## BACKWARD GLANCE O'ER
TRAVEL'D ROADS.

PERHAPS the best of songs heard, or of any and all true love, or
life's fairest episodes, or sailors', soldiers' trying scenes on land
or sea; is the *résumé* of them, or any of them, long afterwards,
looking at the actualities away back past, with all their practical
excitations gone. How the soul loves to float amid such reminis-
cences!

So here I sit gossiping in the early candle-light of old age—I
and my book—casting backward glances over our travel’d road.
After completing, as it were, the journey—(a varied jaunt of
years, with many halts and gaps of intervals—or some lengthen’d
ship-voyage, wherein more than once the last hour had apparently
arrived, and we seem’d certainly going down—yet reaching port
in a sufficient way through all discomfitures at last)—After com-
pleting my poems, I am curious to review them in the light of
their own (at the time unconscious, or mostly unconscious) inten-
tions, with certain unfoldings of the thirty years they seek to
embody. These lines, therefore, will probably blend the weft
of first purposes and speculations, with the warp of that expe-
rience afterwards, always bringing strange developments.

Result of seven or eight stages and struggles extending through
nearly thirty years, (as I nigh my three-score-and-ten I live
largely on memory,) I look upon “Leaves of Grass,” now fin-
ish’d to the end of its opportunities and powers, as my definitive
carte visite to the coming generations of the New World,* if I
may assume to say so. That I have not gain’d the acceptance of
my own time, but have fallen back on fond dreams of the future
—anticipations—(“still lives the song, though Regnar dies”)—
That from a worldly and business point of view “Leaves of
Grass” has been worse than a failure—that public criticism on
the book and myself as author of it yet shows mark’d anger and
contempt more than anything else—(“I find a solid line of ene-

* When Champollion, on his death-bed, handed to the printer the revised proof of his "Egyptian Grammar," he said gayly, "Be careful of this—it is my *carte de visite* to posterity."

(5)

O'ER TRAVEL'D ROADS.

sonality, identified with place and date, in a far more candid and
comprehensive sense than any hitherto poem or book.

Perhaps this is in brief, or suggests, all I have sought to do. Given the Nineteenth Century, with the United States, and what they furnish as area and points of view, "Leaves of Grass" is, or seeks to be, simply a faithful and doubtless self-will'd record. In the midst of all, it gives one man's—the author's—identity, advisors, observations, faiths, and thoughts, color'd hardly at all with any decided coloring from other faiths or other identities. Plenty of songs had been sung—beautiful, matchless songs—adjusted to other lands than these—another spirit and stage of evolution; but I would sing, and leave out or put in, quite solely with reference to America and to-day. Modern science and democracy seem'd to be throwing out their challenge to poetry to put them in its statements in contradistinction to the songs and myths of the past. As I see it now (perhaps too late,) I have unwittingly taken up that challenge and made an attempt at such statements—which I certainly would not assume to do now, knowing more clearly what it means.

For grounds for "Leaves of Grass," as a poem, I abandon'd
the conventional themes, which do not appear in it: none
of the stock ornamentation, or choice plots of love or war, or
high, exceptional personages of Old-World song; nothing, as I
may say, for beauty's sake—no legend, or myth, or romance, nor
euphemism, nor rhyme. But the broadest average of humanity
and its identities in the now ripening Nineteenth Century, and
especially in each of their countless examples and practical occu-
pations in the United States to-day.

One main contrast of the ideas behind every page of my verses,
compared with establish'd poems, is their different relative atti-
tude towards God, towards the objective universe, and still more
(by reflection, confession, assumption, &c.) the quite changed
attitude of the ego, the one chanting or talking, towards himself
and towards his fellow-humanity. It is certainly time for Amer-
ica, above all, to begin this readjustment in the scope and basic
point of view of verse; for everything else has changed. As I
write, I see in an article on Wordsworth, in one of the current
English magazines, the lines, "A few weeks ago an eminent
French critic said that, owing to the special tendency to science
and to its all-devouring force, poetry would cease to be read in
fifty years." But I anticipate the very contrary. Only a firmer,
vastly broader, new area begins to exist—nay, is already form'd
—to which the poetic genius must emigrate. Whatever may have
been the case in years gone by, the true use for the imaginative
faculty of modern times is to give ultimate vivification to facts,

O'ER TRAVEL'D ROADS.

or pensive or other emotion. But, strange as it may sound at first, I will say there is something striking far deeper and towering far higher than those themes for the best elements of modern song.

Just as all the old imaginative works rest, after their kind, on long trains of presuppositions, often entirely unmention'd by themselves, yet supplying the most important bases of them, and without which they could have had no reason for being, so "Leaves of Grass," before a line was written, presupposed something different from any other, and, as it stands, is the result of such presupposition. I should say, indeed, it were useless to attempt reading the book without first carefully tallying that preparatory background and quality in the mind. Think of the United States to-day—the facts of these thirty-eight or forty empires solder'd in one—sixty or seventy millions of equals, with their lives, their passions, their future—these incalculable, modern, American, seething multitudes around us, of which we are inseparable parts! Think, in comparison, of the petty environment and limited area of the poets of past or present Europe, no matter how great their genius. Think of the absence and ignorance, in all cases hitherto, of the multitudinousness, vitality, and the unprecedented stimulants of to-day and here. It almost seems as if a poetry with cosmic and dynamic features of magnitude and limitlessness suitable to the human soul, were never possible before. It is certain that a poetry of absolute faith and equality for the use of the democratic masses never was.

In estimating first-class song, a sufficient Nationality, or, on the other hand, what may be call'd the negative and lack of it, (as in Goethe's case, it sometimes seems to me,) is often, if not always, the first element. One needs only a little penetration to see, at more or less removes, the material facts of their country and radius, with the coloring of the moods of humanity at the time, and its gloomy or hopeful prospects, behind all poets and each poet, and forming their birth-marks. I know very well that my "Leaves" could not possibly have emerged or been fashion'd or completed, from any other era than the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, nor any other land than democratic America, and from the absolute triumph of the National Union arms.

And whether my friends claim it for me or not, I know well enough, too, that in respect to pictorial talent, dramatic situations, and especially in verbal melody and all the conventional technique of poetry, not only the divine works that to-day stand ahead in the world's reading, but dozens more, transcend (some

them immeasurably trans all I have o- could do.

10

A BACKWARD GLANCE

But it seem'd to me, as the objects in Nature, the themes of
aestheticism, and all special exploitations of the mind and soul,
involve not only their own inherent quality, but the quality, just
as inherent and important, of their point of view,* the time had
come to reflect all themes and things, old and new, in the lights
thrown on them by the advent of America and democracy—to
chant those themes through the utterance of one, not only the
grateful and reverent legatee of the past, but the born child of
the New World—to illustrate all through the genesis and ensem-
ble of to-day; and that such illustration and ensemble are the
chief demands of America's prospective imaginative literature.
Not to carry out, in the approved style, some choice plot of
fortune or misfortune, or fancy, or fine thoughts, or incidents,
or courtesies—all of which has been done overwhelmingly and
well, probably never to be excell'd—but that while in such
aesthetic presentation of objects, passions, plots, thoughts, &c.,
our lands and days do not want, and probably will never have,
anything better than they already possess from the bequests of
the past, it still remains to be said that there is even towards all
those a subjective and contemporary point of view appropriate
to ourselves alone, and to our new genius and environments,
different from anything hitherto; and that such conception of
current or gone-by life and art is for us the only means of their
assimilation consistent with the Western world.

Indeed, and anyhow, to put it specifically, has not the time
arrived when, (if it must be plainly said, for democratic Amer-
ica's sake, if for no other) there must imperatively come a
readjustment of the whole theory and nature of Poetry? The
question is important, and I may turn the argument over and
repeat it: Does not the best thought of our day and Republic
conceive of a birth and spirit of song superior to anything past
or present? To the effectual and moral consolidation of our
lands (already, as materially establish'd, the greatest factors in
known history, and far, far greater through what they prelude
and necessitate, and are to be in future)—to conform with and
build on the concrete realities and theories of the universe fur-
nish'd by science, and henceforth the only irrefragable basis
for anything, verse included—to root both influences in the
emotional and imaginative action of the modern time, and
dominate all that precedes or opposes them—is not either a
radical advance and step forward, or a new verteber of the best
song indispensable?

* According to Immanuel Kant, the last essential reality, giving shape and significance to all the rest.

O'ER *TRAVEL'D* ROADS.

11

The New World receives with joy the poems of the antique,
with European feudalism's rich fund of epics, plays, ballads—
seeks not in the last to deaden or displace those voices from our
ear and area—holds them indeed as indispensable studies, influ-
ences, records, comparisons. But though the dawn-dazzle of the
sun of literature is in those poems for us of to-day—though
perhaps the best parts of current character in nations, social
groups, or any man's or woman's individuality, Old World or
New, are from them—and though if I were ask'd to name the
most precious bequest to current American civilization from all
the hitherto ages, I am not sure but I would name those old and
less old songs ferried hither from east and west—some serious
words and debits remain; some acrid considerations demand a
hearing. Of the great poems receiv'd from abroad and from the
ages, and to-day enveloping and penetrating America, is there
one that is consistent with these United States, or essentially
applicable to them as they are and are to be? Is there one
whose underlying basis is not a denial and insult to democracy?
What a comment it forms, anyhow, on this era of literary
fulfilment, with the splendid day-rise of science and resuscitation
of history, that our chief religious and poetical works are not our
own, nor adapted to our light, but have been furnish'd by far-
back ages out of their arriere and darkness, or, at most, twilight
dimness! What is there in those works that so imperiously and
scornfully dominates all our advanced civilization, and culture?

Even Shakspere, who so suffuses current letters and art (which
indeed have in most degrees grown out of him,) belongs essen-
tially to the buried past. Only he holds the proud distinction
for certain important phases of that past, of being the loftiest of
the singers life has yet given voice to. All, however, relate to
and rest upon conditions, standards, politics, sociologies, ranges
of belief, that have been quite eliminated from the Eastern hem-
isphere, and never existed at all in the Western. As authorita-
tive types of song they belong in America just about as much as
the persons and institutes they depict. True, it may be said, the
emotional, moral, and æsthetic natures of humanity have not
radically changed—that in these the old poems apply to our times
and all times, irrespective of date; and that they are of incal-
culable value as pictures of the past. I willingly make those
admissions, and to their fullest extent; then advance the points
herewith as of serious, even paramount importance.

I have indeed put on record elsewhere my reverence and eulogy
for those never-to-be-excell'd poetic bequests, and their indescrib-
able preciousness as heirlooms for America. Another and sepa-
rate point must now be candidly stated. If I had not stood

12

A BACKWARD GLANCE

before those poems with uncover'd head, fully aware of their
colossal grandeur and beauty of form and spirit, I could not have
written "Leaves of Grass." My verdict and conclusions as
illustrated in its pages are arrived at through the temper and in-
culcation of the old works as much as through anything else—
perhaps more than through anything else. As America fully and
fairly construed is the legitimate result and evolutionary outcome
of the past, so I would dare to claim for my verse. Without
stopping to qualify the averment, the Old World has had the
poems of myths, fictions, feudalism, conquest, caste, dynastic
wars, and splendid exceptional characters and affairs, which have
been great; but the New World needs the poems of realities and
science and of the democratic average and basic equality, which
shall be greater. In the centre of all, and object of all, stands
the Human Being, towards whose heroic and spiritual evolution
poems and everything directly or indirectly tend; Old World or
New.

Continuing the subject, my friends have more than once sug-
gested—or may be the garrulity of advancing age is possessing
me—some further embryonic facts of “Leaves of Grass,” and
especially how I enter’d upon them. Dr. Bucke has, in his vol-
ume, already fully and fairly described the preparation of my
poetic field, with the particular and general plowing, planting,
seeding, and occupation of the ground, till everything was fer-
tilized, rooted, and ready to start its own way for good or bad.
Not till after all this, did I attempt any serious acquaintance with
poetic literature. Along in my sixteenth year I had become
possessor of a stout, well-cramm’d one thousand page octavo
volume (I have it yet,) containing Walter Scott’s poetry entire—
an inexhaustible mine and treasury of poetic forage (especially
the endless forests and jungles of notes)—has been so to me for
fifty years, and remains so to this day.*

Later, at intervals, summers and falls, I used to go off, some-
times for a week at a stretch, down in the country, or to Long
Island’s seashores—there, in the presence of outdoor influences,

* Sir Walter Scott's COMPLETE POEMS; especially including BORDER MINTRELSY; then Sir Tristrem; Lay of the Last Minstrel; Ballads from the German; Marmion; Lady of the Lake; Vision of Don Roderick; Lord of the Isles; Rokeby; Bridal of Triermain; Field of Waterloo; Harold the Dauntless; all the Dramas; various Introductions, endless interesting Notes, and Essays on Poetry, Romance, &c.

Lockhart's 1833 (or '34) edition with Scott's latest and copious revisions and annotations. (All the poems were thoroughly read by me, but the ballads of the Border Minstrelsy over and over again.)

O'ER TRAVEL'D ROADS.

I went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, and ab-
sorb'd (probably to better advantage for me than in any library
or indoor room—it makes such difference *where* you read,) Shak-
spere, Ossian, the best translated versions I could get of Homer,
Eschylus, Sophocles, the old German Nibelungen, the ancient
Hindoo poems, and one or two other masterpieces, Dante's
among them. As it happen'd, I read the latter mostly in an old
wood. The Iliad (Buckley's prose version,) I read first thor-
oughly on the peninsula of Orient, northeast end of Long Island,
in a shelter'd hollow of rocks and sand, with the sea on each side.
(I have wonder'd since why I was not overwhelm'd by those
mighty masters. Likely because I read them, as described, in
the full presence of Nature, under the sun, with the far-spreading
landscape and vistas, or the sea rolling in.)

Toward the last I had among much else look'd over Edgar
Poe's poems—of which I was not an admirer, tho' I always
saw that beyond their limited range of melody (like perpetual
chimes of music bells, ringing from lower ᵇ flat up to g) they
were melodious expressions, and perhaps never excell'd ones, of
certain pronounc'd phases of human morbidity. (The Poetic
area is very spacious—has room for all—has so many mansions !)
But I was repaid in Poe's prose by the idea that (at any rate for
our occasions, our day) there can be no such thing as a long
poem. The same thought had been haunting my mind before,
but Poe's argument, though short, work'd the sum out and proved
it to me.

Another point had an early settlement, clearing the ground
greatly. I saw, from the time my enterprise and questionings
positively shaped themselves (how best can I express my own
distinctive era and surroundings, America, Democracy ?) that the
trunk and centre whence the answer was to radiate, and to which
all should return from straying however far a distance, must be
an identical body and soul, a personality—which personality,
after many considerations and ponderings I deliberately settled
should be myself—indeed could not be any other. I also felt
strongly (whether I have shown it or not) that to the true and
full estimate of the Present both the Past and the Future are main
considerations.

These, however, and much more might have gone on and come
to naught (almost positively would have come to naught,) if a
sudden, vast, terrible, direct and indirect stimulus for new and
national declamatory expression had not been given to me. It
is certain, I say, that, although I had made a start before, only
from the occurrence of the Secession War, and what it show'd
me as by flashes of lightning, with the emotional depths it sounded

A BACKWARD GLANCE

and arous'd (of course, I don't mean in my own heart only, I
saw it just as plainly in others, in millions)—that only from the
strong flare and provocation of that war's sights and scenes the
final reasons-for-being of an autochthonic and passionate song
definitely came forth.

I went down to the war fields in Virginia (end of 1862), lived
thenceforward in camp—saw great battles and the days and nights
afterward—partook of all the fluctuations, gloom, despair, hopes
again arous'd, courage evoked—death readily risk'd—the cause,
too—along and filling those agonistic and lurid following years,
1863-'64-'65—the real parturition years (more than 1776-'83)
of this henceforth homogeneous Union. Without those three or
four years and the experiences they gave, "Leaves of Grass"
would not now be existing.

But I set out with the intention also of indicating or hinting
some point-characteristics which I since see (though I did not
then, at least not definitely) were bases and object-urgings toward
those "Leaves" from the first. The word I myself put prima-
riously for the description of them as they stand at last, is the word
Suggestiveness. I round and finish little, if anything; and could
not, consistently with my scheme. The reader will always have
his or her part to do, just as much as I have had mine. I seek
less to state or display any theme or thought, and more to bring
you, reader, into the atmosphere of the theme or thought—there
to pursue your own flight. Another impetus-word is Comrade-
ship as for all lands, and in a more commanding and acknowledg'd
sense than hitherto. Other word-signs would be Good Cheer,
Content, and Hope.

The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings
to the observation of Humanity and Nature—the mood out of
which he contemplates his subjects. What kind of temper and
what amount of faith report these things? Up to how recent a
date is the song carried? What the equipment, and special raci-
ness of the singer—what his tinge of coloring? The last value
of artistic expressers, past and present—Greek æsthetes, Shak-
spere—or in our own day Tennyson, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Em-
erson—is certainly involv'd in such questions. I say the pro-
foundest service that poems or any other writings can do for their
reader is not merely to satisfy the intellect, or supply something
polish'd and interesting, nor even to depict great passions, or
persons or events, but to fill him with vigorous and clean manli-
ness, religiousness, and give him good heart as a radical posses-
sion and habit. The educated world seems to have been growing
more and more ennuyed for ages, leaving to our time the inheri-

O'ER TRAVEL'D ROADS.

tance of it all. Fortunately there is the original inexhaustible
fund of buoyancy, normally resident in the race, forever eligible
to be appeal'd to and relied on.

As for native American individuality, though certain to come,
and on a large scale, the distinctive and ideal type of Western
character (as consistent with the operative political and even
money-making features of United States' humanity in the Nine-
teenth Century as chosen knights, gentlemen and warriors were
the ideals of the centuries of European feudalism) it has not yet
appear'd. I have allow'd the stress of my poems from beginning
to end to bear upon American individuality and assist it—not
only because that is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her gener-
alizing laws, but as counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of
Democracy—and for other reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary
and other conventions, I avowedly chant "the great pride of
man in himself," and permit it to be more or less a *motif* of
nearly all my verse. I think this pride indispensable to an
American. I think it not inconsistent with obedience, humility,
defference, and self-questioning.

Democracy has been so retarded and jeopardized by powerful
personalities, that its first instincts are fain to clip, conform,
bring in stragglers, and reduce everything to a dead level. While
the ambitious thought of my song is to help the forming of a great
aggregate Nation, it is, perhaps, altogether through the forming
of myriads of fully develop'd and enclosing individuals. Wel-
come as are equality's and fraternity's doctrines and popular edu-
cation, a certain liability accompanies them all, as we see. That
primal and interior something in man, in his soul's abysms, col-
oring all, and, by exceptional fruitions, giving the last majesty
to him—something continually touch'd upon and attain'd by the
old poems and ballads of feudalism, and often the principal
foundation of them—modern science and democracy appear to
be endangering, perhaps eliminating. But that forms an appear-
ance only; the reality is quite different. The new influences,
upon the whole, are surely preparing the way for grander indivi-
dualities than ever. To-day and here personal force is behind
everything, just the same. The times and depictions from the
Iliad to Shakspere inclusive can happily never again be realized—
but the elements of courageous and lofty manhood are un-
changed.

Without yielding an inch the working-man and working-
woman were to be in my pages from first to last. The ranges
of heroism and loftiness with which Greek and feudal poets en-
dow'd their god-like or lordly born characters—indeed prouder
and better based and with fuller ranges than those—I was to

16

A BACKWARD GLANCE

endow the democratic averages of America. I was to show that we, here and to-day, are eligible to the grandest and the best—more eligible now than any times of old were. I will also want my utterances (I said to myself before beginning) to be in spirit the poems of the morning. (They have been founded and mainly written in the sunny forenoon and early midday of my life.) I will want them to be the poems of women entirely as much as men. I have wish'd to put the complete Union of the States in my songs without any preference or partiality whatever. Henceforth, if they live and are read, it must be just as much South as North—just as much along the Pacific as Atlantic—in the valley of the Mississippi, in Canada, up in Maine, down in Texas, and on the shores of Puget Sound.

From another point of view "Leaves of Grass" is avowedly the song of Sex and Amativeness, and even Animality—though Beanings that do not usually go along with those words are behind all, and will duly emerge; and all are sought to be lifted into a different light and atmosphere. Of this feature, intentionally palpable in a few lines, I shall only say the espousing principle of those lines so gives breath of life to my whole scheme that the bulk of the pieces might as well have been left unwritten were those lines omitted. Difficult as it will be, it has become, in my opinion, imperative to achieve a shifted attitude from superior men and women towards the thought and fact of sexuality, as an element in character, personality, the emotions, and a theme in literature. I am not going to argue the question by itself; it does not stand by itself. The vitality of it is altogether in its relations, bearings, significance—like the clef of a symphony. At last analogy the lines I allude to, and the spirit in which they are spoken, permeate all "Leaves of Grass," and the work must stand or fall with them, as the human body and soul must remain as an entirety.

Universal as are certain facts and symptoms of communities or individuals all times, there is nothing so rare in modern conventions and poetry as their normal recognizance. Literature is always calling in the doctor for consultation and confession, and always giving evasions and swathing suppressions in place of that "heroic nudity"* on which only a genuine diagnosis of serious cases can be built. And in respect to editions of "Leaves of Grass" in time to come (if there should be such) I take occasion now to confirm those lines with the settled convictions and deliberate renewals of thirty years, and to hereby prohibit, as far as word of mine can do so, any elision of them.

*"Nineteenth Century," July, 1883.

18 A BACKWARD GLANCE O'er TRAVEL'D ROADS.

good while, and listening to the criticisms of his suite of students,
he said to the latter, in answer to their questions (as to what
school the work implied or belong'd,) "I do not believe the ar-
tist, unknown and perhaps no longer living, who has given the
world this legacy; ever belong'd to any school, or ever painted
anything but this one picture, which is a personal affair—a piece
out of a man's life."

"Leaves of Grass" indeed (I cannot too often reiterate) has mainly been the outcropping of my own emotional and other personal nature—an attempt, from first to last, to put a Person, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, in America,) freely, fully and truly on record. I could not find any similar personal record in current literature that satisfied me. But it is not on "Leaves of Grass" distinctively as literature, or a specimen thereof, that I feel to dwell, or advance claims. No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly toward art or æstheticism. I hope to go on record for something different—something better, if I may dare to say so. If I rested "Leaves of Grass" on the usual claims—if I did not feel that the deepest moral, social, political purposes of America are the underlying endeavors at least of my pages; that the geography and hydrography of this continent, the Prairies, the St. Lawrence, Ohio, the Carolinas, Texas, Missouri are their real veins and current concrete—I should not dare to have them put in type, and printed, and offer'd for sale.

I say no land or people or circumstances ever existed so need-
ing a race of singers and poems differing from all others, and
rigidly their own, as the land and people and circumstances of
our United States need such singers and poems to-day, and for
the future. Still further, as long as the States continue to absorb
and be dominated by the poetry of the Old World, and remain
unsupplied with autochthonous song, to express, vitalize and give
color to and define their material and political success, and minis-
ter to them distinctively, so long will they stop short of first-class
Nationality and remain defective.

In the free evening of my day I give to you, reader, the fore-
going garrulous talk, thoughts, reminiscences,

As idly drifting down the ebb,
Such ripples, half-caught voices, echo from the shore.

Concluding with two items for the imaginative genius of the
West, when it worthily rises—First, what Herder taught to the
young Goethe, that really great poetry is always (like the
Homeric or Biblical canticles) the result of a national spirit,
and not the privilege of a polish'd and select few; Second, that
the strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.

# SANDS AT SEVENTY.

## MANNAHATTA.

My city's fit and noble name resumed,
Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,
*A rocky founded island—shores where ever gayly dash the coming,
going, hurrying sea waves.*

## PAUMANOK.

Sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking!
One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,
steamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or gentle—mighty
hulls dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water—healthy air and soil!
Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!

## FROM MONTAUK POINT.

I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky;)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that inbound urge
and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.

## TO THOSE WHO'VE FAIL'D.

To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,
To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers—to over-ardent travelers—to pilots
on their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition—I'd rear
a laurel-cover'd monument,
High, high above the rest—To all cut off before their time,
Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench'd by an early death.

(19)

20

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY-NINE.

A carol closing sixty-nine—a *résumé*—a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled
Flag I love;
Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north, south, east and west,
your items all;
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.

THE BRAVEST SOLDIERS.

Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived
through the fight;
But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.

A FONT OF TYPE.

This latent mine—these unlaunch’d voices—passionate powers,
Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,
(Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)
These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,
Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,
Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

AS I SIT WRITING HERE.

As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,
Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering
*ennui*,
May filter in my daily songs.

MY CANARY BIRD.

Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty
books,
Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations ?
But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,
Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,
Is it not just as great, O soul ?

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

QUERIES TO MY SEVENTIETH YEAR.

Approaching, nearing, curious,
Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?
Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?
Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,
Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack'd voice harping, screeching?

THE WALLABOUT MARTYRS.

[In Brooklyn, in an old vault, mark'd by no special recognition, lie huddled at this moment the undoubtedly authentic remains of the stanchest and earliest revolutionary patriots from the British prison ships and prisons of the times of 1776-83, in and around New York, and from all over Long Island; originally buried—many thousands of them—in trenches in the Wallabout sands.]

Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of
mouldy bones,
Once living men—once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,
The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.

THE FIRST DANDELION.

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass—innocent, golden,
calm as the dawn,
The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

AMERICA.

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.

MEMORIES.

How sweet the silent backward tracings!
The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation of old times resumed—their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

22

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

TO-DAY AND THEE.

The appointed winners in a long-stretch'd game;
The course of Time and nations—Egypt, India, Greece and
Rome;
The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,
Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,
Garner'd for now and thee—To think of it!
The heirdom all converged in thee!

AFTER THE DAZZLE OF DAY.

After the dazzle of day is gone,
Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;
After the clamor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,
Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BORN FEB. 12, 1809.

To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer—a pulse of
thought,
To memory of Him—to birth of Him.
Publish'd Feb. 12, 1888.

OUT OF MAY'S SHOWS SELECTED.

Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.

HALCYON DAYS.

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or
war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier
air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs
really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all !
The brooding and blissful halcyon days !

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

FANCIES AT NAVESINK.

THE PILOT IN THE MIST.

Steaming the northern rapids—(an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,

A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,

Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)*

Again 'tis just at morning—a heavy haze contends with daybreak,

Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me—I press through
foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me,

Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman

Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.

HAD I THE CHOICE.

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,

To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,

Homer with all his wars and warriors—Hector, Achilles, Ajax,

Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—Tennyson's fair ladies,

Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect
rhyme, delight of singers;

These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter,

Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,

Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,

And leave its odor there.

YOU TIDES WITH CEASELESS SWELL.

You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!

You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's
spread,

Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,

What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what
Sirius' ? what Capella's?

What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what
boundless aggregate of all?

What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to
all in you? what fluid, vast identity,

Holding the universe with all its parts as one—as sailing in a ship?

* Navesink—a sea-side mountain, lower entrance of New York Bay.

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

LAST OF EBB, AND DAYLIGHT WANING.

Last of ebb, and daylight waning,
Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt
incoming,
With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,
Many a muffled confession—many a sob and whisper’d word,
As of speakers far or hid.

How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!
Poets unnamed—artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost
designs,

Love’s unresponse—a chorus of age’s complaints—hope’s last
words,

Some suicide’s despairing cry, *Away to the boundless waste, and never again return.*

On to oblivion then!
On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!
On for your time, ye furious debouché!

AND YET NOT YOU ALONE.

And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,
Nor you, ye lost designs alone—nor failures, aspirations;
I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;
Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again—duly the
hinges turning,

Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,
Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,
The rhythmus of Birth eternal.

PROUDLY THE FLOOD COMES IN.

Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,
All throbs, dilates—the farms, woods, streets of cities—workmen
at work,

Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—steamers’ pennants
of smoke—and under the forenoon sun,

Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the
inward bound,

Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

BY THAT LONG SCAN OF WAVES.

By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon
myself,

In every crest some undulating light or shade—some retrospect,

26

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA!

With husky-haughty lips, O sea!
Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,
(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,
Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the
sun,
Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos'd hurricanes,
Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all
eternity in thy content,
(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make
thee greatest—no less could make thee,)
Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet
never gain'st,
Surely some right withheld—some voice, in huge monotonous
rage, of freedom-lover pent,
Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those
breakers,
By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breathe,
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
And undertones of distant lion roar,
(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear—but now, rapport for
once,
A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)
The first and last confession of the globe,
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms,
The tale of cosmic elemental passion,
Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

DEATH OF GENERAL GRANT.

As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,
From that great play on history's stage eterne,
That lurid, partial act of war and peace—of old and new contending,
Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long
suspense;
All past—and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing,
Victor's and vanquish'd—Lincoln's and Lee's—now thou with
them,

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

Man of the mighty days—and equal to the days!

Thou from the prairies!—tangled and many-vein'd and hard has
been thy part,

To admiration has it been enacted!

RED JACKET (FROM ALOFT.)

[Impromptu on Buffalo City's monument to, and re-burial of the old Iroquois orator, October 9, 1884.]

Upon this scene, this show,

Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,

(Nor in caprice alone—some grains of deepest meaning.)

Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds' blended
shapes,

As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill'd with its soul,

Product of Nature's sun, stars, earth direct—a towering human
form,

In hunting-shirt of film, arm'd with the rifle, a half-ironical smile
curving its phantom lips,

Like one of Ossian's ghosts looks down.

WASHINGTON'S MONUMENT, FEBRUARY, 1885.

Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:

Far from its base and shaft expanding—the round zones circling,
comprehending,

Thou, Washington, art all the world's, the continents' entire—
not yours alone, America,

Europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot,

Or frozen North, or sultry South—the African's—the Arab's in
his tent,

Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;

(Greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the same—the heir
legitimate, continued ever,

The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken
line,

Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e'en in defeat de-
feated not, the same;)

Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,

Through teeming cities' streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,

Now, or to come, or past—where patriot wills existed or exist,

Wherever Freedom, pois'd by Toleration, sway'd by Law.

Stands or is rising thy true monument.

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

OLD SALT KOSSABONE.

Far back, related on my mother's side,

Old Salt Kossabone, I'll tell you how he died:

(Had been a sailor all his life—was nearly 90—lived with his
married grandchild, Jenny;

House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and
stretch to open sea;)

The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his
regular custom,

In his great arm chair by the window seated,

(Sometimes, indeed, through half the day.)

Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself
—And now the close of all:

One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long—cross-
tides and much wrong going,

At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veer-
ing,

And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly enter-
ing, cleaving, as he watches,

“She’s free—she’s on her destination ’—these the last words—
when Jenny came, he sat there dead,

Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother's side, far
back.

THE DEAD TENOR.

As down the stage again,

With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable,

Back from the fading lessons of the past, I'd call, I'd tell and
own,

How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from
thee!

(So firm—so liquid-soft—again that tremulous, manly timbre!)

The perfect singing voice—deepest of all to me the lesson—trial
and test of all:)

How through those strains distill'd—how the rapt ears, the soul
of me, absorbing

Fernando's heart, Manrico's passionate call, Ernani's, sweet
Gennaro's,

I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants transmuting,
Freedom's and Love's and Faith's unloos'd cantabile,

(As perfume's, color's, sunlight's correlation :)

From these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor,

A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shovel'd
earth,

To memory of thee.

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

31

“GOING SOMEWHERE.”

My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,

(Now buried in an English grave—and this a memory-leaf for
her dear sake.)

Ended our talk—"The sum, concluding all we know of old or
modern learning, intuitions deep,

"Of all Geologies—Histories—of all Astronomy—of Evolution,
Metaphysics all,

"Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely
bettering,

"Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is
duly over.)

"The world, the race, the soul—in space and time the universes,

"All bound as is befitting each—all surely going somewhere."

From the 1867 edition L. of G.

SMALL THE THEME OF MY CHANT.

Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest—namely, One's-
Self—a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the
New World, I sing.

Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physi-
ognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;—I
say the Form complete is worthier far. The Female equally
with the Male, I sing.

Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self. I speak the word of the
modern, the word En-Masse.

My Days I sing, and the Lands—with interstice I knew of hap-
less War.

(O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence,
I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I
return.)

And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than
once, and link'd together let us go.)

TRUE CONQUERORS.

Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or
bent,)

Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck,

Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and
scars;

Enough that they've survived at all—long life's unflinching ones!

Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all
—in that alone,

True conquerors, o'er all the rest.

32

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

THE UNITED STATES TO OLD WORLD CRITICS.

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete,
Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;
As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,
Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps,
The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

THE CALMING THOUGHT OF ALL.

That coursing on, whate'er men's speculations,
Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies,
Amid the bawling presentations new and old,
The round earth's silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

THANKS IN OLD AGE.

Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere
life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear
—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of . . . ar the
same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown—or young or old—countless, un-
specified, readers belov'd,
We never met, and ne'er shall meet—and yet our souls embrace,
long, close and long ;)
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books—for colors, forms,
For all the brave strong men—devoted, hardy men—who've for-
ward sprung in freedom's help, all years, all lands,
For braver, stronger, more devoted men—(a special laurel ere I
go, to life's war's chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought—the great artillerists—the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul :)
As soldier from an ended war return'd—As traveler out of
myriads, to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks—joyful thanks!—a soldier's, traveler's thanks.

LIFE AND DEATH.

The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,
Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.
By each successive age insoluble, pass'd on,
To ours to-day—and we pass on the same

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

THE VOICE OF THE RAIL

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed,
and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own
origin, and make pure and beautify it:
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wander-
ing,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)

SOON SHALL THE WINTER'S FOIL BE HERE.

Soon shall the winter's foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt—A little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and
growth—a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears—all thy best attributes—all that takes cognizance
of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill. Thou shall perceive the simple shows, the
delicate miracles of earth,
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flow-
ers,
The arbutus under foot, the willow's yellow-green, the blossom-
ing plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs—the
flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.

WHILE NOT THE PAST FORGETTING.

While not the past forgetting,
To-day, at least, contention sunk entire—peace, brotherhood up-
risen;
For sign reciprocal our Northern, Southern hands,
Lay on the graves of all dead soldiers, North or South
(Nor for the past alone—for meanings to the future,)
Wreaths of roses and branches of palm.
Publish'd May 30, 1888.

3

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

THE DYING VETERAN.

[A Long Island incident—early part of the present century.]

Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,
Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,
I cast a reminiscence—(likely 'twill offend you,
I heard it in my boyhood;)—More than a generation since,
A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself,
(Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritual-
istic,
Had fought in the ranks—fought well—had been all through the
Revolutionary war,)
Lay dying—sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending
him,
Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-
caught words:
"Let me return again to my war-days,
To the sights and scenes—to forming the line of battle,
To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,
To the cannons, the grim artillery,
To the galloping aids, carrying orders,
To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,
The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;
Away with your life of peace!—your joys of peace!
Give me my old wild battle-life again!"

STRONGER LESSONS.

Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and
were tender with you, and stood aside for you?

Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you,
and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with
contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

A PRAIRIE SUNSET.

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,

The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's multiform power con-
sign'd for once to colors;

The light, the general air possess'd by them—colors till now un-
known,

No limit, confine—not the Western sky alone—the high meri-
dian—North, South, all,

Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS.

Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting:

He shipp'd as green-hand boy, and sail'd away, (took some sudden, vehement notion;)

Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round,

While he the globe was circling round and round,—and now returns:

How changed the place—all the old land-marks gone—the parents dead;

(Yes, he comes back *to lay in port for good—to settle*—has a well-fill'd purse—no spot will do but this;)

The little boat that scull'd him from the sloop, now held in leash I see,

I hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the sand,

I see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass,

I scan the face all berry-brown and bearded—the stout-strong frame,

Dress'd in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:

(Then what the told-out story of those twenty years? What of the future?)

ORANGE BUDS BY MAIL FROM FLORIDA.

[Voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war and the grand opera were proofs enough of civilization's and France's progress, in his day.]

A lesser proof than old Voltaire's, yet greater,

Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America,

To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,

Brought safely for a thousand miles o'er land and tide,

Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,

Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,

A bunch of orange buds by mail from Florida.

TWILIGHT.

The soft voluptuous opiate shades,

The sun just gone, the eager light dispell'd—(I too will soon be gone, dispell'd.)

A haze—nirwana—rest and night—oblivion.

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

THE DISMANTLED SHIP.

In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and
hawser'd tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.

NOW PRECEDENT SONGS, FAREWELL.

Now precedent songs, farewell—by every name farewell,
(Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession,
waggons,

From ups and downs—with intervals—from elder years, mid-age,
or youth.)

“In Cabin'd Ships,” or “Thee Old Cause” or “Poets to Come”

Or “Paumunok,” “Song of Myself,” “Calamus,” or “Adam,”

Or “Beat! Beat! Drums!” or “To the Leaven'd Soil they
Trod,”

Or “Captain! My Captain!” “Kosmos,” “Quicksand Years,”
or “Thoughts,”

“Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood,” and many, many more
unspecified,

From fibre heart of mine—from throat and tongue—(My life's
hot pulsing blood,

The personal urge and form for me—not merely paper, automatic
type and ink.)

Each song of mine—each utterance in the past—having its long,
long history,

Of life or death, or soldier's wound, of country's loss or safety,
(O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! com-
pared indeed to that!)

What wretched shred e'en at the best of all !)

AN EVENING LULL.

After a week of physical anguish,
Restless and pain, and feverish heat,
Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,
Three hours of peace and soothing rest and brain.

* The two songs on this page are eked out during an afternoon, June, 1888,
in my seventieth year, at a critical spell of illness. Of course no reader and
probably no human being at any time will ever have such phases of emotional
and solemn action as these involve to me. I feel in them an end and close
of all.

37

38

SANDS AT SEVENTY.

AFTER THE SUPPER AND TALK.

After the supper and talk—after the day is done,
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating;
(So hard for his hand to release those hands—no more will they
meet,

No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,
A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more.)

Shunning, postponing severance—seeking to ward off the last
word ever so little,

E'en at the exit-door turning—charges superfluous calling back—
e'en as he descends the steps,

Something to eke out a minute additional—shadows of nightfall
deepening,

Farewells, messages lessening—dimmer the forthgoer's visage
and form,

Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness—loth, O so. loth to de-
part!

Garrulous to the very last.

OUR EMINENT VISITORS.

mov'd in its tides by action as powerless as that of the dwellers by the shore
to direct the currents of the ocean."

A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded, per-
manently treasur'd by our literary classes and educators. (The
gestation, the youth, the knitting preparations, are now over, and
it is full time for definite purpose, result.) How few think of it,
though it is the impetus and background of our whole Nation-
ality and popular life. In the present brief memorandum I very
likely for the first time awake "the intelligent reader" to the
idea and inquiry whether there isn't such a thing as the dis-
tinctive genius of our democratic New World, universal, imma-
nent, bringing to a head the best experience of the past—not
specially literary or intellectual—not merely "good," (in the
Sunday School and Temperance Society sense,)—some invisible
spine and great sympathetic to these States, resident only in the
average people, in their practical life, in their physiology, in
their emotions, in their nebulous yet fiery patriotism, in the
armies (both sides) through the whole Secession War—an
identity and character which indeed so far "finds no voice
among their spokesmen."

To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears to-day, is
even yet, for its most important results, entirely in the tentative
state; its very formation-stir and whirling trials and essays more
splendid and picturesque, to my thinking, than the accom-
plish'd growths and shows of other lands, through European
history, or Greece, or all the past. Surely a New World litera-
ture, worthy the name, is not to be, if it ever comes, some
fiction, or fancy, or bit of sentimentalism or polish'd work
merely by itself, or in abstraction. So long as such literature
is no born branch and offshoot of the Nationality, rooted and
grown from its roots, and fibred with its fibre, it can never
answer any deep call or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught
Republic is wiser than its teachers. The best literature is always
a result of something far greater than itself—not the hero, but
the portrait of the hero. Before there can be recorded history
or poem there must be the transaction. Beyond the old master-
pieces, the Iliad, the interminable Hindu epics, the Greek
tragedies, even the Bible itself, range the immense facts of what
must have preceded them, their *sine qua non*—the veritable
poems and masterpieces, of which, grand as they are, the word-
statements are but shreds and cartoons.

For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest, most
stupendous processes ever known, ever perform'd by man or
nation, on the largest scales and in countless varieties, are now

THE BIBLE AS POETRY.

I SUPPOSE one cannot at this day say anything new, from a
literary point of view, about those autochthonic bequests of
Asia—the Hebrew Bible, the mighty Hindu epics, and a hun-
dred lesser but typical works; (not now definitely including the
Iliad—though that work was certainly of Asiatic genesis, as
Homer himself was—considerations which seem curiously
ignored.) But will there ever be a time or place—ever a
student, however modern, of the grand art, to whom those com-
positions will not afford profounder lessons than all else of their
kind in the garnerage of the past? Could there be any more
opportune suggestion, to the current popular writer and reader
of verse, what the office of poet was in primeval times—and is
yet capable of being, anew, adjusted entirely to the modern?

All the poems of Orientalism, with the Old and New Testa-
ments at the centre, tend to deep and wide, (I don't know but
the deepest and widest,) psychological development—with little,
or nothing at all, of the mere æsthetic, the principal verse-
requirement of our day. Very late, but unerringly, comes to
every capable student the perception that it is not in beauty, it
is not in art, it is not even in science, that the profoundest laws
of the case have their eternal sway and outcropping.

In his discourse on "Hebrew Poets" De Sola Mendes said: "The fundamental feature of judaism, of the Hebrew nationality, was religion; its poetry was naturally religious. Its subjects, God and Providence, the covenants with Israel, God in Nature, and as reveal'd, God the Creator and Governor, Nature in her majesty and beauty, inspired hymns and odes to Nature's God. And then the checker'd history of the nation furnish'd allusions, illustrations, and subjects for epic display—the glory of the sanctuary, the offerings, the splendid ritual, the Holy City, and lov'd Palestine with its pleasant valleys and wild tracts.” Dr. Mendes said “that rhyming was not a characteristic of Hebrew poetry at all. Metre was not a necessary mark of poetry. Great poets discarded it; the early Jewish poets knew it not.”

Compared with the famed epics of Greece, and lesser ones
since, the spinal supports of the Bible are simple and meagre.
All its history, biography, narratives, etc., are as beads, strung
on and indicating the eternal thread of the Deific purpose and

(43)

THE BIBLE AS POETRY.

44

power. Yet with only deepest faith for impetus, and such Deific
purpose for palpable or impalpable theme, it often transcends
the masterpieces of Hellas, and all masterpieces. The metaphors
daring beyond account, the lawless soul, extravagant by our
standards, the glow of love and friendship, the fervent kiss—
nothing in argument or logic, but unsurpass'd in proverbs, in
religious ecstacy, in suggestions of common mortality and death,
man's great equalizers—the spirit everything, the ceremonies
and forms of the churches nothing, faith limitless, its immense
sensuousness immensely spiritual—an incredible, all-inclusive
non-worldliness and dew-scented illiteracy (the antipodes of our
Nineteenth Century business absorption and morbid refinement)
—no hair-splitting doubts, no sickly sulking and sniffling, no
“Hamlet,” no “Adonais,” no “Thanatopsis,” no “In Memo-
riam.”

The culminated proof of the poetry of a country is the quality
of its personnel, which, in any race, can never be really superior
without superior poems. The finest blending of individuality
with universality (in my opinion nothing out of the galaxies of
the “Iliad,” or Shakspere’s heroes, or from the Tennysonian
“Idyls,” so lofty, devoted and starlike,) typified in the songs
of those old Asiatic lands. Men and women as great columnar
trees. Nowhere else the abnegation of self towering in such
quaint sublimity; nowhere else the simplest human emotions
conquering the gods of heaven, and fate itself. (The episode,
for instance, toward the close of the “Mahabharata”—the jour-
ney of the wife Savitri with the god of death, Yama,

“One terrible to see—blood-red his garb,
His body huge and dark, bloodshot his eyes,
Which flamed like suns beneath his turban cloth,
Arm'd was he with a noose,”

who carries off the soul of the dead husband, the wife tenaciously
following, and—by the resistless charm of perfect poetic recita-
tion!—eventually redeeming her captive mate.)

I remember how enthusiastically William H. Seward, in his
last days, once expatiated on these themes, from his travels in
Turkey, Egypt, and Asia Minor, finding the oldest Biblical
narratives exactly illustrated there to-day with apparently no
break or change along three thousand years—the veil'd women,
the costumes, the gravity and simplicity, all the manners just the
same. The veteran Trelawney said he found the only real
nobleman of the world in a good average specimen of the mid-
aged or elderly Oriental. In the East the grand figure, always
leading, is the old man, majestic, with flowing beard, paternal,

THE BIBLE AS POETRY.

etc. In Europe and America, it is, as we know, the young
fellow—in novels, a handsome and interesting hero, more or
less juvenile—in operas, a tenor with blooming cheeks, black
mustache, superficial animation, and perhaps good lungs, but no
more depth than skim-milk. But reading folks probably get
their information of those Bible areas and current peoples, as
depicted in print by English and French cads, the most shallow,
impudent, supercilious brood on earth.

I have said nothing yet of the cumulus of associations (per-
fectly legitimate parts of its influence, and finally in many re-
spects the dominant parts,) of the Bible as a poetic entity, and
of every portion of it. Not the old edifice only—the congeries
also of events and struggles and surroundings, of which it has
been the scene and motive—even the horrors, dreads, deaths.
How many ages and generations have brooded and wept and
agonized over this book! What untellable joys and ecstasies—
what support to martyrs at the stake—from it. (No really great
song can ever attain full purport till long after the death of its
singer—till it has accrued and incorporated the many passions,
many joys and sorrows, it has itself arous'd.) To what myriads
has it been the shore and rock of safety—the refuge from driving
tempest and wreck! Translated in all languages, how it has
united this diverse world! Of civilized lands to-day, whose of
our retrospects has it not interwoven and link'd and permeated ?
Not only does it bring us what is clasp'd within its covers ; nay,
that is the least of what it brings. Of its thousands, there is not
a verse, not a word, but is thick-studded with human emotions,
successions of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, of our
own antecedents, inseparable from that background of us, on
which, phantasmal as it is, all that we are to-day inevitably de-
pends—our ancestry, our past.

Strange, but true, that the principal factor in cohering the
nations, eras and paradoxes of the globe, by giving them a com-
mon platform of two or three great ideas, a commonalty of
origin, and projecting cosmic brotherhood, the dream of all
hope, all time—that the long trains, gestations, attempts and
failures, resulting in the New World, and in modern solidarity
and politics—are to be identified and resolv'd back into a col-
lection of old poetic lore, which, more than any one thing else,
has been the axis of civilization and history through thousands
of years—and except for which this America of ours, with its
polity and essentials, could not now be existing.

No true bard will ever contravene the Bible. If the time ever
comes when iconoclasm does its extremest in one direction
against the Books of the Bible in its present form, the collection

WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS?

some there was certainly something so veil'd. Even the episodes of Cade, Joan of Arc, and the like (which sometimes seem to me like interpolations allow'd,) may be meant to foil the possible sleuth, and throw any too 'cute pursuer off the scent. In the whole matter I should specially dwell on, and make much of, that inexplicable element of every highest poetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve its real purpose and meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of this trait—hiding the nest where common seekers may never find it—the Shaksperean works afford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations known to me. I would even call that trait the leading one through the whole of those works.

All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how and where I get my new light on Shakspere. Speaking of the special English plays, my friend William O'Connor says:

> They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,—and carry to me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably well enough understood in that age, which perhaps time and criticism will reveal. . . . Their atmosphere is one of barbarous and tumultuous gloom,—they do not make us love the times they limn, . . . and it is impossible to believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could have sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be true, certainly and subtly saps and mines.

Reading the just-specified play in the light of Mr. O'Connor's suggestion, I defy any one to escape such new and deep utterance-meanings, like magic ink, warm'd by the fire, and previously invisible. Will it not indeed be strange if the author of "Othello" and "Hamlet" is destin'd to live in America, in a generation or two, less as the cunning draughtsman of the passions, and more as putting on record the first full exposé—and by far the most vivid one, immeasurably ahead of doctrinaires and economists—of the political theory and results, or the reason-why and necessity for them which America has come on earth to abnegate and replace?

The summary of my suggestion would be, therefore, that while the more the rich and tangled jungle of the Shaksperean area is travers'd and studied, and the more baffled and mix'd, as so far appears, becomes the exploring student (who at last surmises everything, and remains certain of nothing,) it is possible a future age of criticism, diving deeper, mapping the land and lines freer, completer than hitherto, may discover in the plays named the scientific (Baconian?) inauguration of modern Democracy—furnishing realistic and first-class artistic portraitures of the mediæval world, the feudal personalties, institutes, in their

'60 ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON.

"Holding the plough," said his brother Gilbert, "was the favorite situation with Robert for poetic compositions; and some of his best verses were produced while he was at that exercise." "I must return to my humble station, and woo my rustic muse in my wonted way, at the plough-tail." 1787, to the Earl of Buchan. He has no high ideal of the poet or the poet's office; indeed quite a low and contracted notion of both:

"Fortune ! if thou'll but gie me still
Hale breeks, a scone, and whiskey gill,
An' rowth o' rhyme to rave at will,
Tak' a' the rest."

See also his rhym'd letters to Robert Graham invoking patron-
age; "one stronghold," Lord Glencairn, being dead, now these
appeals to "Fintra, my other stay," (with in one letter a copious
shower of vituperation generally.) In his collected poems there
is no particular unity, nothing that can be called a leading the-
ory, no unmistakable spine or skeleton. Perhaps, indeed, their
very desultoriness is the charm of his songs: "I take up one or
another," he says in a letter to Thompson, "just as the bee of
the moment buzzes in my bonnet-lug."

Consonantly with the customs of the time—yet markedly in-
consistent in spirit with Burns's own case, (and not a little pain-
ful as it remains on record, as depicting some features of the bard
himself,) the relation called patronage existed between the nobil-
ity and gentry on one side, and literary people on the other, and
gives one of the strongest side-lights to the general coloring of
poems and poets. It crops out a good deal in Burns's Letters,
and even necessitated a certain flunkeyism on occasions, through
life. It probably, with its requirements, (while it help'd in
money and countenance) did as much as any one cause in making
that life a chafed and unhappy one, ended by a premature and
miserable death.

Yes, there is something about Burns peculiarly acceptable to
the concrete, human points of view. He poetizes work-a-day
agricultural labor and life, (whose spirit and sympathies, as well
as practicalities, are much the same everywhere,) and treats fresh,
often coarse, natural occurrences, loves, persons, not like many
new and some old poets in a genteel style of gilt and china, or at
second or third removes, but in their own born atmosphere,
laughter, sweat,ction. Perhaps no one ever sang "lads and
lasses"—that universal race, mainly the same, too, all ages, all
lands—down on their own plane, as he has. He exhibits no
philosophy worth mentioning; his morality is hardly more than

died.) His collected works in giving everything, are nearly one
half first drafts. His brightest hit is his use of the Scotch patois,
so full of terms flavor'd like wild fruits or berries. Then I should
make an allowance to Burns which cannot be made for any other
poet. Curiously even the frequent crudeness, haste, deficiencies,
(flatness and puerilities by no means absent) prove upon the whole
not out of keeping in any comprehensive collection of his works,
heroically printed, 'following copy,' every piece, every line ac-
cording to originals. Other poets might tremble for such bold-
ness, such rawness. In 'this odd-kind chiel' such points
hardly mar the rest. Not only are they in consonance with the
underlying spirit of the pieces, but complete the full abandon
and veracity of the farm-fields and the home-brew'd flavor of the
Scotch vernacular. (Is there not often something in the very
neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from
intrinsic genius, and not 'put on,' that secretly pleases the soul
more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most per-
fect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in
the very names of his songs—"O for ane and twenty, Tam,"
"John Barleycorn," "Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin'
roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast," "Gude
e'en to you, Kimmer," "Merry hae I been teething a Heckle,"
"O lay thy loof in mine, lass," and others.

The longer and more elaborated poems of Burns are just such
as would please a natural but homely taste, and cute but average
intellect, and are inimitable in their way. The "Twa Dogs," (one
of the best) with the conversation between Cesar and Luath, the
"Brigs of Ayr," "the Cotter's Saturday Night," "Tam O'Shan-
ter"—all will be long read and re-read and admired, and ever
deserve to be. With nothing profound in any of them, what
there is of moral and plot has an inimitably fresh and racy flavor.
If it came to question, Literature could well afford to send adrift
many a pretensive poem, and even book of poems, before it could
spare these compositions.

Never indeed was there truer utterance in a certain range of
idiosyncracy than by this poet. Hardly a piece of his, large or
small, but has "snap" and raciness. He puts in cantering rhyme
(often doggerel) much cutting irony and idiomatic ear-cuffing of
the kirk-deacons—drily good-natured addresses to his cronies,
(he certainly would not stop us if he were here this moment,
from classing that "to the De'il" among them)—"to Mailie and
her Lambs," "to auld Mare Maggie," "to a Mouse,"

‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie :’

"to a Mountain Daisy," "to a Haggis," "to a Louse," "to the

SLANG IN AMERICA.

mon restaurant waiters a plate of ham and beans is known as "stars and stripes," codfish balls as "sleeve buttons," and hash as "mystery."

The Western States of the Union are, however, as may be supposed, the special areas of slang, not only in conversation, but in names of localities, towns, rivers, etc. A late Oregon traveller says:

"On your way to Olympia by rail, you cross a river called the Shookum-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and Toutle; and if you seek further you will hear of whole counties labell'd Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsar, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium, and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What man, having the whole American continent to choose from, would willingly date his letters from the county of Snohomish or bring up his children in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think twice before he establish'd himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle is sufficiently barbarous; Stelicoom is no better; and I suspect that the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma because it is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire horror."

Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party from Reno: "The toughest set of roosters that ever shook the dust off any town left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia. They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New York cock-fighters, two Chicago murders, three Baltimore bruisers, one Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three Virginia beats, two Union Pacific roughs, and two check guerrillas." Among the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, *The Fairplay* (Colorado) *Fuume*, *The Solid Muldoon*, of Ouray, *The Tombstone Epitaph*, of Nevada, *The Jimplecute*, of Texas, and *The Bazoo*, of Missouri. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail Lake, are a few of the names of places in Butte county, Cal.

Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrations of the fermentation processes I have mention'd, and their froth and specks, than those Mississippi and Pacific coast regions, at the present day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others are of an appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies to the Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposed in Congress for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye, Lick-skillet, Rake-pocket and Steal-easy are the names of some Texan towns. Miss Bremer found among the aborigines the following names: *Men's*, Horn-

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMIN-
ISCENCE.

AFTER the close of the Secession War in 1865, I work'd sev-
eral months (until Mr. Harlan turn'd me out for having written
"Leaves of Grass") in the Interior Department at Washington,
in the Indian Bureau. Along this time there came to see their
Great Father an unusual number of aboriginal visitors, delegations
for treaties, settlement of lands, &c.—some young or middle-
aged, but mainly old men, from the West, North, and occasion-
ally from the South—parties of from five to twenty each—the
most wonderful proofs of what Nature can produce, (the survival
of the fittest, no doubt—all the frailer samples dropt, sorted out
by death)—as if to show how the earth and woods, the attrition
of storms and elements, and the exigencies of life at first hand,
can train and fashion men, indeed chiefs, in heroic massiveness,
imperturbability, muscle, and that last and highest beauty con-
sisting of strength—the full exploitation and fruitage of a human
identity, not from the culmination-points of "culture" and arti-
ficial civilization, but tallying our race, as it were, with giant,
vital, gnarl'd, enduring trees, or monoliths of separate hardiest
rocks, and humanity holding its own with the best of the said
trees or rocks, and outdoing them.

There were Omahas, Poncas, Winnebagoes, Cheyennes, Na-
vahos, Apaches, and many others. Let me give a running ac-
count of what I see and hear through one of these conference
collections at the Indian Bureau, going back to the present tense.
Every head and face is impressive, even artistic; Nature redeems
herself out of her crudest recesses. Most have red paint on their
cheeks, however, or some other paint. ("Little Hill" makes the
opening speech, which the interpreter translates by scraps.)
Many wear head tires of gaudy-color'd braid, wound around
thickly—some with circlets of eagles' feathers. Necklaces of
bears' claws are plenty around their necks. Most of the chiefs
are wrapt in large blankets of the brightest scarlet. Two or three
have blue, and I see one black. (A wise man call'd "the
Flesh" now makes a short speech, apparently asking something.
Indian Commissioner Dole answers him, and the interpreter
translates in scraps again.) All the principal chiefs have toma-

(13)

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE.

hawks or hatchets, some of them very richly ornamented and costly. Plaid shirts are to be observ'd—none too clean. Now a tall fellow, "Hole-in-the-Day," is speaking. He has a copious head-dress composed of feathers and narrow ribbon, under which appears a countenance painted all over a bilious yellow. Let us note this young chief. For all his paint, "Hole-in-the-Day" is a handsome Indian, mild and calm, dress'd in drab buckskin leggings, dark gray surtout, and a soft black hat. His costume will bear full observation, and even fashion would accept him. His apparel is worn loose and scant enough to show his superb physique, especially in neck, chest, and legs. ("The Apollo Belvidere!" was the involuntary exclamation of a famous European artist when he first saw a full-grown young Choctaw.)

One of the red visitors—a wild, lean-looking Indian, the one in the black woolen wrapper—has an empty buffalo head, with the horns on, for his personal surmounting. I see a markedly Bourbonish countenance among the chiefs—(it is not very uncommon among them, I am told.) Most of them avoided resting on chairs during the hour of their "talk" in the Commissioner's office; they would sit around on the floor, leaning against something, or stand up by the walls, partially wrapt in their blankets. Though some of the young fellows were, as I have said, magnificent and beautiful animals, I think the palm of unique picturesqueness, in body, limb, physiognomy, etc., was borne by the old or elderly chiefs, and the wise men.

My here-alluded-to experience in the Indian Bureau produced one very definite conviction, as follows: There is something about these aboriginal Americans, in their highest characteristic representations, essential traits, and the ensemble of their physique and physiognomy—something very remote, very lofty, arousing comparisons with our own civilized ideals—something that our literature, portrait painting, etc., have never caught, and that will almost certainly never be transmitted to the future, even as a reminiscence. No biographer, no historian, no artist, has grasp'd it—perhaps could not grasp it. It is so different, so far outside our standards of eminent humanity. Their feathers, paint—even the empty buffalo skull—did not, to say the least, seem any more ludicrous to me than many of the fashions I have seen in civilized society. I should not apply the word savage (at any rate, in the usual sense) as a leading word in the description of those great aboriginal specimens, of whom I certainly saw many of the best. There were moments, as I look'd at them or studied them, when our own exemplification of personality, dignity, heroic presentation anyhow (as in the conventions of society, or even in the accepted poems and plays,) seem'd sickly, puny, inferior.

The interpreters, agents of the Indian Department, or other whites accompanying the bands, in positions of responsibility, were always interesting to me; I had many talks with them. Occasionally I would go to the hotels where the bands were quarter'd, and spend an hour or two informally. Of course we could not have much conversation—though (through the interpreters) more of this than might be supposed—sometimes quite animated and significant. I had the good luck to be invariably receiv'd and treated by all of them in their most cordial manner.

[Letter to W. W. from an artist, B. H., who has been much among the American Indians:]

"I have just receiv'd your little paper on the Indian delegations. In the fourth paragraph you say that there is something about the essential traits of our aborigines which 'will almost certainly never be transmitted to the future.' If I am so fortunate as to regain my health I hope to weaken the force of that statement, at least in so far as my talent and training will permit. I intend to spend some years among them, and shall endeavor to perpetuate on canvas some of the finer types, both men and women, and some of the characteristic features of their life. It will certainly be well worth the while. My artistic enthusiasm was never so thoroughly stirr'd up as by the Indians. They certainly have more of beauty, dignity and nobility mingled with their own wild individuality, than any of the other indigenous types of man. Neither black nor Afghan, Arab nor Malay (and I know them all pretty well) can hold a candle to the Indian. All of the other aboriginal types seem to be more or less distorted from the model of perfect human form—as we know it—the blacks, thin-hipped, with bulbous limbs, not well mark'd; the Arabs large-jointed, &c. But I have seen many a young Indian as perfect in form and feature as a Greek statue—very different from a Greek statue, of course, but as satisfying to the artistic perceptions and demand.

"And the worst, or perhaps the best of it all is that it will require an artist—and a good one—to record the real facts and impressions. Ten thousand photographs would not have the value of one really finely felt painting. Color is all-important. No one but an artist knows how much. An Indian is only half an Indian without the blue-black hair and the brilliant eyes shining out of the wonderful dusky ochre and rose complexion."

SOME WAR MEMORANDA.

JOTTED DOWN AT THE TIME.

I FIND this incident in my notes (I suppose from "chinning".
in hospital with some sick or wounded soldier who knew of it):

When Kilpatrick and his forces were cut off at Brandy Station
(last of September, '63, or thereabouts,) and the bands struck up
"Yankee Doodle," there were not cannon enough in the Southern
Confederacy to keep him and them "in." It was when Meade
fell back. K. had his large cavalry division (perhaps 5000 men,)
but the rebs, in superior force, had surrounded them. Things
look'd exceedingly desperate. K. had two fine bands, and order'd
them up immediately; they join'd and play'd "Yankee Doodle"
with a will! It went through the men like lightning—but to in-
spire, not to unnerve. Every man seem'd a giant. They charged
like a cyclone, and cut their way out. Their loss was but 20. It
was about two in the afternoon.

WASHINGTON STREET SCENES.

April 7, 1864.—WALKING DOWN PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE.—
Warmish forenoon, after the storm of the past few days. I see,
passing up, in the broad space between the curbs, a big squad of
a couple of hundred conscripts, surrounded by a strong cordon
of arm'd guards, and others interspers'd between the ranks. The
government has learn'd caution from its experiences; there are
many hundreds of "bounty jumpers," and already, as I am told,
eighty thousand deserters! Next (also passing up the Avenue,) a
cavalry company, young, but evidently well drill'd and service-
harden'd men. Mark the upright posture in their saddles, the
bronz'd and bearded young faces, the easy swaying to the motions
of the horses, and the carbines by their right knees; handsome
and reckless, some eighty of them, riding with rapid gait, clatter-
ing along. Then the tinkling bells of passing cars, the many
shops (some with large show-windows, some with swords, straps
for the shoulders of different ranks, hat-cords with acorns, or other
insignia,) the military patrol marching along, with the orderly
or second-lieutenant stopping different ones to examine passes—
the forms, the faces, all sorts crowded together, the worn and pale,
the pleas'd, some on their way to the railroad depot going home,

(80)

SOME WAR MEMORANDA.

the cripples, the darkeys, the long trains of government wagons,
or the sad strings of ambulances conveying wounded—the many
officers' horses tied in front of the drinking or oyster saloons, or
held by black men or boys, or orderlies.

THE 195TH PENNSYLVANIA.

*Tuesday, Aug. 1, 1865.*—About 3 o'clock this afternoon (sunbroiling hot) in Fifteenth street, by the Treasury building, a large and handsome regiment, 195th Pennsylvania, were marching by—as it happen'd, receiv'd orders just here to halt and break ranks, so that they might rest themselves awhile. I thought I never saw a finer set of men—so hardy, candid, bright American looks, all weather-beaten, and with warm clothes. Every man was home-born. My heart was much drawn toward them. They seem'd very tired, red, and streaming with sweat. It is a one-year regiment, mostly from Lancaster County, Pa.; have been in Shenandoah Valley. On halting, the men unhitch'd their knapsacks, and sat down to rest themselves. Some lay flat on the pavement or under trees. The fine physical appearance of the whole body was remarkable. Great, very great, must be the State where such young farmers and mechanics are the practical average. I went around for half an hour and talk'd with several of them, sometimes squatting down with the groups.

LEFT-HAND WRITING BY SOLDIERS.

*April 30, 1866.*—Here is a single significant fact, from which one may judge of the character of the American soldiers in this just concluded war: A gentleman in New York City, a while since, took it into his head to collect specimens of writing from soldiers who had lost their right hands in battle, and afterwards learn'd to use the left. He gave public notice of his desire, and offer'd prizes for the best of these specimens. Pretty soon they began to come in, and by the time specified for awarding the prizes three hundred samples of such left-hand writing by maim'd soldiers had arrived.

I have just been looking over some of this writing. A great many of the specimens are written in a beautiful manner. All are good. The writing in nearly all cases slants backward instead of forward. One piece of writing, from a soldier who had lost both arms, was made by holding the pen in his mouth.

CENTRAL VIRGINIA IN '64.

 Culpeper, where I am stopping, looks like a place of two or three thousand inhabitants. Must be one of the pleasantest

SOME WAR MEMORANDA.

however, they had their champions. " That the color'd race,"
said a good authority, " is capable of military training and effi-
ciency, is demonstrated by the testimony of numberless witnesses,
and by the eagerness display'd in the raising, organizing, and
drilling of African troops. Few white regiments make a better
appearance on parade than the First and Second Louisiana Native
Guards. The same remark is true of other color'd regiments."
At Milliken's Bend, at Vicksburg, at Port Hudson, on Morris
Island, and wherever tested, they have exhibited determin'd
bravery, and compell'd the plaudits alike of the thoughtful and
thoughtless soldiery. During the siege of Port Hudson the ques-
tion was often ask'd those who beheld their resolute charges, how
the 'niggers' behav'd under fire; and without exception the an-
swer was complimentary to them. 'O, tip-top!' 'first-rate!'
'bully!' were the usual replies.'' But I did not start out to argue
the case—only to give my reminiscence literally, as jotted on the
spot at the time.

I write this on Mason's (otherwise Analostan) Island, under
the fine shade trees of an old white stucco house, with big rooms;
the white stucco house, originally a fine country seat (tradition
says the famous Virginia Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave
Law, was born here.) I reach'd the spot from my Washington
quarters by ambulance up Pennsylvania avenue, through George-
town, across the Aqueduct bridge, and around through a cut and
winding road, with rocks and many bad gullies not lacking.
After reaching the island, we get presently in the midst of the
camp of the 1st Regiment U. S. C. T. The tents look clean
and good; indeed, altogether, in locality especially, the pleasant-
est camp I have yet seen. The spot is umbrageous, high and dry,
with distant sounds of the city, and the puffing steamers of the
Potomac, up to Georgetown and back again. Birds are singing
in the trees, the warmth is endurable here in this moist shade,
with the fragrance and freshness. A hundred rods across is
Georgetown. The river between is swell'd and muddy from the
late rains up country. So quiet here, yet full of vitality,
all around in the far distance glimpses, as I sweep my eye, of
hills, verdure-clad, and with plenteous trees; right where I sit,
locust, sassafras, spice, and many other trees, a few with huge
parasitic vines; just at hand the banks sloping to the river, wild
with beautiful, free vegetation, superb weeds, better, in their
natural growth and forms, than the best garden. Lots of
luxuriant grape vines and trumpet flowers; the river flowing far
down in the distance.

Now the paying is to begin. The Major (paymaster) with his
clerk seat themselves at a table—the rolls are before them—the

SOME WAR MEMORANDA.

money box is open'd—there are packages of five, ten, twenty-five
cent pieces. Here comes the first Company (B), some 82 men,
all blacks. Certes, we cannot find fault with the appearance of
this crowd—negroes though they be. They are manly enough,
bright enough, look as if they had the soldier-stuff in them, look
hardy, patient, many of them real handsome young fellows.
The paying, I say, has begun. The men are march'd up in close
proximity. The clerk calls off name after name, and each walks
up, receives his money, and passes along out of the way. It is a
real study, both to see them come close, and to see them pass
away, stand counting their cash—(nearly all of this company get
ten dollars and three cents each.) The clerk calls George
Washington. That distinguish'd personage steps from the ranks,
in the shape of a very black man, good sized and shaped,
and aged about 30, with a military moustache; he takes his
"ten three," and goes off evidently well pleas'd. (There
are about a dozen Washingtons in the company. Let us hope
they will do honor to the name.) At the table, how quickly the
Major handles the bills, counts without trouble, everything going
on smoothly and quickly. The regiment numbers to-day about
1,000 men (including 20 officers, the only whites.)

Now another company. These get $5.36 each. The men look well. They, too, have great names; besides the Washingtons aforesaid, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Calhoun, James Madison, Alfred Tennyson, John Brown, Benj. G. Tucker, Horace Greeley, etc. The men step off aside, count their money with a pleas'd, half-puzzled look. Occasionally, but not often, there are some thoroughly African physiognomies, very black in color, large, protruding lips, low forehead, etc. But I have to say that I do not see one utterly revolting face.

Then another company, each man of this getting $10.03 also.
The pay proceeds very rapidly (the calculation, roll-signing, etc.,
having been arranged before hand.) Then some trouble. One
company, by the rigid rules of official computation, gets only 23
cents each man. The company (K) is indignant, and after two
or three are paid, the refusal to take the paltry sum is universal,
and the company marches off to quarters unpaid.

Another company (I) gets only 70 cents. The sullen, lowering,
disappointed look is general. Half refuse it in this case. Com-
pany G, in full dress, with brass scales on shoulders, look'd, per-
haps, as well as any of the companies—the men had an unusually
alert look.

These, then, are the black troops,—or the beginning of them.
Well, no, one can see them, even under these circumstances—
their military career in its novitiate—without feeling well pleas'd
with them.

FIVE THOUSAND POEMS

THERE have been collected in a cluster nearly five thousand big and little American poems—all that diligent and long-continued research could lay hands on! The author of ‘Old Grimes is Dead’ commenced it, more than fifty years ago; then the cluster was pass’d on and accumulated by C. F. Harris; then further pass’d on and added to by the late Senator Anthony, from whom the whole collection has been bequeath’d to Brown University. A catalogue (such as it is) has been made and publish’d of these five thousand poems—and is probably the most curious and suggestive part of the whole affair. At any rate it has led me to some abstract reflection like the following.

I should like, for myself, to put on record my devout acknowledgment not only of the great masterpieces of the past, but of the benefit of *all* poets, past and present, and of *all* poetic utterance—in its entirety the dominant moral factor of humanity’s progress. In view of that progress, and of evolution, the religious and æsthetic elements, the distinctive and most important of any, seem to me more indebted to poetry than to all other means and influences combined. In a very profound sense *religion is the poetry of humanity*. Then the points of union and rapport among all the poems and poets of the world, however wide their separations of time and place and theme, are much more numerous and weighty than the points of contrast. Without relation as they may seem at first sight, the whole earth’s poets and poetry—*en masse*—the Oriental, the Greek, and what there is of Roman—the oldest myths—the interminable ballad-romances of the Middle Ages—the hymns and psalms of worship—the epics, plays, swarms of lyrics of the British Islands, or the Teutonic old or new—or modern French—or what there is in America, Bryant’s, for instance, or Whittier’s or Longfellow’s—the verse of all tongues and ages, all forms, all subjects, from primitive times to our own day inclusive—really combine in one aggregate and electric globe or universe, with all its numberless parts and radia-tions held together by a common centre or verteber. To repeat it, all poetry thus has (to the point of view comprehensive enough) more features of resemblance than difference, and becomes essentially, like the planetary globe itself, compact and orbic and whole. Nature seems to sow countless seeds—makes incessant crude attempts—thankful to get now and then, even at rare and long intervals, something approximately good.

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THE OLD BOWERY.

*A Reminiscence of New York Plays and Acting Fifty Years Ago.*

In an article not long since, "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth," in "The Nineteenth Century," after describing the bitter regretfulness to mankind from the loss of those first-class poems, templates, pictures, gone and vanish'd from any record of men, the writer (Fleeming Jenkin) continues:

> If this be our feeling as to the more durable works of art, what shall we say of those triumphs which, by their very nature, last no longer than the action which creates them—the triumphs of the orator, the singer or the actor? There is an anodyne in the words, "must be so," "inevitable," and there is even some absurdity in longing for the impossible. This anodyne and our sense of humor temper the unhappiness we feel when, after hearing some great performance, we leave the theatre and think, "Well, this great thing has been, and all that is now left of it is the feeble print upon my brain, the little thrill which memory will send along my nerves, mine and my neighbors, as we live longer the print and thrill must be feebler, and when we pass away the impress of the great artist will vanish from the world." The regret that a great art should in its nature be transitory, explains the lively interest which many feel in reading anecdotes or descriptions of a great actor.

All this is emphatically my own feeling and reminiscence about the best dramatic and lyric artists I have seen in bygone days—for instance, Marietta Alboni, the elder Booth, Forrest, the tenor Bettini, the baritone Badiali, “old man Clarke”—(I could write a whole paper on the latter’s peerless rendering of the Ghost in “Hamlet” at the Park, when I was a young fellow)—an actor named Ranger, who appear’d in America forty years ago in *genre* characters; Henry Placide, and many others. But I will make a few memoranda at least of the best one I knew.

For the elderly New Yorker of to-day, perhaps, nothing were more likely to start up memories of his early manhood than the mention of the Bowery and the elder Booth. At the date given, the more stylish and select theatre (prices, 50 cents pit, $1 boxes) was "The Park," a large and well-appointed house on Park Row, opposite the present Post-office. English opera and the old comedies were often given in capital style; the principal foreign stars appear'd here, with Italian opera at wide intervals. The Park held a large part in my boyhood's and young manhood's

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88

THE OLD BOWERY.

life. Here I heard the English actor, *Anderson, b.* "Charles de Moor," and in the fine part of "Gisippus." Here I heard Fanny Kemble, Charlotte Cushman, the Seguins, Daddy Rice, Hackett as Falstaff, Nimrod Wildfire, Rip Van Winkle, and in his Yankee characters. (See pages 19, 20, *Specimen Days*.)
It was here (some years later than the date in the headline) I also heard Marlo many times, and at his best. In such parts as Gen-naro, in "Lucrezia Borgia," he was inimitable—the sweetest of voices, a pure tenor, of considerable compass and respectable power. His wife, Grisi, was with him, no longer first-class or young—a fine Norma, though, to the last.

Perhaps my dearest amusement reminiscences are those musical ones. I doubt if ever the senses and emotions of the future will be thrill'd as were the auditors of a generation ago by the deep passion of Alboni's contralto (at the Broadway Theatre, south side, near Pearl street)—or by the trumpet notes of Badiali's baritone, or Bettini's pensive and incomparable tenor in Fernando in "Favorita," or Marini's bass in "Faliero," among the Havana troupe, Castle Garden.

But getting back more specifically to the date and theme I started from—the heavy tragedy business prevail'd more decidedly at the Bowery Theatre, where Booth and Forrest were frequently to be heard. Though Booth *pere*, then in his prime, ranging in age from 40 to 44 years (he was born in 1796,) was the loyal child and continuer of the traditions of orthodox English play-acting, he stood out "himself alone" in many respects beyond any of his kind on record, and with effects and ways that broke through all rules and all traditions. He has been well describ'd as an actor "whose instant and tremendous concentration of passion in his delineations overwhelm'd his audience, and wrought into it such enthusiasm that it partook of the fever of inspiration surging through his own veins." He seems to have been of beautiful private character, very honorable, affectionate, good-natured, no arrogance, glad to give the other actors the best chances. He knew all stage points thoroughly, and curiously ignored the mere dignities. I once talk'd with a man who had seen him do the Second Actor in the mock play to Charles Kean's-Hamlet in Baltimore. He was a marvellous linguist. He play'd Shylock once in London, giving the dialogue in Hebrew, and in New Orleans Oreste (Racine's "Andromaque") in French. One trait of his habits, I have heard, was strict vegetarianism. He was exceptionally kind to the brute creation. Every once in a while he would make a break for solitude or wild freedom, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for days. (He illustrated Plato's rule that to the forming an artist of the very highest rank a dash of in-

THE OLD BOWERY.

sanity or what the world calls insanity is indispensable.) He was a small-sized man—yet sharp observers noticed that however crowded the stage might be in certain scenes, Booth never seem'd overopt or hidden. He was singularly spontaneous and fluc- tuating; in the same part each rendering differ'd from any and all others. He had no stereotyped positions and made no arbi- trary requirements on his fellow-performers.

As is well known to old play-goers, Booth's most effective part was Richard III. Either that, or Iago, or Shylock, or Pescara in "The Apostate," was sure to draw a crowded house. (Remember heavy pieces were much more in demand those days than now.) He was also unapproachably grand in Sir Giles Over- reach, in "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the principal character in "The Iron Chest."

In any portraiture of Booth, those years, the Bowery Theatre, with its leading lights, and the lessee and manager, Thomas Hamblin, cannot be left out. It was at the Bowery I first saw Edwin Forrest (the play was John Howard Payne's "Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin," and it affected me for weeks; or rather I might say permanently filter'd into my whole nature,) then in the zenith of his fame and ability. Sometimes (perhaps a veter- ran's benefit night,) the Bowery would group together five or six of the first-class actors of those days—Booth, Forrest, Cooper, Hamblin, and John R. Scott, for instance. At that time and here George Jones ("Count Joannes") was a young, handsome actor, and quite a favorite. I remember seeing him in the title role in "Julius Cæsar," and a capital performance it was.

To return specially to the manager. Thomas Hamblin made a first-rate foil to Booth, and was frequently cast with him. He had a large, shapely, imposing presence, and dark and flashing eyes. I remember well his rendering of the main role in Matu- rin's "Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand." But I thought Tom Hamblin's best acting was in the comparatively minor part of Faulconbridge in "King John"—he himself evidently revell'd in the part, and took away the house's applause from young Kean (the King) and Ellen Tree (Constance,) and everybody else on the stage—some time afterward at the Park. Some of the Bow- ery actresses were remarkably good. I remember Mrs. Pritchard 'in "Tour de Nesle," and Mrs. McClure in "Fatal Curiosity," and as Millwood in "George Barnwell." (I wonder what old fellow reading these lines will recall the fine comedietta of "The Youth That Never Saw a Woman," and the jolly acting in it of Mrs. Herring and old Gates.)

The Bowery, now and then, was the place, too, for spectacular pieces, such as "The Last Days of Pompeii," "The Lion-

THE OLD BOWERY.

by them the times and characters I am describing. Not but
what there was more or less rankness in the crowd even then.
For types of sectional New York those days—the streets East of
the Bowery, that intersect Division, Grand, and up to Third
Avenue—types that never found their Dickens, or Hogarth, or
Balzac, and have pass’d away unportraiture—the young ship-
builders, cartmen, butchers, firemen (the old-time “soap-lock”
or exaggerated “Mose” or “Sikesey,” of Chanfrau’s plays,) they,
too, were always to be seen in these audiences, racy of the East
River and the Dry Dock. Slang, wit, occasional shirt sleeves,
and a picturesque freedom of looks and manners, with a rude
good-nature and restless movement, were generally noticeable.
Yet there never were audiences that paid a good actor or an
interesting play the compliment of more sustain’d attention or
quicker rapport. Then at times came the exceptionally decorous
and intellectual congregations I have hinted at; for the Bowery
really furnish’d plays and players you could get nowhere else.
Notably, Booth always drew the best hearers; and to a specimen
of his acting I will now attend in some detail.

I happen’d to see what has been reckon’d by experts one of the
most marvelous pieces of histrionism ever known. It must have
been about 1834 or ’35. A favorite comedian and actress at the
Bowery, Thomas Flynn and his wife, were to have a joint benefit,
and, securing Booth for Richard, advertised the fact many days
before-hand. The house fill’d early from top to bottom. There
was some uneasiness behind the scenes, for the afternoon arrived,
and Booth had not come from down in Maryland, where he lived.
However, a few minutes before ringing-up time he made his ap-
pearance in lively condition.

After a one-act farce over, as contrast and prelude, the cur-
tain rising for the tragedy, I can, from my good seat in the pit,
pretty well front, see again Booth’s quiet entrance from the side,
as, with head bent, he slowly and in silence, (amid the tempest
of boisterous hand-clapping,) walks down the stage to the foot-
lights with that peculiar and abstracted gesture, musingly kicking
his sword, which he holds off from him by its sash. Though fifty
years have pass’d since then, I can hear the clank, and feel the
perfect following hush of perhaps three thousand people waiting.
(I never saw an actor who could make more of the said hush or
wait, and hold the audience in an indescribable, half-delicious,
half-irritating suspense.) And so throughout the entire play, all
parts, voice, atmosphere, magnetism, from

“Now is the winter of our discontent,”

to the closing death fight with Richmond, were of the finest and

NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH
BOOKS.

"SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA," LONDON EDITION,
JUNE, 1887. PREFACE TO THE READER IN THE
BRITISH ISLANDS.

IF you will only take the following pages, as you do some long
and gossippy letter written for you by a relative or friend travel-
ing through distant scenes and incidents, and jotting them down
lazily and informally, but ever veraciously (with occasional diver-
sions of critical thought about somebody or something,) it might
remove all formal or literary impediments at once, and bring you
and me close together in the spirit in which the jottings were col-
lated to be read. You have had, and have, plenty of public
events and facts and general statistics of America;—in the fol-
lowing book is a common individual New World *private life*, its
birth and growth, its struggles for a living, its goings and com-
ings and observations (or representative portions of them) amid
the United States of America the last thirty or forty years, with
their varied war and peace, their local coloring, the unavoidable
egotism, and the lights and shades and sights and joys and pains
and sympathies common to humanity. Further introductory
light may be found in the paragraph, "A Happy Hour's Com-
mand," and the bottom note belonging to it, at the beginning
of the book. I have said in the text that if I were required to
give good reason-for-being of "Specimen Days," I should be
unable to do so. Let me fondly hope that it has at least the
reason and excuse of such off-hand gossippy letter as just alluded
to, portraying American life-sights and incidents as they actually
occurred—their presentation, making additions as far as it goes,
to the simple experience and association of your soul, from a
comrade soul;—and that also, in the volume, as below any page

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NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH BOOKS.

say dawdle over books and papers a good deal—spend half the
day at that.

Nor can I finish this note without putting on record—wafting
over sea from hence—my deepest thanks to certain friends
and helpers (I would specify them all and each by name,
but imperative reasons, outside of my own wishes, forbid.)
in the British Islands, as well as in America. Dear, even in the
abstract, is such flattering function always no doubt to the soul!
Nigher still, if possible, I myself have been, and am to-day
indebted to such help for my very sustenance, clothing, shelter,
and continuity. And I would not go to the grave without
briefly, but plainly, as I here do, acknowledging—may I not say
even glorying in it?

PREFACE TO "DEMOCRATIC VISTAS" WITH OTHER PAPERS.—ENGLISH EDITION.

MAINLY I think I should base the request to weigh the follow-
ing pages on the assumption that they present, however indirectly,
some views of the West and Modern, or of a distinctly western
and modern (American) tendency, about certain matters.

Then, too, the pages include (by attempting to illustrate it,) a
theory herein immediately mentioned. For another and different
point of the issue, the Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show
of the bulk, the common people of America (from sources rep-
resenting not only the British Islands, but all the world,) means,
at least, eligibility to Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show
for the bulk, the common people of all civilized nations.

That positively "the dry land has appeared," at any rate, is an
important fact.

America is really the great test or trial case for all the problems
and promises and speculations of humanity, and of the past and
present.

I say, too, we* are not to look so much to changes, ameliora-
tions, and adaptations in Politics as to those of Literature and
(thence) domestic Sociology. I have accordingly in the follow-
ing melange introduced many themes besides political ones.

Several of the pieces are ostensibly in explanation of my own
writings; but in that very process they best include and set forth
their side of principles and generalities pressing vehemently for
consideration our age.

Upon the whole, it is on the atmosphere they are born in, and,

* We who, in many departments, ways, make the *building up of the masses*,
by *building up grand individuals*, our shibboleth: and in brief that is the
marrow of this book.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

GLAD am I to give—were anything better lacking—even the most brief and shorn testimony of Abraham Lincoln. Everything I heard about him authentically, and every time I saw him (and it was my fortune through 1862 to ’65 to see, or pass a word with, or watch him, personally, perhaps twenty or thirty times,) added to and anneal’d my respect and love at the moment. And as I dwell on what I myself heard or saw of the mighty Westerner, and blend it with the history and literature of my age, and of what I can get of all ages, and conclude it with his death, it seems like some tragic play, superior to all else I know—vaster and fierier and more convulsionary, for this America of ours, than Eschylus or Shakspere ever drew for Athens or for England. And then the Moral permeating, underlying all! the Lesson that none so remote—none so illiterate—no age, no class—but may directly or indirectly read!

Abraham Lincoln’s was really one of those characters, the best of which is the result of long trains of cause and effect—needing a certain spaciousness of time, and perhaps even remoteness, to properly enclose them—having unequal’d influence on the shaping of this Republic (and therefore the world) as to-day, and then far more important in the future. Thus the time has by no means yet come for a thorough measurement of him. Nevertheless, we who live in his era—who have seen him, and heard him, face to face, and are in the midst of, or just parting from, the strong and strange events which he and we have had to do with—can in some respects bear valuable, perhaps indispensable testimony concerning him.

I should first like to give a very fair and characteristic likeness of Lincoln, as I saw him and watch’d him one afternoon in Washington, for nearly half an hour, not long before his death. It was as he stood on the balcony of the National Hotel, Pennsylvania Avenue, making a short speech to the crowd in front, on the occasion either of a set of new colors presented to a famous Illinois regiment, or of the daring capture, by the Western men, of some flags from ‘‘the enemy,’’ (which latter phrase, by the by, was not used by him at all in his remarks.) How the picture happen’d to be made I do not know, but I bought it a few days

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