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Title: Brave Men and Women
       Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs

Author: O.E. Fuller

Release Date: November 3, 2004 [EBook #13942]

Language: English

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BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN

THEIR STRUGGLES, FAILURES, AND TRIUMPHS.

BY

O.E. FULLER, A.M.

"_Find out what you are fitted for; work hard at that one thing, and
keep a brave, honest heart_."

       *       *       *       *       *

COPYRIGHT
By O.E. FULLER
1884
All rights reserved.

       *       *       *       *       *




PREFACE


Struggle, failure, triumph: while triumph is the thing sought, struggle
has its joy, and failure is not without its uses.

"It is not the _goal_," says Jean Paul, "but the _course_ which makes us
happy." The law of life is what a great orator affirmed of
oratory--"Action, action, action!" As soon as one point is gained,
another, and another presents itself.

"It is a mistake," says Samuel Smiles, "to suppose that men succeed
through success; they much oftener succeed through failure." He cites,
among others, the example of Cowper, who, through his diffidence and
shyness, broke down when pleading his first cause, and lived to revive
the poetic art in England; and that of Goldsmith, who failed in passing
as a surgeon, and yet wrote the "Deserted Village" and the "Vicar of
Wakefield." Even when one turns to no new course, how many failures, as
a rule, mark the way to triumph, and brand into life, as with a hot
iron, the lessons of defeat!

The brave man or the brave woman is one who looks life in the eye, and
says: "God helping me, I am going to  realize the best possibilities of
my nature, by calling into action the beneficent laws which govern and
determine the development of each individual member of the race." And
the failures of such a person are the jewels of triumph; that triumph
which is certain in the sight of heaven, if not in the eyes of men.

"Brave Men and Women," the title of this volume, is used in a double
sense, as referring not only to those whose words and deeds are here
recorded, or cited as examples, but also to all who read the book, and
are striving after the riches of character.

Some of the sketches and short papers are anonymous, and have been
adapted for use in these pages. Where the authorship is known, and the
productions have been given _verbatim_, the source, if not the pen of
the editor, has been indicated. Thanks are due to the press, and to
those who have permitted the use of copyrighted matter.

In conclusion, the editor lays little claim to originality--save in the
metrical pieces, and in the use he has made of material. His aim has
simply been to form a sort of _mosaic_ or variegated picture of the
Brave Life--the life which recognizes the Divine Goodness in all things,
striving through good report and evil report, and in manifold ways,
which one is often unqualified to judge, to attain to the life of Him
who is "the light of the world."

THE AUTHOR.

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.--HIS FAME STILL CLIMBING TO HEAVEN--WHAT HE HAD DONE
AT FIFTY-TWO--POOR RICHARD'S ADDRESS


CHAPTER II.

DEFENCE OF A GREAT MAN.--WAS DR. FRANKLIN MEAN?--JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER


CHAPTER III.

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS MOTHER.--THE MOTHER'S EDUCATION--THE SON'S
TRAINING--DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTIES


CHAPTER IV.

ABIGAIL ADAMS.--THE WIFE OF OUR SECOND PRESIDENT--THE MOTHER OF OUR
SIXTH


CHAPTER V.

TWO NEIGHBORS.--WHAT THEY GOT OUT OF LIFE


CHAPTER VI.

HORACE GREELEY.--THE MOLDER OF PUBLIC OPINION--THE BRAVE JOURNALIST


CHAPTER VII.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.--THE TIMES WHEN HE APPEARED--"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"--A
FLAMING ADVOCATE OF LIBERTY--LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT--POWER TO
DISCERN THE RIGHT--THE MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT


CHAPTER VIII.

MARY WORDSWORTH.--THE KINDLY WIFE OF THE GREAT POET


CHAPTER IX.

MADAME MALIBRAN.--HER CAREER AS A SINGER--KINDNESS OF HEART


CHAPTER X.

GARFIELD MAXIMS.--GATHERED FROM HIS SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, LETTERS, ETC.


CHAPTER XI.

WHAT I CARRIED TO COLLEGE.--A REMINISCENCE AT FORTY--PICTURES OF RURAL
LIFE


CHAPTER XII.

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.--HEROISM ON THE GREAT DEEP--A MARTYR OF THE POLAR SEA


CHAPTER XIII.

ELIZABETH ESTAUGH.--A QUAKER COURTSHIP IN WHICH SHE WAS THE PRINCIPAL
ACTOR


CHAPTER XIV.

"CHINESE" GORDON.--IN THE TRENCHES OF THE CRIMEA--PUTS DOWN THE GREAT
TAIPING REBELLION IN CHINA, IN 1863-4--HERO OF THE SOUDAN--BEARDS THE
MEN-STEALERS IN THEIR STRONGHOLDS AND MAKES THE PEOPLE LOVE HIM


CHAPTER XV.

MEN'S WIVES.--BITS OF COMMON SENSE AND WISDOM ON A GREAT SUBJECT


CHAPTER XVI.

WOMEN'S HUSBANDS.--WHAT THE "BREAD-WINNERS" LIKE IN THEIR WIVES--A
LITTLE CONSTITUTIONAL OPPOSITION


CHAPTER XVII.

JOHN PLOUGHMAN.--WHAT HE SAYS ABOUT RELIGIOUS GRUMBLERS--GOOD NATURE AND
FIRMNESS, ETC.


CHAPTER XVIII.

CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL.--A NOBLE, SELF-SACRIFICING WOMAN


CHAPTER XIX.

PESTIFEROUS LITERATURE.--THE PRINTING PRESS--THE FLOOD OF IMPURE AND
LOATHSOME LITERATURE, ETC.


CHAPTER XX.

SATISFIED.--AND OTHER POEMS


CHAPTER XXI.

HEROES OF SCIENCE.--MICHAEL FARADAY--SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS--M. PASTEUR


CHAPTER XXII.

MY UNCLE TOBY.--ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL CREATIONS OF A GREAT GENIUS


CHAPTER XXIII.

STEPHEN GIRARD.--THE NAPOLEON OF MERCHANTS--HIS LIFE SUCCESSFUL, AND YET
A FAILURE


CHAPTER XXIV.

DISAPPOINTMENTS.--PLEASURE AFTER PAIN--PAIN AFTER PLEASURE


CHAPTER XXV.

THE THREE KINGS.--AN OLD STORY IN A NEW LIGHT


CHAPTER XXVI.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.--THE HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA


CHAPTER XXVII.

SHY PEOPLE.--HAWTHORNE--WASHINGTON, IRVING, AND OTHERS--MADAME RECAMIER


CHAPTER XXVIII.

JOHN MARSHALL.--IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY--His MARRIAGE--LAW
LECTURES--AT THE BAR--His INTELLECTUAL POWERS--ON THE BENCH


CHAPTER XXIX.

A NOBLE MOTHER.--How SHE TRAINED HERSELF, AND EDUCATED HER BOYS


CHAPTER XXX.

THE CARE OF THE BODY.--WHAT DR. SARGENT, OF THE HARVARD GYMNASIUM, SAYS
ABOUT IT--POINTS FOR PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND PUPILS


CHAPTER XXXI.

SAINT CECILIA.--THE PATRONESS OF MUSIC--MYTHS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF
MUSIC--ITS RELATION TO WORK AND BLESSEDNESS


CHAPTER XXXII.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.--A LIFE OF WONDER AND WARNING


CHAPTER XXXIII.

A VISION OF TIME.--NEW YEAR'S EVE


CHAPTER XXXIV.

JOHN BUNYAN.--FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT


CHAPTER XXXV.

MADAME ROLAND.--THE MOST REMARKABLE WOMAN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--THE
IPHIGENIA OF FRANCE


CHAPTER XXXVI.

CHEERFUL AND BRAVE.--THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON--SIR WALTER
RALEIGH--XENOPHON--CÆSAR--NELSON, ETC.


CHAPTER XXXVII.

HAROLD.--THE LAST SAXON KING OF ENGLAND


CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PETER COOPER.--THE LESSONS OF A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE


CHAPTER XXXIX.

ILLUSIONS.--"THEREFORE TRUST TO THY HEART AND WHAT THE WORLD CALLS
ILLUSIONS"


CHAPTER XL.

PHILLIPS BROOKS.--At Home


CHAPTER XLI.

ST. JOHN AND THE ROBBER.--A LEGEND OF THE FIRST CENTURY


CHAPTER XLII.

JOHN PLOUGHMAN AGAIN.--THE PITH AND MARROW OF CERTAIN OLD PROVERBS


CHAPTER XLIII.

HENRY WILSON.--FROM THE SHOEMAKER'S BENCH TO THE CHAIR OF VICE-PRESIDENT


CHAPTER XLIV.

JOAN OF ARC.--THE PEASANT MAIDEN WHO DELIVERED HER COUNTRY AND BECAME A
MARTYR IN ITS CAUSE


CHAPTER XLV.

THE SONG OF WORK.--MANY PHASES AND MANY EXAMPLES


CHAPTER XLVI.

ALVAN S. SOUTHWORTH.--CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT


CHAPTER XLVII.

A FORBIDDEN TOPIC.--WHICH SOME PEOPLE PERSIST IN INTRODUCING


CHAPTER XLVIII.

IDA LEWIS WILSON.--THE GRACE DARLING OF AMERICA


CHAPTER XLIX.

RACHEL JACKSON.--THE WIFE OF OUR SEVENTH PRESIDENT


CHAPTER L.

DISCONTENTED GIRLS.--ONE PANACEA FOR THEM--AND ONE REFUGE


CHAPTER LI.

THE VOICE IN RAMAH.--"RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT BE
COMFORTED BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT"


CHAPTER LII.

LA FAYETTE.--THE FRIEND AND DEFENDER OF LIBERTY ON TWO CONTINENTS


CHAPTER LIII.

LYDIA SIGOURNEY.--THE LESSON OF A USEFUL AND BEAUTIFUL LIFE


CHAPTER LIV.

OLD AGE AND USEFULNESS.--THE GLORY OF BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN


CHAPTER LV.

RHYMES AND CHIMES.--SUITABLE FOR AUTOGRAPH ALBUMS

       *       *       *       *       *




I.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

(BORN 1706--DIED 1790.)


HIS FAME STILL CLIMBING TO HEAVEN--WHAT HE HAD DONE AT FIFTY-TWO--POOR
RICHARD'S ADDRESS.


The late Judge Black was remarkable not only for his wit and humor,
which often enlivened the dry logic of law and fact, but also for
flashes of unique eloquence. In presenting a certain brief before the
United States Supreme Court he had occasion to animadvert upon some of
our great men. Among other things he said, as related to the writer by
one who heard him: "The colossal name of Washington is growing year by
year, _and the fame of Franklin is still climbing to heaven_,"
accompanying the latter words by such a movement of his right hand that
not one of his hearers failed to see the immortal kite quietly bearing
the philosopher's question to the clouds. It was a point which delivered
the answer. In the life of every great man there is likewise a point
which delivers the special message which he was born to publish to the
world. Biography is greatly simplified when it confines itself chiefly
to that one point. What does the reader, who has his own work to do,
care for a great multitude of details which are not needed for the
setting of the picture? _To the point_ is the cry of our busy life.

Benjamin Franklin is here introduced to the reader


AT FIFTY-TWO.


What had he done at that age to command more than ordinary respect and
admiration?

I. Born in poverty and obscurity, in which he passed his early years;
with no advantages of education in the schools of his day, after he
entered his teens; under the condition of daily toil for his bread; he
had carried on, in spite of all obstacles, the process of self-education
through books and observation, and become in literature and science, as
well as in the practical affairs of every-day life, the best informed
man in America.

II. Apprenticed to a printer in his native Boston, at thirteen; a
journeyman in Philadelphia at seventeen; working at the case in London
at nineteen; back to the Quaker City, and set up for himself at
twenty-six; he had long since mastered all the details of a great
business, prepared to put his hand to any thing, from the trundling of
paper through the streets on a wheel-barrow to the writing of editorials
and pamphlets, and had earned for himself a position as the most
prosperous printer and publisher in the colonies.

III. Retired from active business at forty-six, considering that he had
already earned and saved enough to supply his reasonable wants for the
rest of his life; fired with ambition to do something for the
advancement of science; he had now for six years given himself to
philosophical investigation and experiment, among other things
demonstrated the identity of electricity as produced by artificial means
and atmospheric lightning, and made himself a name throughout the
civilized world.

IV. Besides, it must not be forgotten that he had all along been
foremost in many a work for the public good. The Franklin Library, of
Philadelphia, owes to him its origin. The University of Pennsylvania
grew out of an educational project in which he was a prime mover. And
his ideas as to the relative importance of ancient and modern _classics_
were more than a hundred years in advance of his times.

Such is a glimpse of Franklin at fifty-two, as preliminary to a single
episode which will occupy the rest of this chapter. But the episode
itself requires a special word.

V. For a quarter of a century Franklin had published an almanac under
the _pseudonym_ of Richard Saunders, into the pages of which he crowded
year by year choice scraps of wit and wisdom, which made the little
hand-book a welcome visitor in almost every home of the New World. Now
in the midst of those philosophical studies which so much delighted him,
when about to cross the Atlantic as a commissioner to the Home
Government, he found time to gather up the maxims and quaint sayings of
twenty-five years and set them in a wonderful mosaic, as the preface of
Poor Richard's world-famous almanac--as unique a piece of writing as any
language affords. Here it is:


POOR RICHARD'S ADDRESS.


Courteous Reader: I have heard that nothing gives an author so great
pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others. Judge,
then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to
relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great company of people
were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale
not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and
one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks,
"Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not those heavy
taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them?
What would you advise us to do?" Father Abraham stood up and replied,
"If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; 'for a word
to the wise is enough,' as Poor Richard says." They joined in desiring
him to speak his mind, and gathering around him, he proceeded as
follows:--

"Friends," says he, "the taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid
on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more
easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous
to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times
as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from
these taxes the commissioners can not ease or deliver us by allowing an
abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be
done for us; 'God helps them that help themselves,' as Poor Richard
says.

"I. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people
one-tenth of their time to be employed in its service, but idleness
taxes many of us much more: sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely
shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears,
while the used key is always bright,' as Poor Richard says. 'But dost
thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is
made of,' as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we
spend in sleep! forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and
that there will be sleeping enough in the grave,' as Poor Richard says.
'If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be,' as
Poor Richard says, 'the greatest prodigality;' since as he elsewhere
tell us, 'Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough
always proves little enough.' Let us then up and be doing, and doing to
the purpose, so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.
'Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy, and he that
riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at
night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes
him. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and
early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,' as Poor Richard
says.

"So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times? We may make
these times better if we bestir ourselves. 'Industry need not wish, and
he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without
pains; then help hands, for I have no lands,' or if I have they are
smartly taxed. 'He that hath a trade, hath an estate; and he that hath a
calling, hath an office of profit and honor,' as Poor Richard says; but
then the trade must be worked at, and the calling well followed, or
neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we
are industrious we shall never starve; for 'at the workingman's house
hunger looks in, but dares not enter.' Nor will the bailiff or the
constable enter, for 'industry pays debts, while despair increaseth
them.' What though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich relation
left a legacy; 'Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all
things to industry. Then plow deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall
have corn to sell and to keep.' Work while it is called to-day, for you
know not how much you may be hindered to-morrow. 'One to-day is worth
two to-morrows,' as Poor Richard says; and farther, 'Never leave that
till to-morrow which you can do to-day.' If you were a servant, would
you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle? Are you
then your own master? Be ashamed to catch yourself idle, when there is
so much to be done for yourself, your family, your country, and your
king. Handle your tools without mittens; remember, that 'the cat in
gloves catches no mice,' as Poor Richard says. It is true there is much
to be done, and, perhaps, you are weak-handed; but stick to it steadily,
and you will see great effects; for, 'Constant dropping wears away
stones; and by diligence, and patience the mouse ate in two the cable;
and little strokes fell great oaks.'

"Methinks I hear some of you say, 'Must a man afford himself no
leisure?' I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says: 'Employ
thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and, since thou art not
sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.' Leisure is time for doing
something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the
lazy man never; for 'A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two
things. Many, without labor, would live by their wits only, but they
break for want of stock;' whereas industry gives comfort, and plenty,
and respect. 'Fly pleasures, and they will follow you. The diligent
spinner has a large shift; and now I have a sheep and a cow, every body
bids me good morrow.'

"II. But with our industry we must likewise be steady, settled, and
careful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eyes, and not trust
too much to others, for, as Poor Richard says,

    "'I never saw an oft removed tree,
    Nor yet an oft removed family,
    That throve so well as those that settled be.'

"And again, 'three removes is as bad as a fire;' and again, 'Keep thy
shop, and thy shop will keep thee;' and again, 'If you would have your
business done, go; if not, send;' and again,

    "'He that by the plow would thrive,
    Himself must either hold or drive.'

And again, 'the eye of the master will do more work than both his
hands;' and again, 'Want of care does us more damage than want of
knowledge;' and again, 'Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your
purse open.' Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for,
'In the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the
want of it; but a man's own care is profitable, for, 'If you would have
a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. A little
neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost;
for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider
was lost,' being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a
little care about a horseshoe nail.

"III. So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own
business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our
industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to
save as he gets, 'keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die
not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean will;' and

    "'Many estates are spent in the getting,
    Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting,
    And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting.'

'If you would be wealthy, think of saving, as well as of getting. The
Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are greater than
her incomes.'

"Away then with your expensive follies, and you will not then have so
much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable
families; for

    "'Women and wine, game and deceit,
    Make the wealth small, and the want great.'

And farther, 'What maintains one vice would bring up two children.' You
may think, perhaps, that a little tea, or a little punch now and then,
diet a little more costly, clothes a little finer, and a little
entertainment now and then, can be no great matter; but remember, 'Many
a little makes a mickle.' Beware of little expenses. 'A small leak will
sink a great ship,' as Poor Richard says; and again, 'Who dainties love,
shall beggars prove;' and moreover, 'Fools make feasts, and wise men eat
them.' Here you are all got together to this sale of fineries and
knick-knacks. You call them goods, but, if you do not take care, they
will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and
perhaps they may, for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion
for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard says,
'Buy what thou hast no need of, and erelong thou shalt sell thy
necessaries.' And again, 'At a great pennyworth pause awhile;' he means,
that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the
bargain, by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than
good. For in another place he says, 'Many have been ruined by buying
good pennyworths.' Again, 'It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase
of repentance;' and yet this folly is practiced every day at auctions,
for want of minding the almanac. Many a one, for the sake of finery on
the back, have gone with a hungry belly, and half starved their
families; 'Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the kitchen
fire,' as Poor Richard says. These are not the necessaries of life; they
can scarcely be called the conveniences; and yet, only because they look
pretty, how many want to have them? By these and other extravagances,
the greatest are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom
they formerly despised, but who, through industry and frugality, have
maintained their standing; in which case it appears plainly, that 'A
plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees,' as Poor
Richard says. Perhaps they have had a small estate left them, which they
knew not the getting of; they think 'It is day, and will never be
night;' that a little to be spent out of so much is not worth minding;
but 'Always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting in, soon comes
to the bottom,' as Poor Richard says; and then, 'When the well is dry,
they know the worth of water.' But this they might have known before, if
they had taken his advice. 'If you would know the value of money, go and
try to borrow some; for he that goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing,' as
Poor Richard says; and, indeed, so does he that lends to such people,
when he goes to get it in again. Poor Dick farther advises, and says,

    "'Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse;
    Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.'

And again, 'Pride is as loud a beggar as Want, and a great deal more
saucy.' When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that
your appearance may be all of a piece; but Poor Dick says, 'It is easier
to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.' And
it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to
swell in order to equal the ox.

    "'Vessels large may venture more,
    But little boats should keep near shore.'

It is, however, a folly soon punished; for, as Poor Richard says, 'Pride
that dines on vanity, sups on contempt; Pride breakfasted with Plenty,
dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy.' And after all, of what use
is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is
suffered? It can not promote health, nor ease pain; it makes no increase
of merit in the person; it creates envy, it hastens misfortune.

"But what madness it must be to run in debt for these superfluities! We
are offered by the terms of this sale six months' credit; and that,
perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it, because we can not spare
the ready money, and hope, now to be fine without it. But, ah! think
what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your
liberty. If you can not pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your
creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him; you will make poor,
pitiful, sneaking excuses, and, by degrees, come to lose your veracity,
and sink into base downright lying; for 'The second vice is lying, the
first is running in debt,' as Poor Richard says; and again, to the same
purpose, 'Lying rides upon debt's back;' whereas a freeborn Englishman
ought not to be ashamed nor afraid to see or speak to any man living.
But poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. 'It is hard
for an empty bag to stand upright.' What would you think of that prince,
or of that government, who should issue an edict forbidding you to dress
like a gentleman or gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude?
Would you not say that you were free, have a right to dress as you
please, and that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges, and
such a government tyrannical? and yet you are about to put yourself
under that tyranny when you run in debt for such dress! Your creditor
has authority, at his pleasure, to deprive you of your liberty, by
confining you in jail for life, or by selling you for a servant, if you
should not be able to pay him. When you have got your bargain, you may,
perhaps, think little of payment; but, as Poor Richard says, 'Creditors
have better memories than debtors; creditors are a superstitious sect,
great observers of days and times.' The day comes round before you are
aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it; or,
if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which at first seemed so long,
will, as it lessens, appear extremely short: Time will seem to have
added wings to his heels as well as his shoulders. 'Those have a short
Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.' At present, perhaps, you may
think yourselves in thriving circumstances, and that you can bear a
little extravagance without injury; but

    "'For age and want save while you may,
    No morning sun lasts a whole day.'

"Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever, while you live, expense
is constant and certain; and 'It is easier to build two chimneys than to
keep one in fuel,' as Poor Richard says: so, 'Rather go to bed
supperless than rise in debt.'

    "'Get what you can, and what you get hold,
    'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.'

And, when you have got the philosopher's stone, sure you will no longer
complain of bad times, or the difficulty of paying taxes.

"IV. This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but, after all, do
riot depend too much upon your own industry and frugality and prudence,
though excellent things; for they may all be blasted without the
blessing of Heaven; and, therefore, ask that blessing humbly, and be not
uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and
help them. Remember Job suffered, and was afterwards prosperous.

"And now to conclude, 'Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will
learn in no other,' as Poor Richard says, and scarce in that; for it is
true, 'We may give advice, but we can not give conduct.' However,
remember this, 'They that will not be counseled, can not be helped;' and
farther, that, 'If you will not hear reason, she will surely rap your
knuckles,' as Poor Richard says."

Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard it, and
approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary, just as
if it had been a common sermon; for the auction opened, and they began
to buy extravagantly. I found the good man had thoroughly studied my
Almanac, and digested all I had dropped on these topics during the
course of twenty-five years. The frequent mention he made of me must
have tired any one else; but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with
it, though I was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my
own which he ascribed to me; but rather the gleanings that I had made of
the sense of all ages and nations. However, I resolved to be the better
for the echo of it; and, though I had at first determined to buy stuff
for a new coat, I went away, resolved to wear my old one a little
longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy profit will be as great as
mine. I am, as ever, thine to serve thee,

    RICHARD SAUNDERS.


This quaint address made a brilliant hit. It was at once printed on
large sheets, framed, and hung up in cottages in England, as well as in
this country. It was also translated into French, Spanish, and modern
Greek. At the present day, however, it is not often met with, except in
the author's collected works, or in fragments; and the young reader,
especially, will be thankful to find it here in full.

       *       *       *       *       *




II.

DEFENSE OF A GREAT MAN.


WAS DR. FRANKLIN MEAN?--JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.


A man of no enviable notoriety is reported to have spoken of Dr.
Franklin as "hard, calculating, angular, unable to comprehend any higher
object than the accumulation of money." Not a few people who profess
much admiration for Franklin in other respects seem to think that in
money matters there was something about him akin to meanness. To correct
this false impression and show "how Franklin got his money, how much he
got, and what he did with it," one of his recent biographers is called
up in his defense, and to the question, "Was Dr. Franklin mean?" here is


JAMES PARTON'S ANSWER.


I will begin with the first pecuniary transaction in which he is known
to have been concerned, and this shall be given in his own words:

"When I was a child of seven years old my friends, on a holiday, filled
my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys
for children, and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met
by the way in the hands of another boy, _I voluntarily offered and gave
all my money for one_."

That was certainly not the act of a stingy, calculating boy.

His next purchase, of which we have any knowledge was made when he was
about eleven years old; and this time, I confess, he made a much better
bargain. The first book he could ever call his own was a copy of
Pilgrim's Progress, which he read and re-read until he got from it all
so young a person could understand. But being exceedingly fond of
reading, he exchanged his Pilgrim's Progress for a set of little books,
then much sold by peddlers, called "Burton's Historical Collections," in
forty paper-covered volumes, containing history, travels, tales,
wonders, and curiosities, just the thing for a boy. As we do not know
the market value of his Pilgrim's Progress, we can not tell whether the
poor peddler did well by him or the contrary. But it strikes me that
that is not the kind of barter in which a mean, grasping boy usually
engages.

His father being a poor soap-and-candle maker, with a dozen children or
more to support or assist, and Benjamin being a printer's apprentice, he
was more and more puzzled to gratify his love of knowledge. But one day
he hit upon an expedient that brought in a little cash. By reading a
vegetarian book this hard, calculating Yankee lad had been led to think
that people could live better without meat than with it, and that
killing innocent animals for food was cruel and wicked. So he abstained
from meat altogether for about two years. As this led to some
inconvenience at his boarding-house, he made this cunning proposition to
his master:

"Give me one-half the money you pay for my board and I will board
myself."

The master consenting, the apprentice lived entirely on such things as
hominy, bread, rice, and potatoes, and found that he could actually live
upon half of the half. What did the calculating wretch do with the
money? Put it into his money-box? No; he laid it out in the improvement
of his mind.

When at the age of seventeen, he landed in Philadelphia, a runaway
apprentice, he had one silver dollar and one shilling in copper coin. It
was a fine Sunday morning, as probably the reader remembers, and he knew
not a soul in the place. He asked the boatmen upon whose boat he had
come down the Delaware how much he had to pay. They answered, Nothing,
because he had helped them row. Franklin, however, insisted upon their
taking his shilling's worth of coppers, and forced the money upon them.
An hour after, having bought three rolls for his breakfast, he ate one
and gave the other two to a poor woman and her child who had been his
fellow-passengers. These were small things, you may say; but remember he
was a poor, ragged, dirty runaway in a strange town, four hundred miles
from a friend, with three pence gone out of the only dollar he had in
the world.

Next year when he went home to see his parents, with his pocket full of
money, a new suit of clothes and a watch, one of his oldest Boston
friends was so much pleased with Franklin's account of Philadelphia that
he determined to go back with him. On the journey Franklin discovered
that his friend had become a slave to drink. He was sorely plagued and
disgraced by him, and at last the young drunkard had spent all his money
and had no way of getting on except by Franklin's aid. This hard,
calculating, mercenary youth, did he seize the chance of shaking off a
most troublesome and injurious traveling companion? Strange to relate,
he stuck to his old friend, shared his purse with him till it was empty,
and then began on some money which he had been intrusted with for
another, and so got him to Philadelphia, where he still assisted him. It
was seven years before Franklin was able to pay all the debt incurred by
him to aid this old friend, for abandoning whom few would have blamed
him.

A year after he was in still worse difficulty from a similar cause. He
went to London to buy types and a press with which to establish himself
in business at Philadelphia, the governor of Pennsylvania having
promised to furnish the money. One of the passengers on the ship was a
young friend of Franklin's named James Ralph, with whom he had often
studied, and of whom he was exceedingly fond. Ralph gave out that he,
too, was going to London to make arrangements for going into business
for himself at Philadelphia. The young friends arrived. Franklin
nineteen and Ralph a married man with two children. On reaching London
Franklin learned, to his amazement and dismay, that the governor had
deceived him, that no money was to be expected from him, and that he
must go to work and earn his living at his trade. No sooner had he
learned this than James Ralph gave him another piece of stunning
intelligence; namely, that he had run away from his family and meant to
settle in London as a poet and author.

Franklin had ten pounds in his pocket, and knew a trade. Ralph had no
money, and knew no trade. They were both strangers in a strange city.
Now, in such circumstances, what would a mean, calculating young man
have done? Reader, you know very well, without my telling you. What
Franklin did was this: he shared his purse with his friend till his ten
pounds were all gone; and having at once got to work at his trade, he
kept on dividing his wages with Ralph until he had advanced him
thirty-six pounds--half a year's income--not a penny of which was ever
repaid. And this he did--the cold-blooded wretch!--because he could not
help loving his brilliant, unprincipled comrade, though disapproving his
conduct and sadly needing his money.

Having returned to Philadelphia, he set up in business as a printer and
editor, and, after a very severe effort, he got his business well
established, and at last had the most profitable establishment of the
kind in all America. During the most active part of his business life he
always found some time for the promotion of public objects. He founded a
most useful and public-spirited club; a public library, which still
exists, and assisted in every worthy scheme. He was most generous to his
poor relations, hospitable to his fellow-citizens, and particularly
interested in his journeymen, many of whom he set up in business.

The most decisive proof, however, which he ever gave that he did not
overvalue money, was the retirement from a most profitable business for
the purpose of having leisure to pursue his philosophical studies. He
had been in business twenty years, and he was still in the prime of
life--forty-six years of age. He was making money faster than any other
printer on this continent. But being exceedingly desirous of spending
the rest of his days in study and experiment, and having saved a
moderate competency, he sold his establishment to his foreman on very
easy terms, and withdrew. His estate, when he retired, was worth about a
hundred thousand dollars. If he had been a lover of money, I am
confident that he could and would have accumulated one of the largest
fortunes in America. He had nothing to do but continue in business, and
take care of his investments, to roll up a prodigious estate. But not
having the slightest taste for needless accumulation, he joyfully laid
aside the cares of business, and spent the whole remainder of his life
in the services of his country; for he gave up his heart's desire of
devoting his leisure to philosophy when his country needed him.

Being in London when Captain Cook returned from his first voyage to the
Pacific, he entered warmly into a beautiful scheme for sending a ship
for the purpose of stocking the islands there with pigs, vegetables, and
other useful animals and products. A hard, selfish man would have
laughed such a project to scorn.

In 1776, when he was appointed embassador of the revolted colonies to
the French king, the ocean swarmed with British cruisers, General
Washington had lost New York, and the prospects of the Revolution were
gloomy in the extreme. Dr. Franklin was an old man of seventy, and might
justly have asked to be excused from a service so perilous and
fatiguing. But he did not. He went. And just before he sailed he got
together all the money he could raise--about three thousand pounds--and
invested it in the loan recently announced by Congress. This he did at a
moment when few men had a hearty faith in the success of the Revolution.
This he did when he was going to a foreign country that might not
receive him, from which he might be expelled, and he have no country to
return to. There never was a more gallant and generous act done by an
old man.

In France he was as much the main stay of the cause of his country as
General Washington was at home.

Returning home after the war, he was elected president of Pennsylvania
for three successive years, at a salary of two thousand pounds a year.
But by this time he had become convinced that offices of honor, such as
the governorship of a State, ought not to have any salary attached to
them. He thought they should be filled by persons of independent income,
willing to serve their fellow-citizens from benevolence, or for the
honor of it. So thinking, he at first determined not to receive any
salary; but this being objected to, he devoted the whole of the salary
for three years--six thousand pounds--to the furtherance of public
objects. Part of it he gave to a college, and part was set aside for the
improvement of the Schuylkill River.

Never was an eminent man more thoughtful of people who were the
companions of his poverty. Dr. Franklin, from amidst the splendors of
the French court, and when he was the most famous and admired person in
Europe, forgot not his poor old sister, Jane, who was in fact dependent
on his bounty. He gave her a house in Boston, and sent her every
September the money to lay in her Winter's fuel and provisions. He wrote
her the kindest, wittiest, pleasantest letters. "Believe me, dear
brother," she writes, "your writing to me gives me so much pleasure that
the great, the very great, presents you have sent me give me but a
secondary joy."

How exceedingly absurd to call such a man "hard" and miserly, because he
recommended people not to waste their money! Let me tell you, reader,
that if a man means to be liberal and generous, he _must_ be economical.
No people are so mean as the extravagant, because, spending all they
have upon themselves, they have nothing left for others. Benjamin
Franklin was the most consistently generous man of whom I have any
knowledge.

       *       *       *       *       *




III.

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS MOTHER.


THE MOTHER'S EDUCATION--THE SON'S TRAINING--DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL
DUTIES.


It was in the Spring of 1758 that the daughter of a distinguished
professor of medicine in the University of Edinburgh changed her maiden
name of Rutherford for her married name of Scott, having the happiness
to unite her lot with one who was not only a scrupulously honorable man,
but who, from his youth up, had led a singularly blameless life. Well
does Coventry Patmore sing:

    "Who is the happy husband? He,
      Who, scanning his unwedded life,
    Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
      'Twas faithful to his future wife."

Such a husband as this was the father of Sir Walter Scott, a writer to
the signet (or lawyer) in large practice in Edinburgh. He had never been
led from the right way; and when the less virtuously inclined among the
companions of his early life in Edinburgh found that they could not
corrupt him, they ceased after a little while to laugh at him, and
learned to honor him and to confide in him, "which is certainly," says
he who makes the record on the authority of Mrs. Scott herself, "a great
inducement to young men in the outset of life to act a similar part." It
does not appear that old Walter Scott sought for beauty of person in his
bride, though no doubt the face he loved was more beautiful to him than
that of the bonniest belle in Scotland; but beauty of mind and
disposition she certainly had. Of her father it is told that, when in
practice as "a physician, he never gave a prescription without silently
invoking on it the blessing of Heaven, and the piety which dictated the
custom had been inherited by his daughter.


THE MOTHER'S' EDUCATION.


Mrs. Scott's education, also, had been an excellent one--giving, besides
a good general grounding, an acquaintance with literature, and not
neglecting "the more homely duties of the needle and the account-book."
Her manners, moreover (an important and too often neglected factor in a
mother's influence over her children), were finished and elegant, though
intolerably stiff in some respects, when compared with the manners and
habits of to-day. The maidens of today can scarcely realize, for
instance, the asperity of the training of their embryo
great-grandmothers, who were always made to sit in so Spartanly upright
a posture that Mrs. Scott, in her seventy-ninth year, boasted that she
had never allowed her shoulders to touch the back of her chair!


THE SON'S TRAINING.


As young Walter was one of many children he could not, of course,
monopolize his mother's attention; but probably she recognized the
promise of his future greatness (unlike the mother of the duke of
Wellington, who thought Arthur the family dunce), and gave him a special
care; for, speaking of his early boyhood, he tells us: "I found much
consolation in the partiality of my mother." And he goes on to say that
she joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn to study
poetry and works of imagination. Like the mothers of the Ettrick
Shepherd and of Burns, she repeated to her son the traditionary ballads
she knew by heart; and, so soon as he was sufficiently advanced, his
leisure hours were usually spent in reading Pope's translation of Homer
aloud to her, which, with the exception of a few ballads and some of
Allan Ramsay's songs, was the first poetry he made acquaintance with. It
must often have been with anxiety, and sometimes not without a struggle,
that his mother--solicitous about every trifle which affected the
training of her child--decided on the books which she was to place in
his hands. She wished him to develop his intellectual faculties, but not
at the expense of his spiritual; and romantic frivolity and mental
dissipation on the one hand, and a too severe repression--dangerous in
its after reaction--on the other, were the Scylla and Charybdis between
which she had to steer. The ascetic Puritanism of her training and
surroundings would naturally have led her to the narrower and more
restrictive view, in which her husband, austerer yet, would have
heartily concurred; but her broad sense, quickened by the marvelous
insight that comes from maternal love, led her to adopt the broader,
and, we may safely add, with Sir Walter's career and character before
us, the better course. Her courage was, however, tempered with a wise
discretion; and when he read to her she was wont, he says, to make him
"pause upon those passages which expressed generous and worthy
sentiments"--a most happy method of education, and a most effective one
in the case of an impressionable boy. A little later, when he passed
from the educational care of his mother to that of a tutor, his
relations to literature changed, as the following passage from his
autobiography will show: "My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a
profane play or poem; and my mother had no longer the opportunity to
hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, however, in her dressing-room,
where I slept at one time, some odd volumes of Shakespeare; nor can I
easily forget the rapture with which I sat up in my shirt reading them
by the light of a fire in her apartment, until the bustle of the family
rising from supper warned me that it was time to creep back to my bed,
where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since 9 o'clock."
This is a suggestive, as well as frank, story. Supposing for a moment
that instead of Shakespeare the room had contained some of the volumes
of verse and romance which, though denying alike the natural and the
supernatural virtues, are to be found in many a Christian home, how
easily might he have suffered a contamination of mind.


DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTY.


It has been proudly said of Sir Walter as an author that he never forgot
the sanctities of domestic love and social duty in all that he wrote;
and considering how much he did write, and how vast has been the
influence of his work on mankind, we can scarcely overestimate the
importance of the fact. Yet it might have been all wrecked by one little
parental imprudence in this matter of books. And what excuse is there,
after all, for running the terrible risk? Authors who are not fit to be
read by the sons and daughters are rarely read without injury by the
fathers and mothers; and it would be better by far, Savonarola-like, to
make a bonfire of all the literature of folly, wickedness, and
infidelity, than run the risk of injuring a child simply for the sake of
having a few volumes more on one's shelves. In the balance of heaven
there is no parity between a complete library and a lost soul. But this
story has another lesson. It indicates once more the injury which may be
done to character by undue limitations. Under the ill-considered
restrictions of his tutor, which ran counter to the good sense of his
mother, whose wisdom was justified by the event, Walter Scott might
easily have fallen into tricks of concealment and forfeited his
candor--that candor which developed into the noble probity which marked
his conduct to the last. Without candor there can not be truth, and, as
he himself has said, there can be no other virtue without truth.
Fortunately for him, by the wise sanction his mother had given to his
perusal of imaginative writings, she had robbed them of a mystery
unhealthy in itself; and he came through these stolen readings
substantially unharmed, because he knew that his fault was only the
lighter one of sitting up when he was supposed to be lying down.

Luckily this tutor's stern rule did not last long; and when a severe
illness attacked the youth (then advanced to be a student at Edinburgh
College) and brought him under his mother's charge once more, the bed on
which he lay was piled with a constant succession of works of
imagination, and he was allowed to find consolation in poetry and
romance, those fountains which flow forever for the ardent and the
young. It was in relation to Mrs. Scott's control of her son's reading
that he wrote with gratitude, late in life, "My mother had good natural
taste and great feeling." And after her death, in a letter to a friend,
he paid her this tribute: "She had a mind peculiarly well stored. If I
have been able to do any thing in the way of painting the past times, it
is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She was a
strict economist, which, she said, enabled her to be liberal. Out of her
little income of about fifteen hundred dollars a year, she bestowed at
least a third in charities; yet I could never prevail on her to accept
of any assistance." Her charity, as well as her love for genealogy, and
her aptitude for story-telling, was transmitted to her son. It found
expression in him, not only in material gifts to the poor, but in a
conscientious care and consideration for the feelings of others. This
trait is beautifully exhibited by many of the facts recorded by Lockhart
in his famous memoir, and also by a little incident, not included there,
which I have heard Sir Henry Taylor tell, and which, besides
illustrating the subject, deserves for its own sake a place in print.
The great and now venerable author of "Philip Van Artevelde" dined at
Abbotsford only a year or two before the close of its owner's life. Sir
Walter had then lost his old vivacity, though not his simple dignity;
but for one moment during the course of the evening he rose into
animation, and it happened thus: There was a talk among the party of an
excursion which was to be made on the following day, and during the
discussion of the plans Miss Scott mentioned that two elderly maiden
ladies, living in the neighborhood, were to be of the number, and hinted
that their company would be a bore. The chivalrous kindliness of her
father's heart was instantly aroused. "I can not call that
good-breeding," he said, in an earnest and dignified tone--a rebuke
which echoed the old-fashioned teaching on the duties of true politeness
he had heard from his mother half a century before.

We would gladly know more than we do of Mrs. Scott's attitude toward her
son when first his _penchant_ for authorship was shown. That she smiled
on his early evidences of talent, and fostered them, we may well
imagine; and the tenderness with which she regarded his early
compositions is indicated by the fact that a copy of verses, written in
a boyish scrawl, was carefully preserved by her, and found, after her
death, folded in a paper on which was inscribed, "My Walter's first
lines, 1782." That she gloried in his successes when they came, we
gather; for when speaking late in life to Dr. Davy about his brother Sir
Humphrey's distinction, Sir Walter, doubtless drawing on his own home
memories, remarked, "I hope, Dr. Davy, that your mother lived to see it;
there must have been great pleasure in that to her." But with whatever
zeal Mrs. Scott may have unfolded Sir Walter's mind by her training, by
her praise, by her motherly enthusiasm, it is certain that, from first
to last, she loved his soul, and sought its interest, in and above all.
Her final present to him before she died was not a Shakespeare or a
Milton, but an old Bible--the book she loved best; and for her sake Sir
Walter loved it too.

Happy was Mrs. Scott in having a son who in all things reciprocated the
affection of his mother. With the first five-guinea fee he earned at the
bar he bought a present for her--a silver taper-stand, which stood on
her mantle-piece many a year; when he became enamored of Miss Carpenter
he filially wrote to consult his mother about the attachment, and to beg
her blessing upon it; when, in 1819, she died at an advanced age, he was
in attendance at her side, and, full of occupations though he was, we
find him busying himself to obtain for her body a beautifully situated
grave. Thirteen years later he also rested from his labors. During the
last hours of his lingering life he desired to be read to from the New
Testament; and when his memory for secular poetry had entirely failed
him, the words and the import of the sacred volume were still in his
recollection, as were also some of the hymns of his childhood, which his
grandson, aged six years, repeated to him. "Lockhart," he said to his
son-in-law, "I have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good
man; be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give
you any comfort when you come to lie here."

So passed the great author of "Waverley" away. And when, in due course,
his executors came to search for his testament, and lifted up his desk,
"we found," says one of them, "arranged in careful order a series of
little objects, which had obviously been so placed there that his eye
might rest on them every morning before he began his tasks." There were
the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilet-table
when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room; the silver
taper-stand which the young advocate bought for her with his first fee;
a row of small packets inscribed by her hand, and containing the hair of
such of her children as had died before her; and more odds and ends of a
like sort--pathetic tokens of a love which bound together for a little
while here on earth, and binds together for evermore in heaven,
Christian mother and son.

      Sir Walter of the land
      Of song and old romance,
    Tradition in his cunning hand
      Obedient as the lance

      His valiant Black Knight bore,
      Wove into literature
    The legend, myth, and homely lore
      Which now for us endure,

      To charm our weary hours,
      To rouse our stagnant hearts,
    And leave the sense of new-born powers,
      Which never more departs.

      We thank him in the name
      Of One who sits on high,
    And aye abides in every fame
      Which makes a brighter sky.

       *       *       *       *       *




IV.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

(BORN 1744--DIED 1818.)


THE WIFE OF OUR SECOND PRESIDENT--THE MOTHER OF OUR SIXTH.


Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister, of Weymouth,
Massachusetts, was one of the most noted women of our early history. She
left a record of her heart and character, and to some extent a picture
of the stirring times in which she lived, in the shape of letters which
are of perennial value, especially to the young. "It was fashionable to
ridicule female learning" in her day; and she says of herself in one of
her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds in explanation,
"I was always sick." When girls, however, were sent to school, their
education seldom went beyond writing and arithmetic. But in spite of
disadvantages, she read and studied in private, and by means of
correspondence with relatives and others, cultivated her mind, and
formed an easy and graceful style of writing.

On the 25th of October, 1764, Miss Smith became the wife of John Adams,
a lawyer of Braintree, the part of the town in which he lived being
afterwards called Quincy, in honor of Mrs. Adams's maternal grandfather.
Charles Francis Adams, her grandson, from whose memoir of her the
material for this brief sketch is drawn, says that the ten years
immediately following her marriage present little that is worth
recording.

But when the days of the Revolution came on, those times that tried
men's souls, women were by no means exempt from tribulation, and they,
too, began to make history. The strength of Mrs. Adams's affection for
her husband may be learned from an extract from one of her letters: "I
very well remember when Eastern circuits of the courts, which lasted a
month, were thought an age, and an absence of three months intolerable;
but we are carried from step to step, and from one degree to another, to
endure that which we at first think impossible."

In 1778 her husband went as one of the commissioners to France. During
his absence Mrs. Adams managed, as she had often done before, both the
household and the farm--a true wife and mother of the Revolution. "She
was a farmer cultivating the land, and discussing the weather and the
crops; a merchant reporting prices current and the rates of exchange,
and directing the making up of invoices; a politician speculating upon
the probabilities of peace and war; and a mother writing the most
exalted sentiments to her son."

John Quincy Adams, the son, in his twelfth year, was with his father in
Europe. The following extracts are from letters to him, dated 1778-80:

"'Tis almost four months since you left your native land, and embarked
upon the mighty waters, in quest of a foreign country. Although I have
not particularly written to you since, yet you may be assured you have
constantly been upon my heart and mind.

"It is a very difficult task, my dear son, for a tender parent to bring
her mind to part with a child of your years going to a distant land; nor
could I have acquiesced in such a separation under any other care than
that of the most excellent parent and guardian who accompanied you. You
have arrived at years capable of improving under the advantages you will
be likely to have, if you do but properly attend to them. They are
talents put into your hands, of which an account will be required of you
hereafter; and being possessed of one, two, or four, see to it that you
double your numbers.

"The most amiable and most useful disposition in a young mind is
diffidence of itself; and this should lead you to seek advice and
instruction from him who is your natural guardian, and will always
counsel and direct you in the best manner, both for your present and
future happiness. You are in possession of a natural good understanding,
and of spirits unbroken by adversity and untamed with care. Improve your
understanding by acquiring useful knowledge and virtue, such as will
render you an ornament to society, an honor to your country, and a
blessing to your parents. Great learning and superior abilities, should
you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation
unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them. Adhere to
those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled
into your mind, and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for
all your words and actions.

"Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the
precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of
your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render
many things unnecessary for me to write, which I might otherwise do; but
the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and
precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both
parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear
as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave
in the ocean you have crossed, or that any untimely death crop you in
your infant years, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless
child.

"You have entered early in life upon the great theater of the world,
which is full of temptations and vice of every kind. You are not wholly
unacquainted with history, in which you have read of crimes which your
inexperienced mind could scarcely believe credible. You have been taught
to think of them with horror, and to view vice as

            'A monster of so frightful mien,
    That, to be hated, needs but to be seen.'

"Yet you must keep a strict guard upon yourself, or the odious monster
will soon lose its terror by becoming familiar to you. The modern
history of our own times furnishes as black a list of crimes as can be
paralleled in ancient times, even if we go back to Nero, Caligula, or
Cæsar Borgia. Young as you are, the cruel war into which we have been
compelled by the haughty tyrant of Britain and the bloody emissaries of
his vengeance, may stamp upon your mind this certain truth, that the
welfare and prosperity of all countries, communities, and, I may add,
individuals, depend upon their morals. That nation to which we were once
united, as it has departed from justice" eluded and subverted the wise
laws which formerly governed it, and suffered the worst of crimes to go
unpunished, has lost its valor, wisdom, and humanity, and, from being
the dread and terror of Europe, has sunk into derision and infamy....

"Some author, that I have met with, compares a judicious traveler to a
river, that increases its stream the further it flows from its source;
or to certain springs, which, running through rich veins of minerals,
improve their qualities as they pass along. It will be expected of you,
my son, that, as you are favored with superior advantages under the
instructive eye of a tender parent, your improvement should bear some
proportion to your advantages. Nothing is wanting with you but
attention, diligence, and steady application. Nature has not been
deficient.

"These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the
still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great
characters are formed. Would Cicero have shone so distinguished an
orator if he had not been roused, kindled, and inflamed by the tyranny
of Catiline, Verres, and Mark Antony? The habits of a vigorous mind are
formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of
this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not
the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great
virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the
heart, then those qualities, which would otherwise lie dormant, wake
into life and form the character of the hero and statesman. War,
tyranny, and desolation are the scourges of the Almighty, and ought no
doubt to be deprecated. Yet it is your lot, my son, to be an eye-witness
of these calamities in your own native land, and, at the same time, to
owe your existence among a people who have made a glorious defense of
their invaded liberties, and who, aided by a generous and powerful ally,
with the blessing of Heaven, will transmit this inheritance to ages yet
unborn.

"Nor ought it to be one of the least of your incitements towards
exerting every power and faculty of your mind, that you have a parent
who has taken so large and active a share in this contest, and
discharged the trust reposed in him with so much satisfaction as to be
honored with the important embassy which at present calls him abroad.

"The strict and inviolable regard you have ever paid to truth gives me
pleasing hopes that you will not swerve from her dictates, but add
justice, fortitude, and every manly virtue which can adorn a good
citizen, do honor to your country, and render your parents supremely
happy, particularly your ever affectionate mother.

... "The only sure and permanent foundation of virtue is religion. Let
this important truth be engraven upon your heart. And also, that the
foundation of religion is the belief of the one only God, and a just
sense of his attributes, as a being infinitely wise, just, and good, to
whom you owe the highest reverence, gratitude, and adoration; who
superintends and governs all nature, even to clothing the lilies of the
field, and hearing the young ravens when they cry; but more particularly
regards man, whom he created after his own image, and breathed into him
an immortal spirit, capable of a happiness beyond the grave; for the
attainment of which he is bound to the performance of certain duties,
which all tend to the happiness and welfare of society, and are
comprised in one short sentence, expressive of universal benevolence,
'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'

"Justice, humanity, and benevolence, are the duties you owe to society
in general. To your country the same duties are incumbent upon you, with
the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and
life itself for its defense and security. To your parents you owe love,
reverence, and obedience to all just and equitable commands. To
yourself,--here, indeed, is a wide field to expatiate upon. To become
what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you, attend
to some precepts and instructions from the pen of one who can have no
motive but your welfare and happiness, and who wishes in this way to
supply to you the personal watchfulness and care which a separation from
you deprived you of at a period of life when habits are easiest acquired
and fixed; and though the advice may not be new, yet suffer it to obtain
a place in your memory, for occasions may offer, and perhaps some
concurring circumstances unite, to give it weight and force.

"Suffer me to recommend to you one of the most useful lessons of
life--the knowledge and study of yourself. There you run the greatest
hazard of being deceived. Self-love and partiality cast a mist before
the eyes, and there is no knowledge so hard to be acquired, nor of more
benefit when once thoroughly understood. Ungoverned passions have aptly
been compared to the boisterous ocean, which is known to produce the
most terrible effects. 'Passions are the elements of life,' but elements
which are subject to the control of reason. Whoever will candidly
examine themselves, will find some degree of passion, peevishness, or
obstinacy in their natural tempers. You will seldom find these
disagreeable ingredients all united in one; but the uncontrolled
indulgence of either is sufficient to render the possessor unhappy in
himself, and disagreeable to all who are so unhappy as to be witnesses
of it, or suffer from its effects.

"You, my dear son, are formed with a constitution feelingly alive; your
passions are strong and impetuous; and, though I have sometimes seen
them hurry you into excesses, yet with pleasure I have observed a
frankness and generosity accompany your efforts to govern and subdue
them. Few persons are so subject to passion but that they can command
themselves when they have a motive sufficiently strong; and those who
are most apt to transgress will restrain themselves through respect and
reverence to superiors, and even, where they wish to recommend
themselves, to their equals. The due government of the passions has been
considered in all ages as a most valuable acquisition. Hence an inspired
writer observes, 'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty;
and he that ruleth his spirit, than he than taketh a city.' This
passion, co-operating with power, and unrestrained by reason, has
produced the subversion of cities, the desolation of countries, the
massacre of nations, and filled the world with injustice and oppression.
Behold your own country, your native land, suffering from the effects of
lawless power and malignant passions, and learn betimes, from your own
observation and experience, to govern and control yourself. Having once
obtained this self-government, you will find a foundation laid for
happiness to yourself and usefulness to mankind. 'Virtue alone is
happiness below;' and consists in cultivating and improving every good
inclination, and in checking and subduing every propensity to evil. I
have been particular upon the passion of anger, as it is generally the
most predominant passion at your age, the soonest excited, and the least
pains are taken to subdue it;

    'What composes man, can man destroy.'"

With such a mother to counsel him, one is led to ask, how could John
Quincy Adams _help_ becoming a noble-minded and great man? Who wonders
that, with good natural endowments and his excellent privileges, coupled
with maternal training, he fitted himself to fill the highest office in
the gift of a free people?

In June, 1784, Mrs. Adams sailed for London, to join her husband, who
was then our Minister at the Court of St. James. While absent, she
visited France and Netherlands; resided for a time in the former
country; and returned with her knowledge of human nature, of men,
manners, etc., enlarged; disgusted with the splendor and sophistications
of royalty, and well prepared to appreciate the republican simplicity
and frankness of which, she was herself a model. While Mr. Adams was
Vice-president and President, she never laid aside her singleness of
heart and that sincerity and unaffected dignity which had won for her
many friends before her elevation, and which, in spite of national
animosity, conquered the prejudices and gained the heart of the
aristocracy of Great Britain. But her crowning virtue was her Christian
humility, which is beautifully exemplified in a letter which she wrote
to Mr. Adams, on the 8th of February, 1797, "the day on which the votes
for President were counted, and Mr. Adams, as Vice-president, was
required by law to announce himself the President elect for the ensuing
term:"

    "'The sun is dressed in brightest beams,
    To give thy honors to the day.'

"And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have
this day to declare yourself head of a nation. 'And now, O Lord, my God,
thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an
understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before
this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is
able to judge this thy so great a people?' were the words of a royal
sovereign; and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief
magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of
royalty.

"My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally absent;
and my petitions to Heaven are, that 'the things which make for peace
may not be hidden from your eyes.' My feelings are not those of pride or
ostentation, upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the
obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with
it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself,
with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to
this great people, shall be the daily prayer of your A.A."

From her husband's retirement from the Presidency in 1801, to the close
of her life in 1818, Mrs. Adams remained constantly at Quincy. Cheerful,
contented, and happy, she devoted her last years, in that rural
seclusion, to the reciprocities of friendship and love, to offices of
kindness and charity, and, in short, to all those duties which tend to
ripen the Christian for an exchange of worlds.

But it would be doing injustice to her character and leaving one of her
noblest deeds unrecorded, to close without mentioning the influence for
good which she exerted over Mr. Adams, and her part in the work of
making him what he was. That he was sensible of the benignant influence
of wives, may be gathered from the following letter, which was addressed
to Mrs. Adams from Philadelphia, on the 11th of August, 1777:

"I think I have sometimes observed to you in conversation, that upon
examining the biography of illustrious men you will generally find some
female about them, in the relation of mother or wife or sister, to whose
instigation a great part of their merit is to be ascribed. You will find
a curious example of this in the case of Aspasia, the wife of Pericles.
She was a woman of the greatest beauty and the first genius. She taught
him, it is said, his refined maxims of policy, his lofty imperial
eloquence, nay, even composed the speeches on which so great a share of
his reputation was founded.

"I wish some of our great men had such wives. By the account in your
last letter, it seems the women in Boston begin to think themselves able
to serve their country. What a pity it is that our generals in the
northern districts had not Aspasias to their wives!

"I believe the two Howes have not very great women to their wives. If
they had, we should suffer more from their exertions than we do. This is
our good fortune. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of
Philadelphia a long time ago."

While Mr. Adams was wishing that some of our great men had such wives as
Aspasia, he had such a wife, was himself such a man, and owed half his
greatness to _his_ Aspasia. The exalted patriotism and cheerful piety
infused into the letters she addressed to him during the long night of
political uncertainty that hung over the country, strengthened his
courage, fired his nobler feelings, nerved his higher purposes, and,
doubtless, greatly contributed to make him one of the chief pillars of
the young republic. All honor to a brave wife, and not less heroic
mother. If her husband and son kept the ship of state from the rocks,
the light which guided them was largely from her.

      Heroic wife and mother,
      Whose days were toil and grace,
    Thy glory gleams for many another,
      And shines in many a face.

      The heart, as of a nation,
      Throbs with thy tender love;
    And all our drama of salvation
      Thou watchest from above.

      Our days, which yet are evil,
      And only free in part,
    Have need of things with Heaven co-eval,
      Of Faith's unbounded heart.

      God grant the times approaching
      Be full of glad events,
    No unheroic aims reproaching
      Our line of Presidents.

       *       *       *       *       *




V.

TWO NEIGHBOURS.


WHAT THEY GOT OUT OF LIFE.


It was just two o'clock of one of the warmest of the July afternoons.
Mrs. Hill had her dinner all over, had put on her clean cap and apron,
and was sitting on the north porch, making an unbleached cotton shirt
for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore unbleached shirts at harvest-time.
Mrs. Hill was a thrifty housewife. She had pursued this economical
avocation for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to
"_shu_!" away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about
the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden shutting
down of a great blue cotton umbrella caused her to drop her work, and
exclaim:

"Well, now, Mrs. Troost! who would have thought you ever _would_ come to
see me!"

"Why, I have thought a great many times I would come," said the visitor,
stamping her little feet--for she was a little woman--briskly on the
blue flag-stones, and then dusting them nicely with her white cambric
handkerchief, before venturing on the snowy floor of Mrs. Hill. And,
shaking hands, she added, "It _has_ been a good while, for I remember
when I was here last I had my Jane with me--quite a baby then, if you
mind--and she is three years old now."

"Is it possible?" said Mrs. Hill, untying the bonnet-strings of her
neighbor, who sighed as she continued, "Yes, she was three along in
February;" and she sighed again, more heavily than before, though there
was no earthly reason that I know of why she should sigh, unless,
perhaps, the flight of time, thus brought to mind, suggested the
transitory nature of human things.

Mrs. Hill laid the bonnet of Mrs. Troost on her "spare bed," and covered
it with a little pale-blue crape shawl, kept especially for such
occasions; and, taking from the drawer of the bureau a large fan of
turkey feathers, she presented it to her guest, saying, "A very warm
day, isn't it?"

"O, dreadful, dreadful! It seems as hot as a bake oven; and I suffer
with the heat all Summer, more or less. But it's a world of suffering;"
and Mrs. Troost half closed her eyes, as if to shut out the terrible
reality.

"Hay-making requires sunshiny weather, you know; so we must put up with
it," said Mrs. Hill; "besides, I can mostly find some cool place about
the house; I keep my sewing here on the porch, and, as I bake my bread
or cook my dinner, manage to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from
getting overheated; and then, too, I get a good many stitches taken in
the course of the day."

"This _is_ a nice cool place--completely curtained with vines," said
Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again. "They must have cost you a great deal
of pains."

"O, no! no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves; they only
require to be planted. I will save seed for you this Fall, and next
Summer you can have your porch as shady as mine."

"And if I do, it would not signify," said Mrs. Troost; "I never get time
to sit down from one week's end to another; besides, I never had any
luck with vines. Some folks don't, you know."

Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that might be
supposed to move about with little agility, and to find excessive warmth
rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy, cheerful temperament; and
when it rained she tucked up her skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled
about the same as ever, saying to herself, "This will make the grass
grow," or, "It will bring on the radishes," or something else equally
consolatory.

Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who looked as
though she could move about nimbly at any .season; but, as she herself
often said, she was a poor, unfortunate creature, and pitied herself a
great deal, as she was in justice bound to do, for nobody else cared,
she said, how much she had to bear.

They were near neighbors, these good women, but their social
interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent occurrence, for
sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like other folks; sometimes it
was too hot and sometimes it was too cold; and then, again, nobody
wanted to see her, and she was sure she didn't want to go where she
wasn't wanted. Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no
other woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood it was
called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure compensated for
the pains it cost her. It was, however, as she said, a barn of a place,
with half the rooms unfurnished, partly because they had no use for
them, and partly because they were unable to get furniture. So it stood
right in the sun, with no shutters, and no trees about it, and Mrs.
Troost said she didn't suppose it ever would have. She was always
opposed to building it; but she never had her way about any thing.
Nevertheless, some people said Mr. Troost had taken the dimensions of
his house with his wife's apron-strings--but that may have been slander.

While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs. Hill sewed on
the last button, and, shaking the loose threads from the completed
garment, held it up a moment to take a satisfactory view, as it were,
and folded it away.

"Well, did you ever!" said Mrs. Troost. "You have made half a shirt, and
I have got nothing at all done. My hands sweat so I can not use the
needle, and it's no use to try."

"Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk in the garden."

So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and, taking a little tin basin
in her hand, the two went to the garden--Mrs. Troost under the shelter
of the blue umbrella, which she said was so heavy that it was worse than
nothing. Beans, radishes, raspberries, and currants, besides many other
things, were there in profusion, and Mrs. Troost said every thing
flourished for Mrs. Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds.
"And you have bees, too--don't they sting the children, and give you a
great deal of trouble? Along in May, I guess it was, Troost [Mrs. Troost
always called her husband so] bought a hive, or, rather, he traded a
calf for one--a nice, likely calf, too, it was--and they never did us a
bit of good;" and the unhappy woman sighed.

"They _do_ say," said Mrs. Hill, sympathizingly, "that bees won't work
for some folks; in case their king dies they are very likely to quarrel
and not do well; but we have never had any ill luck with ours; and we
last year sold forty dollars' worth of honey, besides having all we
wanted for our own use. Did yours die off, or what, Mrs. Troost?"

"Why," said the ill-natured visitor, "my oldest boy got stung one day,
and being angry, upset the hive, and I never found it out for two or
three days; and, sending Troost to put it up in its place, there was not
a bee to be found high or low."

"You don't tell! the obstinate little creatures! But they must be
treated kindly, and I have heard of their going off for less things."

The basin was by this time filled with currants, and they returned to
the house. Mrs. Hill, seating herself on the sill of the kitchen door,
began to prepare her fruit for tea, while Mrs. Troost drew her chair
near, saying, "Did you ever hear about William McMicken's bees?"

Mrs. Hill had never heard, and, expressing an anxiety to do so, was told
the following story:

"His wife, you know, was she that was Sally May, and it's an old
saying--

    'To change the name and not the letter,
    You marry for worse and not for better.'

"Sally was a dressy, extravagant girl; she had her bonnet 'done up'
twice a year always, and there was no end to her frocks and ribbons and
fine things. Her mother indulged her in every thing; she used to say
Sally deserved all she got; that she was worth her weight in gold. She
used to go everywhere, Sally did. There was no big meeting that she was
not at, and no quilting that she didn't help to get up. All the girls
went to her for the fashions, for she was a good deal in town at her
Aunt Hanner's, and always brought out the new patterns. She used to have
her sleeves a little bigger than anybody else, you remember, and then
she wore great stiffeners in them--la, me! there was no end to her
extravagance.

"She had a changeable silk, yellow and blue, made with a surplus front;
and when she wore that, the ground wasn't good enough for her to walk
on, so some folks used to say; but I never thought Sally was a bit proud
or lifted up; and if any body was sick there was no better-hearted
creature than she; and then, she was always good-natured as the day was
long, and would sing all the time at her work. I remember, along before
she was married, she used to sing one song a great deal, beginning

    'I've got a sweetheart with bright black eyes;'

and they said she meant William McMicken by that, and that she might not
get him after all--for a good many thought they would never make a
match, their dispositions were so contrary. William was of a dreadful
quiet turn, and a great home body; and as for being rich, he had nothing
to brag of, though he was high larnt and followed the river as dark
sometimes."

Mrs. Hill had by this time prepared her currants, and Mrs. Troost paused
from her story while she filled the kettle and attached the towel to the
end of the well-sweep, where it waved as a signal for Peter to come to
supper.

"Now, just move your chair a leetle nearer the kitchen door, if you
please," said Mrs. Hill, "and I can make up my biscuit and hear you,
too."

Meantime, coming to the door with some bread-crumbs in her hands, she
began scattering them on the ground and calling, "Biddy, biddy,
biddy--chicky, chicky, chicky"--hearing which, a whole flock of poultry
was around her in a minute; and, stooping down, she secured one of the
fattest, which, an hour afterward, was broiled for supper.

"Dear me, how easily you get along!" said Mrs. Troost.

And it was some time before she could compose herself sufficiently to
take up the thread of her story. At length, however, she began with--

"Well, as I was saying, nobody thought William McMicken would marry
Sally May. Poor man! they say he is not like himself any more. He may
get a dozen wives, but he'll never get another Sally. A good wife she
made him, for all she was such a wild girl.

"The old man May was opposed to the marriage, and threatened to turn
Sally, his own daughter, out of house and home; but she was headstrong,
and would marry whom she pleased; and so she did, though she never got a
stitch of new clothes, nor one thing to keep house with. No; not one
single thing did her father give her when she went away but a hive of
bees. He was right down ugly, and called her Mrs. McMicken whenever he
spoke to her after she was married; but Sally didn't seem to mind it,
and took just as good care of the bees as though they were worth a
thousand dollars. Every day in Winter she used to feed
them--maple-sugar, if she had it; and if she had not, a little Muscovade
in a saucer or some old broken dish.

"But it happened one day that a bee stung her on the hand--the right
one, I think it was--and Sally said right away that it was a bad sign;
and that very night she dreamed that she went out to feed her bees, and
a piece of black crape was tied on the hive. She felt that it was a
token of death, and told her husband so, and she told me and Mrs. Hanks.
No, I won't be sure she told Mrs. Hanks, but Mrs. Hanks got to hear it
some way."

"Well," said Mrs. Hill, wiping the tears away with her apron, "I really
didn't know, till now, that poor Mrs. McMicken was dead."

"O, she is not dead," answered Mrs. Troost, "but as well as she ever
was, only she feels that she is not long for this world." The painful
interest of her story, however, had kept her from work, so the afternoon
passed without her having accomplished much--she never could work when
she went visiting.

Meantime Mrs. Hill had prepared a delightful supper, without seeming to
give herself the least trouble. Peter came precisely at the right
moment, and, as he drew a pail of water, removed the towel from the
well-sweep, easily and naturally, thus saving his wife the trouble.

"Troost would never have thought of it," said his wife; and she finished
with an "Ah, well!" as though all her tribulations would be over before
long.

As she partook of the delicious honey she was reminded of her own upset
hive; and the crispred radishes brought thoughts of the weedy garden at
home; so that, on the whole, her visit, she said, made her perfectly
wretched, and she should have no heart for a week; nor did the little
basket of extra nice fruit which Mrs. Hill presented her as she was
about to take leave heighten her spirits in the least. Her great heavy
umbrella, she said, was burden enough for her.

"But Peter will take you in the carriage," insisted Mrs. Hill.

"No," said Mrs. Troost, as though charity was offered her; "it will be
more trouble to get in and out than to walk"--and so she trudged home,
saying, "Some folks are born to be lucky."

       *       *       *       *       *




VI.

HORACE GREELEY.

(BORN 1811--DIED 1872.)


THE MOLDER OF PUBLIC OPINION--THE BRAVE JOURNALIST.


Mr. Greeley lived through the most eventful era in our public history
since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. For the eighteen years
between the, formation of the Republican party, in 1854, and his sudden
death in 1872, the stupendous civil convulsions through which we have
passed have merely translated into acts, and recorded in our annals, the
fruits of his thinking and the strenuous vehemence of his moral
convictions. Whether he was right or wrong, is a question on which
opinions will differ; but no person conversant with our history will
dispute the influence which this remarkable and singularly endowed man
has exerted in shaping the great events of our time. Whatever may be the
ultimate judgment of other classes of his countrymen respecting the real
value of his services, the colored race, when it becomes sufficiently
educated to appreciate his career, must always recognize him as the
chief author of their emancipation from slavery and their equal
citizenship. Mr. Lincoln, to whom their ignorance as yet gives the chief
credit, was a chip tossed on the surface of a resistless wave.


THE MOLDER OF PUBLIC OPINION.


It was Mr. Greeley, more than any other man, who let loose the winds
that lifted the waters and drove forward their foaming, tumbling
billows. Mr. Greeley had lent his hand to stir public feeling to its
profoundest depths before Mr. Lincoln's election became possible. He
contributed more than any other man to defeat the compromise and
settlement for which Mr. Lincoln and his chief adviser, Mr. Seward, were
anxious in the exciting, expectant Winter of 1860-61, and to precipitate
an avoidable bloody war. It was he, carrying a majority of the
Republican party with him, who kept insisting, in the early stages of
the conflict, that the emancipation of the slaves was an indispensable
element of success. Mr. Lincoln stood out and resisted, ridiculing an
emancipation proclamation as 'a bull against the comet.' Mr. Greeley
roused the Republican party by that remarkable leader signed by his name
and addressed to Mr. Lincoln, headed 'The Prayer of Twenty Millions,'
the effect of which the President tried to parry by a public letter to
the editor of the _Tribune_, written with all the dexterous ingenuity
and telling aptness of phrase of which Mr. Lincoln was so great a
master. But Mr. Greeley victoriously carried the Republican party, which
he had done more than all other men to form, with him; and within two
months after Mr. Lincoln's reply to 'The Prayer of Twenty Millions,' his
reluctance was overborne, and he was constrained to issue his celebrated
Proclamation, which committed the Government to emancipation, and staked
the success of the war on that issue. This culminating achievement, the
greatest of Mr. Greeley's life, is the most signal demonstration of his
talents. It was no sudden, random stroke. It was the effect of an
accumulated, ever-rising, widening, deepening stream of influence, which
had been gathering volume and momentum for years, and whose piling
waters at last burst through and bore down every barrier. Mr. Greeley
had long been doing all in his power to swell the tide of popular
feeling against slavery, and it was chiefly in consequence of the
tremendous force he had given to the movement that that barbarous
institution was at last swept away. It is the most extraordinary
revolution ever accomplished by a single mind with no other instrument
than a public journal.

It may be said, indeed, that Mr. Greeley had many zealous coadjutors.
But so had Luther able coadjutors in the Protestant Reformation; so had
Cromwell in the Commonwealth; so had Washington in our Revolution; so
had Cobden in the repeal of the corn laws. They are nevertheless
regarded as the leading minds in the respective innovations which they
championed; and by as just a title Mr. Greeley will hold the first place
with posterity on the roll of emancipation. This is the light in which
he will be remembered so long as the history of our times shall be read.

It may be said, again, that Mr. Greeley's efforts in this direction were
aided by the tendencies of his time. But so were Luther's, and
Cromwell's, and Washington's, and everybody's who has left a great mark
on his age, and accomplished things full of consequences to future
generations. The first qualification for exerting this kind of fruitful
influence is for the leader to be in complete sympathy with the
developing tendencies of his own epoch. This is necessary to make him
the embodiment of its spirit, the representative of its ideas, the
quickener of its passions, the reviver of its courage in adverse turns
of fortune, the central mind whom other advocates of the cause consult,
whose action they watch in every new emergency, and whose guidance they
follow because he has resolute, unflagging confidence to lead. In the
controversies in which Mr. Greeley has been behind his age, or stood
against the march of progress, even he has accomplished little. Since
Henry Clay's death, he has been the most noted and active champion of
Protection; but that cause steadily declined until the war forced the
government to strain every source of revenue, and since the close of the
war free-trade ideas have made surprising advances in Mr. Greeley's own
political party. On this subject he was the disciple of dead masters,
and hung to the skirts of a receding cause; but in this school he
acquired that dexterity in handling the weapons of controversy which
proved so effective when he advanced from the position of a disciple to
that of a master, and led a movement in the direction towards which the
rising popular feeling was tending. Mr. Greeley's name will always be
identified with the extirpation of negro slavery as its most
distinguished, powerful, and effective advocate.


THE BRAVE JOURNALIST.


This is his valid title to distinction and lasting fame. Instrumental to
this, and the chief means of its attainment, he founded a public journal
which grew, under his direction, to be a great moving force in the
politics and public thought of our time. This alone would have attested
his energy and abilities; but this is secondary praise. It is the use he
made of his journal when he had created it, the moral ends to which
(besides making it a vehicle of news and the discussion of ephemeral
topics) he devoted it, that will give him his peculiar place in history.
If he had had no higher aim than to supply the market for current
intelligence, as a great merchant supplies the market for dry-goods, he
would have deserved to rank with the builders-up of other prosperous
establishments by which passing contemporary wants were supplied, but
would have had no claim on the remembrance of coming generations. But he
regarded his journal not primarily as a property, but as the instrument
of high moral and political ends; an instrument whose great potency for
good or ill he fully comprehended, and for whose salutary direction he
felt a corresponding responsibility. His simple tastes, inexpensive
habits, his contempt for the social show and parade which are the chief
use made of wealth, and the absorption of his mind in other aims, made
it impossible for him to think of the _Tribune_ merely as a source of
income, and he always managed it mainly with a view to make it an
efficient organ for diffusing opinions which he thought conducive to the
public welfare. It was this which distinguished Mr. Greeley from the
founders of other important journals, who have, in recent years, been
taken from us. With him the moral aim was always paramount, the
pecuniary aim subordinate. Journalism, as he looked upon it, was not an
end, but a means to higher ends. He may have had many mistaken and some
erratic opinions on particular subjects; but the moral earnestness with
which he pursued his vocation, and his constant subordination of private
interest to public objects, nobly atone for his occasional errors.

Among the means by which Mr. Greeley gained, and so long held, the first
place among American journalists, was his manner of writing. His
negative merits as a writer were great; and it would be surprising to
find these negative merits so rare as to be a title to distinction, if
observation did not force the faults he avoided so perpetually upon our
notice. He had no verbiage. We do not merely mean by this that he never
used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he
kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning
and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did
not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the
fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith
of his argument began; and had the secret, possessed by few writers, of
stopping the moment he was done; leaving his readers no chaff to sift
out from the simple wheat. This perfect absence of cloudy irrelevance
and encumbering superfluity was one source of his popularity as a
writer. His readers had to devour no husks to get at the kernel of what
he meant.

Besides these negative recommendations, Mr. Greeley's style had positive
merits of a very high order. The source of these was in the native
structure of his mind; no training could have conferred them; and it was
his original mental qualities, and not any special culture, that pruned
his writing of verbiage and redundancies. Whatever he saw, he saw with
wonderful distinctness. Whether it happened to be a sound idea or a
crotchet, it stood before his mind with the clearness of an object in
sunlight. He never groped at and around it, like one feeling in the
dark. He saw on which side he could lay hands on it at once with the
firmest grasp. It was his vividness of conception which made Mr. Greeley
so clear and succinct a writer. He knew precisely what he would be at,
and he hastened to say it in the fewest words. His choice of language,
though often homely, and sometimes quaint or coarse, was always adapted
to his purpose. He had a great command of racy phrases in common use,
and frequently gave them an unexpected turn which enlivened his style as
by a sudden stroke of wit or grotesque humor. But these touches were
rapid, never detained him; he kept grappling with his argument, and
hurried on.

This peculiar style was aided by the ardor of his feelings and his
vehement moral earnestness. Bent on convincing, he tried to flash his
meaning on the minds of his readers in the readiest and manliest way;
and he was so impatient to make them see the full force of his main
points that he stripped them as naked as he could. This combined
clearness of perception, strength of conviction, and hurrying ardor of
feeling, were the sources of a style which enabled him to write more
than any other journalist of his time, and yet always command attention.
But he is a model which none can successfully imitate without his
strongly marked individuality and peculiarities of mental structure. We
have mentioned his occasional coarseness; but it was merely his
preference of strong direct expression to dainty feebleness; he was
never vulgar.

Mr. Greeley has contributed to the surprising growth and development of
journalism in our time, chiefly by his successful efforts to make it a
guide of public opinion, as well as a chronicle of important news. In
his hands, it was not merely a mirror which indifferently reflects back
the images of all objects on which it is turned, but a creative force; a
means of calling into existence a public opinion powerful enough to
introduce great reforms and sweep down abuses. He had no faith in
purposeless journalism, in journalism which has so little insight into
the tendencies of the time that it shifts its view from day to day in
accommodation to transient popular caprices. No great object is
accomplished without constancy of purpose, and a guide of public opinion
can not be constant unless he has a deep and abiding conviction of the
importance of what he advocates. Mr. Greeley's remarkable power, when
traced back to its main source, will be found to have consisted chiefly
in that vigorous earnestness of belief which held him to the strenuous
advocacy of measures which he thought conducive to the public welfare,
whether they were temporarily popular or not. Journalism may perhaps
gain more success as a mercantile speculation by other methods; but it
can be respected as a great moral and political force only in the hands
of men who have the talents, foresight, and moral earnestness which fit
them to guide public opinion. It is in this sense that Mr. Greeley was
our first journalist, and nobody can successfully dispute his rank, any
more than Mr. Bennett's could be contested in the kind that seeks to
float on the current instead of directing its course. The one did most
to render our American journals great vehicles of news, the other to
make them controlling organs of opinion. Their survivors in the
profession have much to learn from both.--_New York World_.

      Knight of the ready pen,
      Soldier without a sword,
    Such eyes hadst thou for other men,
      So true and grand a word!

      As Cæsar led his legions
      Triumphant over Gaul,
    And through still wilder, darker regions,
      So thou didst lead us all!

      Until we saw the chains
      Which bound our brothers' lives,
    And heard the groans and felt the pains,
      Which come from wearing gyves.

      To brave heroic men
      The false no more was true;
    And what the Nation needed then
      Could any soldier do.

       *       *       *       *       *




VII.

WENDELL PHILLIPS

(BORN 1811--DIED 1884.)


THE TIMES WHEN HE APPEARED--"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"--A FLAMING ADVOCATE OF
LIBERTY--LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT--POWER TO DISCERN THE RIGHT--THE
MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT.


Long chapters of history are illumined as by as electric light in the
following characteristic address from his pulpit by Henry Ward Beecher,
at the time the name of the great philanthropist was added to the roll
of American heroes.


THE TIMES WHEN HE APPEARED.


The condition of the public mind throughout the North at the time I came
to the consciousness of public affairs and was studying my profession
may be described, in one word, as the condition of imprisoned moral
sense. All men, almost, agreed with all men that slavery was wrong; but
what can we do? The compromises of our fathers include us and bind us to
fidelity to the agreements that had been made in the formation of our
Constitution. Our confederation first, and our Constitution after. These
were regarded everywhere as moral obligations by men that hated slavery.
"The compromises of the Constitution must be respected," said the priest
in the pulpit, said the politician in the field, said the statesmen in
public halls; and men abroad, in England especially, could not
understand what was the reason of the hesitancy of President Lincoln and
of the people, when they had risen to arms, in declaring at once the end
for which arms were taken and armies gathered to be the emancipation of
the slaves. There never has been an instance in which, I think, the
feelings and the moral sense of so large a number of people have been
held in check for reasons of fidelity to obligations assumed in their
behalf. There never has been in history another instance more notable,
and I am bound to say, with all its faults and weaknesses, more noble.
The commercial question--that being the underlying moral element--the
commercial question of the North very soon became, on the subject of
slavery, what the industrial and political question of the South had
made it. It corrupted the manufacturer and the merchant. Throughout the
whole North every man that could make any thing regarded the South as
his legal, lawful market; for the South did not manufacture; it had the
cheap and vulgar husbandry of slavery. They could make more money with
cotton than with corn, or beef, or pork, or leather, or hats, or
wooden-ware; and Northern ships went South to take their forest timbers,
and brought them to Connecticut to be made into wooden-ware and
ax-helves and rake-handles, and carried them right back to sell to the
men whose axes had cut down the trees. The South manufactured nothing
except slaves. It was a great manufacture, that; and the whole market of
the North was bribed. The harness-makers, the wagon-makers, the
clock-makers, makers of all manner of implements, of all manner of
goods, every manufactory, every loom as it clanked in the North said,
"Maintain," not slavery, but the "compromises of the Constitution." The
Constitution--that was the veil under which all these cries were
continually uttered.

The distinction between the Anti-slavery men and Abolitionists was
simply this: The Abolitionists disclaimed the obligation to maintain
this government and the compromises of the Constitution, and the
Anti-slavery men recognized the binding obligation and sought the
emancipation of slaves by the more circuitous and gradual influence; but
Abolitionism covered both terms. It was regarded, however, throughout
the North as a greater sin than slavery itself, and none of you that are
under thirty years of age can form any adequate conception of the public
sentiment and feeling during the days of my young manhood. A man that
was known to be an Abolitionist had better be known to have the plague.
Every door was shut to him. If he was born under circumstances that
admitted him to the best society, he was the black sheep of the family.
If he aspired by fidelity, industry, and genius, to good society, he was
debarred. "An Abolitionist" was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any
young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of
age. It was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was
enough to expel a man from Church communion, if he insisted on praying
in the prayer-meeting for the liberation of the slaves. The Church was
dumb in the North, not in the West. The great publishing societies that
were sustained by the contributions of the Churches were absolutely
dumb.


"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"


It was at the beginning of this Egyptian era in America that the young
aristocrat of Boston appeared. His blood came through the best colonial
families. He was an aristocrat by descent and by nature; a noble one,
but a thorough aristocrat. All his life and power assumed that guise. He
was noble; he was full of kindness to inferiors; he was willing to be,
and do, and suffer for them; but he was never of them, nor equaled
himself to them. He was always above them, and his gifts of love were
always the gifts of a prince to his subjects. All his life long he
resented every attack on his person and on his honor, as a noble
aristocrat would. When they poured the filth of their imaginations upon
him, he cared no more for it than the eagle cares what the fly is
thinking about him away down under the cloud. All the miserable
traffickers, and all the scribblers, and all the aristocratic boobies of
Boston were no more to him than mosquitoes are to the behemoth or to the
lion. He was aristocratic in his pride, and lived higher than most men
lived. He was called of God as much as ever Moses and the prophets were;
not exactly for the same great end, but in consonance with those great
ends. You remember, my brother, when Lovejoy was infamously slaughtered
by a mob in Alton?--blood that has been the seed of liberty all over
this land! I remember it. At this time it was that Channing lifted up
his voice and declared that the moral sentiment of Boston ought to be
uttered in rebuke of that infamy and cruelty, and asking for Faneuil
Hall in which to call a public meeting. This was indignantly refused by
the Common Council of Boston. Being a man of wide influence, he gathered
around about himself enough venerable and influential old citizens of
Boston to make a denial of their united request a perilous thing; and
Faneuil Hall was granted to call a public meeting to express itself on
this subject of the murder of Lovejoy. The meeting was made up largely
of rowdies. They meant to overawe and put down all other expressions of
opinion except those that then rioted with the riotous. United States
District-attorney Austin (when Wendell Phillips's name is written in
letters of light on one side of the monument, down low on the other
side, and spattered with dirt, let the name of Austin also be written)
made a truculent speech, and justified the mob, and ran the whole career
of the sewer of those days and justified non-interference with slavery.
Wendell Phillips, just come to town as a young lawyer, without at
present any practice, practically unknown, except to his own family,
fired with the infamy, and, feeling called of God in his soul, went upon
the platform. His first utterances brought down the hisses of the mob.
He was not a man very easily subdued by any mob. They listened as he
kindled and poured on that man Austin the fire and lava of a volcano,
and he finally turned the course of the feeling of the meeting.
Practically unknown when the sun went down one day, when it rose next
morning all Boston was saying, "Who is this fellow? Who is this
Phillips?" A question that has never been asked since.


A FLAMING ADVOCATE OF LIBERTY.


Thenceforth he has been a flaming advocate of liberty, with singular
advantages over all other pleaders. Mr. Garrison was not noted as a
speaker, yet his tongue was his pen. Mr. Phillips, not much given to the
pen, his pen was his tongue; and no other like speaker has ever graced
our history. I do not undertake to say that he surpassed all others. He
had an intense individuality, and that intense individuality ranked him
among the noblest orators that have ever been born to this continent, or
I may say to our mother-land. He adopted in full the tenets of Garrison,
which were excessively disagreeable to the whole public mind. The ground
which he took was that which Garrison took. Seeing that the conscience
of the North was smothered and mute by reason of the supposed
obligations to the compromises of the Constitution, Garrison declared
that the compromises of the Constitution were covenants with hell, and
that no man was bound to observe them. This extreme ground Mr. Phillips
also took,--immediate, unconditional, universal emancipation, at any
cost whatsoever. That is Garrisonism; that is Wendell Phillipsism; and
it would seem as though the Lord rather leaned that way, too.

I shall not discuss the merits of Mr. Garrison or Mr. Phillips in every
direction. I shall say that while the duty of immediate emancipation
without conditions was unquestionably the right ground, yet in the
providence of God even that could not be brought to pass except through
the mediation of very many events. It is a remarkable thing that Mr.
Phillips and Mr. Garrison both renounced the Union and denounced the
Union in the hope of destroying slavery; whereas the providence of God
brought about the love of the Union when it was assailed by the South,
and made the love of the Union the enthusiasm that carried the great war
of emancipation through. It was the very antithesis of the ground which
they took. Like John Brown, Mr. Garrison; like John Brown, Mr. Phillips;
of a heroic spirit, seeking the great and noble, but by measures not
well adapted to secure the end.

Little by little the controversy spread. I shall not trace it. I am
giving you simply the atmosphere in which he sprang into being and into
power. His career was a career of thirty or forty years of undiminished
eagerness. He never quailed nor flinched, nor did he ever at any time go
back one step or turn in the slightest degree to the right or left. He
gloried in his cause, and in that particular aspect of it which had
selected him; for he was one that was called rather than one that chose.
He stood on this platform. It is a part of the sweet and pleasant
memories of my comparative youth here, that when the mob refused to let
him speak in the Broadway Tabernacle before it moved up-town--the old
Tabernacle--William A. Hall, now dead, a fervent friend and
Abolitionist, had secured the Graham Institute wherein to hold a meeting
where Mr. Phillips should be heard. I had agreed to pray at the opening
of the meeting. On the morning of the day on which it was to have taken
place, I was visited by the committee of that Institute--excellent
gentlemen, whose feelings will not be hurt now, because they are all now
ashamed of it; they are in heaven. They visited me to say that in
consequence of the great peril that attended a meeting at the Institute,
they had withdrawn the liberty to use it, and paid back the money, and
that they called simply to say that it was out of no disrespect to me,
but from fidelity to their supposed trust. Well, it was a bitter thing.


LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT.


If there is any thing on earth that I am sensitive to, it is the
withdrawing of the liberty of speech and thought. Henry C. Bowen, who
certainly has done some good things in his life-time, said to me: "You
can have Plymouth Church if you want it." "How?" "It is the rule of the
church trustees that the church may be let by a majority vote when we
are convened; but if we are not convened, then every trustee must give
his assent in writing. If you choose to make it a personal matter, and
go to every trustee, you can have it." He meanwhile undertook, with Mr.
Hall, to put new placards over the old ones, notifying men quietly that
the meeting was to be held here, and distributed thousands and tens of
thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I
went to the trustees man by man. The majority of the trustees very
cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to
decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship. "You
and I will break, if you don't give me this permission." And they
signed. So the meeting glided from the Graham Institute to this house. A
great audience assembled. We had detectives in disguise, and every
arrangement made to handle the subject in a practical form if the crowd
should undertake to molest us. The Rev. Dr. R.S. Storrs consented to
come and pray, for Mr. Wendell Phillips was by marriage a near and
intimate friend and relation of his. The reporters were here; when were
they ever not?

Mr. Phillips began his lecture, and, you may depend upon it, by this
time the lion was in him, and he went careering on. Hie views were
extreme; he made them extravagant. I remember at one point--for he was a
man without bluster, serene, self-poised, never disturbed in the
least--he made an affirmation that was very bitter, and the cry arose
over the whole congregation. He stood still, with a cold, bitter smile
in his eye, and waited till they subsided, when he repeated it with more
emphasis. Again the roar went through. He waited and repeated it, if
possible, more intensely, and he beat them down with that one sentence
until they were still, and let him go on.


POWER TO DISCERN THE RIGHT.


The power to discern right amid all the wrappings of interest and all
the seductions of ambition was singularly his. To choose the lowly for
their sake, to abandon all favor, all power, all comfort, all ambition,
all greatness--that was his genius and glory. He confronted the spirit
of the nation and of the age. I had almost said he set himself against
nature, as if he had been a decree of God over-riding all these other
insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not
called to be a universal orator any more than he was a universal
thinker. In literature and in history widely read, in person
magnificent, in manners most accomplished, gentle as a babe, sweet as a
new-blown rose, in voice clear and silvery, yet he was not a man of
tempests, he was not an orchestra of a hundred instruments, he was not
an organ, mighty and complex. The nation slept, and God wanted a
trumpet, sharp, wide-sounding, narrow and intense; and that was Mr.
Phillips. The long-roll is not particularly agreeable in music, or in
times of war, but it is better than flutes or harps when men are in a
great battle, or are on the point of it. His eloquence was penetrating
and alarming. He did not flow as a mighty Gulf Stream; he did not dash
upon this continent as the ocean does; he was not a mighty rushing
river. His eloquence was a flight of arrows, sentence after sentence
polished, and most of them burning. He slung them one after the other,
and where they struck they slew. Always elegant, always awful. I think
his scorn is and was as fine as I ever knew it in any human being. He
had that sublime sanctuary in his pride that made him almost insensitive
to what would by other men be considered obloquy. It was as if he said
every day in himself: "I am not what they are firing at. I am not there,
and I am not that. It is not against me. I am infinitely superior to
what they think me to be. They do not know me." It was quiet and
unpretentious, but it was there. Conscience and pride were the two
concurrent elements of his nature.


THE MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT.


He lived to see the slave emancipated, but not by moral means. He lived
to see the sword cut the fetter. After this had taken place, he was too
young to retire, though too old to gather laurels of literature or to
seek professional honors. The impulse of humanity was not at all abated.
His soul still flowed on for the great under-masses of mankind, though,
like the Nile, it split up into scores of mouths, and not all of them
were navigable. After a long and stormy life his sun went down in glory.
All the English-speaking people on the globe have written among the
names that shall never die the name of that scoffed, detested,
mob-beaten, persecuted wretch--Wendell Phillips. Boston, that persecuted
and would have slain him, is now exceedingly busy in building his tomb
and rearing his statue. The men that would not defile their lips with
his name are thanking God to-day that he lived.

He has taught some lessons--lessons that the young will do well to take
heed to--that the most splendid gifts and opportunities and ambitions
may be best used for the dumb and lowly. His whole life is a rebuke to
the idea that we are to climb to greatness by climbing up on the backs
of great men, that we are to gain strength by running with the currents
of life, that we can from without add any thing to the great within that
constitutes man. He poured out the precious ointment of his soul upon
the feet of that diffusive Jesus who suffers here in his poor and
despised ones. He has taught young ambitions, too, that the way to glory
is the way often-times of adhesion simply to principle, and that
popularity and unpopularity are not things to be known or considered. Do
right and rejoice. If to do right will bring you under trouble, rejoice
in it that you are counted worthy to suffer with God and the providences
of God in this world.

He belongs to the race of giants, not simply because he was, in and of
himself a great soul, but because he had bathed in the providence of God
and came forth scarcely less than a god; because he gave himself to the
work of God upon earth, and inherited thereby, or had reflected upon
him, some of the majesty of his Master. When pigmies are all dead, the
noble countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look forth, radiant as
a rising sun, a sun that will never set. He has become to us a lesson,
his death an example, his whole history an encouragement to manhood--and
to heroic manhood.

       *       *       *       *       *




VIII

MARY WORDSWORTH

(BORN 1770--DIED 1859.)


THE KINDLY WIFE OF THE GREAT POET.

    "A creature not too bright or good
    For human nature's daily food."


The last thing that would have occurred to Mrs. Wordsworth would have
been that her departure, or any thing about her, would be publicly
noticed amidst the events of a stirring time. Those who knew her well
regarded her with as true a homage as they ever rendered to any member
of the household, or to any personage of the remarkable group which will
be forever traditionally associated with the Lake District; but this
reverence, genuine and hearty as it was, would not, in all eyes, be a
sufficient reason for recording more than the fact of her death. It is
her survivorship of such a group which constitutes an undisputed public
interest in her decease. With her closes a remarkable scene in the
history of the literature of our century. The well-known cottage, mount,
and garden at Rydal will be regarded with other eyes when shut up or
transferred to new occupants. With Mrs. Wordsworth, an old world has
passed away before the eyes of the inhabitants of the district, and a
new one succeeds, which may have its own delights, solemnities, honors,
and graces, but which can never replace the familiar one that is gone.
There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady--blind,
deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but _she_ was not mournful, any
more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden
her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago
that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake
District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to
let one be ready to leave it. Within a few years the beloved daughter
was gone, and then the aged husband, and then the son-in-law, and then
the devoted friend, Mr. Wordsworth's publisher, Mr. Moxon, who paid his
duty occasionally by the side of her chair; then she became blind and
deaf. Still her cheerfulness was indomitable. No doubt, she would in
reality have been "willing to go," whenever called upon, throughout her
long life; but she liked life to the end. By her disinterestedness of
nature, by her fortitude of spirit, and her constitutional elasticity
and activity, she was qualified for the honor of surviving her
household--nursing and burying them, and bearing the bereavement which
they were vicariously spared. She did it wisely, tenderly, bravely, and
cheerfully; and then she will be remembered accordingly by all who
witnessed the spectacle.

It was by the accident, so to speak, of her early friendship with
Wordsworth's sister, that her life became involved with the poetic
element which her mind would hardly have sought for itself in another
position. She was the incarnation of good sense, as applied to the
concerns of the every-day world. In as far as her marriage and course of
life tended to infuse a new elevation into her views of things, it was a
blessing; and, on the other hand, in as far as it infected her with the
spirit of exclusiveness, which was the grand defect of the group in its
own place, it was hurtful; but that very exclusiveness was less an evil
than an amusement, after all. It was rather a serious matter to hear the
poet's denunciation of the railway, and to read his well-known sonnets
on the desecration of the Lake region by the unhallowed presence of
commonplace strangers; and it was truly painful to observe how the
scornful and grudging mood spread among the young, who thought they were
agreeing with Wordsworth in claiming the vales and lakes as a natural
property for their enlightened selves. But it was so unlike Mrs.
Wordsworth, with her kindly, cheery, generous turn, to say that a green
field, with buttercups, would answer all the purposes of Lancashire
operatives, and that they did not know what to do with themselves when
they came among the mountains, that the innocent insolence could do no
harm. It became a fixed sentiment when she alone survived to uphold it,
and one demonstration of it amused the whole neighborhood in a
good-natured way. "People from Birthwaite" were the bugbear--Birthwaite
being the end of the railway. In the Summer of 1857, Mrs. Wordsworth's
companion told her (she being then blind) that there were some strangers
in the garden--two or three boys on the mount, looking at the view.
"Boys from Birthwaite," said the old lady, in the well-known tone, which
conveyed that nothing good could come from Birthwaite. When the
strangers were gone, it appeared that they were the Prince of Wales and
his companions. Making allowance for prejudices, neither few nor small,
but easily dissolved when reason and kindliness had opportunity to work,
she was a truly wise woman, equal to all occasions of action, and
supplying other persons' needs and deficiencies.

In the "Memoirs of Wordsworth" it is stated that she was the original of

    "She was a phantom of delight;"

and some things in the next few pages look like it; but for the greater
part of the poet's life it was certainly believed by some, who ought to
know, that that wonderful description related to another who flitted
before his imagination in earlier days than those in which he discovered
the aptitude of Mary Hutchinson to his own needs. The last stanza is
very like her; and her husband's sonnet to the painter of her portrait,
in old age, discloses to us how the first stanza might be also, in days
beyond the ken of the existing generation.

Of her early sorrows, in the loss of two children and a beloved sister,
who was domesticated with the family, there are probably no living
witnesses. It will never be forgotten, by those who saw it, how the late
dreary train of afflictions was met. For many years Wordsworth's sister
Dorothy was a melancholy charge. Mrs. Wordsworth was wont to warn any
rash enthusiasts for mountain-walking by the spectacle before them. The
adoring sister would never fail her brother; and she destroyed her
health, and then her reason, by exhausting walks and wrong remedies for
the consequences. Forty miles in a day was not a singular feat of
Dorothy's. During the long years of this devoted creature's helplessness
she was tended with admirable cheerfulness and good sense. Thousands of
lake tourists must remember the locked garden-gate when Miss Wordsworth
was taking the air, and the garden-chair going round and round the
terrace, with the emaciated little woman in it, who occasionally called
out to strangers and amused them with her clever sayings. She outlived
the beloved Dora, Wordsworth's only surviving daughter.

After the lingering illness of that daughter (Mrs. Quillinan), the
mother encountered the dreariest portion, probably, of her life. Her
aged husband used to spend the long Winter evenings in grief and
tears--week after week, month after month. Neither of them had eyes for
reading. He could not be comforted. She, who carried as tender a
maternal heart as ever beat, had to bear her own grief and his too. She
grew whiter and smaller, so as to be greatly changed in a few months;
but this was the only expression of what she endured, and he did not
discover it. When he, too, left her, it was seen how disinterested had
been her trouble. When his trouble had ceased, she, too, was relieved.
She followed his coffin to the sacred corner of Grasmere churchyard,
where lay now all those who had once made her home. She joined the
household guests on their return from the funeral, and made tea as
usual. And this was the disinterested spirit which carried her through
the last few years, till she had just reached the ninetieth. Even then
she had strength to combat disease for many days. Several times she
rallied and relapsed; and she was full of alacrity of mind and body as
long as exertion of any kind was possible. There were many eager to
render all duty and love--her two sons, nieces, and friends, and a whole
sympathizing neighborhood.

The question commonly asked by visitors to that corner of Grasmere
churchyard was: Where would _she_ be laid when the time came? The space
was so completely filled. The cluster of stones told of the little
children who died a long life-time ago; of the sisters--Sarah Hutchinson
and Dorothy Wordsworth; and of Mr. Quillinan, and his two wives, Dora
lying between her husband and father, and seeming to occupy her mother's
rightful place. And Hartley Coleridge lies next the family group; and
others press closely round. There is room, however. The large gray
stone, which bears the name of William Wordsworth, has ample space left
for another inscription; and the grave beneath has ample space also for
his faithful life-companion.

Not one is left now of the eminent persons who rendered that cluster of
valleys so eminent as it has been. Dr. Arnold went first, in the vigor
of his years. Southey died at Keswick, and Hartley Coleridge on the
margin of Rydal Lake; and the Quillinans under the shadow of Loughrigg;
and Professor Wilson disappeared from Elleray; and the aged Mrs.
Fletcher from Lancrigg; and the three venerable Wordsworths from Rydal
Mount.

The survivor of all the rest had a heart and a memory for the solemn
_last_ of every thing. She was the one to inquire of about the last
eagle in the district, the last pair of ravens in any crest of rocks,
the last old dalesman in any improved spot, the last round of the last
peddler among hills where the broad white road has succeeded the green
bridal-path. She knew the district during the period between its first
recognition, through Gray's "Letters," to its complete publicity in the
age of railways. She saw, perhaps, the best of it. But she contributed
to modernize and improve it, thou