Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 32

=_226._= A PLEA FOR THE INDIANS.

The light of the great council-fire--its blaze once illumined the entire country we now call our own--is faintly gleaming out its unsteady and dying rays. Our fathers were guests, and warmed themselves by its hospitable rays; now we are lords, and rule with an iron hand over those who received kindly, and entertained generously, the wanderer who came from afar to wors.h.i.+p his G.o.d according to his own will. The very hearth where moulder the ashes of this once never-ceasing fire, is becoming desolate, the decaying embers sometimes starting into a brief brilliancy, and then fading into a gloom more sad, more silent, than ever. Soon will be scattered, as by the winds of heaven, the last ashes that remain. Think of it, O legislator! as thou standest in the Capitol, the great council-hall of thy country; plead for them, "upon whose pathway death's dark shadow falls."

=_Mary E. Moragne,[54] 1815-._=

From "The Huguenot Town."

=_227._= RUINS OF THE OLD FRENCH SETTLEMENT.

An ignorance of the common methods of agriculture practised here, as well as strong prejudices in favor of their former habits of living, prevented them from seizing with avidity on large bodies of land, by individual possession; but the site of a town being selected, a lot of four acres was apportioned to every citizen. In a short time a hundred houses had risen, in a regularly compact body, in the square of which stood a building superior in size and construction to the rest....

... The town was soon busy with the industry of its tradesmen; silk and flax were manufactured, whilst the cultivators of the soil were taxed with the supply of corn and wine. The hum of cheerful voices arose during the week, mingled with the interdicted songs of praise; and on the Sabbath the quiet wors.h.i.+ppers a.s.sembled in their rustic church, listened with fervent response to that faithful pastor, who had been their spiritual leader through perils by sea and land, and who now directed their free, unrestrained devotion to the Lord of the forest.

... The woods still wave on in melancholy grandeur, with the added glory of near a hundred years; but they who once lived and wors.h.i.+pped beneath them--where are they? Shades of my ancestors,--where? No crumbling wreck, no mossy ruin, points the antiquarian research to the place of their sojourn, or to their last resting-places! The traces of a narrow trench, surrounding a square plat of ground, now covered with the interlacing arms of hawthorn and wild honey-suckle, arrest the attention as we are proceeding along a strongly beaten track in the deep woods, and we are a.s.sured that this is the site of the "old French town" which has given its name to the portion of country around.

[Footnote 54: One of the best female writers of South Carolina, who has of late years laid aside her pen.]

=_Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815-._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From "Two years before the Mast."

=_228._= LOSS OF A MAN AT SEA.

Death is at all tunes solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies on sh.o.r.e; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on sh.o.r.e--you follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has pa.s.sed. A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you--at your side--you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then too, at sea--to use a homely but expressive phrase--you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude eulogy, "Well, poor George is gone. His cruise is up soon. He knew his work, and did his duty, and was a good s.h.i.+pmate." Then usually follows some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions are unfixed, and at loose ends. They say,--"G.o.d won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here, will excuse them hereafter. _To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to h.e.l.l after all_, would be hard indeed.

Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the common-place, and the solemn with the ludicrous.

We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an auction was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first, however, called all hands aft, and asked them if they were satisfied that everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that it was in vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very heavily dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course.

=_Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816--._= (Manual, p. 502.)

Essay from "Arcturus."

=_229._= NEWSPAPERS.

No one, it has been said, ever takes up a newspaper without interest, or lays it down without regret. There is a deeper truth in this observation than at first thought strikes the mind; it is not the casual disappointment at the loss of fine writing, or the absence of particular topics of news, or the variety of subjects that dispel all deep-settled reflection; but a newspaper is in some measure a picture of human life, and we can no more read its various paragraphs with pleasure, than we can look back upon the events of any single day with, unmingled satisfaction.... A man may learn, sitting by his fireside, more than an angel would desire to know of human life, by reading well a single newspaper. It is an instrument of many tones, running through the whole scale of humanity; from the lightest gayety to the gravest sadness; from the large interests of nations to the humblest affairs of the smallest individual. On its single page we read of Births, Marriages, and Deaths; the daily, almost hourly, register of royalty, how it eat, walked, and laughed; and the single incident the world deems worth recording of the life of poverty--how it died. It is a picture of motley human life; a poet's thought, or an orator's eloquence in one column, and the condemnation of a pickpocket in another....

Doubtless it was a very satisfactory thing for a Roman poet, when the wind was quiet, to get an audience about him, under a portico, and unwind his well-written scroll for an hour or two; but there must have been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation, to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited, was drowned by the din of arms?...

What would we not give for a newspaper of the days of Homer, with personal recollections of the contractors and commanders in the siege of Troy; a reminiscence of Helen; the unedited fragments of Nestor; or a traditional saying of Ulysses, who may be supposed too wise to have published? What such a pa.s.sage of literature would be to us, the journal of to-day may be to some long distant age, when it is disentombed from the crumbling corner-stone of some Astor House, Exchange, or Trinity Church, on the deserted sh.o.r.e of an island, once New York. What matters of curiosity would be poured fourth for the attention of the inquisitive; how many learned theories which had sprung up in the interim, put to rest; what anxiety moralists would be under to know the number of churches, the bookseller's advertis.e.m.e.nts, and the convictions at the Sessions! Some might be supposed to sigh over our lack of improvement, the infant state of the arts, and our ineffectual attempts at electro-magnetism, while others would dwell upon the old times when Broadway was gayer with life, and the world got along better, than it has ever done since.

=_Horace Binney Wallace,[55] 1817-1852._=

From "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe."

=_230._= ART AN EMANATION OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION.

The spirit, conscious of an emotion of reverence for some unseen subject of its own apprehension, desires to substantiate and fix its deity, and to bring the senses into the same adoring att.i.tude; and this can be done only by setting before them a material representation of the divine.

This is ill.u.s.trated in the universal and inveterate tendency of early nations to idolatry....

How and why was it that the sculpture of the Greeks attained a character so exalted that it s.h.i.+nes on through our time, with a beam of glory peculiar and inextinguishable? When we enter the chambers of the Vatican, we are presently struck with the mystic influence that rays from those silent forms that stand ranged along the walls. Like the moral prestige that might encircle the vital presence of divine beings, we behold divinities represented in human shapes idealized into a significance altogether irresistible. What const.i.tutes that idealizing modification we know not; but we feel that it imparts to the figures an interest and impressiveness which natural forms possess not. These sculptured images seem directly to address the imagination. They do not suffer the cold and critical survey of the eye, but awaken an instant and vivid mental consideration.

... It has sometimes been suggested that the superiority of the Greeks in delineating the figure, arose from the familiarity with it which they acquired from their frequent opportunities of viewing it nude,--on account of their usages, costumes, climate, &c. This is too superficial an account of that vital faculty of skill and knowledge upon this subject, which was a part of the inherent capacity of the Greek.... The outflow and characteristic exercise of Grecian inspiration in sculpture, was in the representation of their mythology, which included heroes, or deified men, as well as G.o.ds of the first rank. Later, it extended to winners at the public games, athletes, runners, boxers;--but this cla.s.s of persons partook, in the national feeling, of a heroic or half-divine superiority. A particular type of form, highly ideal, became appropriate to them, as to the heroes, and to each of the G.o.ds. It may be added, that a capacity thus derived from religious impressibility, extended to a great number of natural forms, which were to the Greeks measurably objects of a divine regard. Many animals as connected with the G.o.ds, or with sacrifices, were sacred beings to them, and became subjects of their surpa.s.sing gift in sculpture. In general, nature,--the visible, the sensible, the actual, was to the h.e.l.lenic soul, Religion; as inward and reflective emotions were and are, to the modern European.

[Footnote 55: A young writer of great cultivation and of uncommon promise. His premature death occurred while on a tour in Europe. A native of Philadelphia.]

=_Henry David Th.o.r.eau, 1817-1862._= (Manual, p. 532.)

From "Autumnal Tints."

=_231._= DESCRIPTION OF "POKE" OR GARGET, (_Phytolacca Decandra_.)

Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their purple stems now, and early in September. They are as interesting to me as most flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem, branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a brilliant lake-red, with crimson, flame-like reflections, equal to anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_, from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on the same plant.

We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane, for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the pipes on a London dock,--what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that the poetaster maybe celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play the baccha.n.a.l with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of philosophy or poetry.

From "Walden, or Life in the Woods."

=_232._= WALDEN POND.

The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet, to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow?

Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

From "Life without Principle."

=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE.