Children's Stories in LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ...... @oji^tg|i ]|n Shelf UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. CHILDREN'S STORIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Children's Stories in American Literature. One vol.^ i2mo. ..... Children's Stories of American Progress One vol.^ l2mo. Illustrated. Children's Stories in American History One vol., i2mo. Illustrated. Children's Stories of the Great Scientists One vol., i2mo. Illustrated, Children's Stories in English Literature From Taliesin to Shakespeare. One vol., i2mo. ..... Children's Stories in English Literature, From Shakespeare to Tennyson. One vol., \2vio. ..... The Princess Lilliwinkins and Other Stories. One vol., \2mo. Illustrated. $1 25 I 25 t 25 I 25 I 25 I 25 I 25 CHILDREN'S Stories IN AMERICAN LITERATURE 1 660- 1 860 ./ Henrietta Christian Wright ^%^^'>^ NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1895 K^ Copyright, 1S95, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS TROW DIRECTORY PRlNTiNQ AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK r Q r CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The Early Literature, i CHAPTER H John James Audubon — 17S0-1S51, 14 CHAPTER HI Washington Irving — 17S3-1859, 28 CHAPTER IV James Fenimore Cooper — 17S9-1851, 51 CHAPTER V William Cullen Bryant — 1794-1878, 69 CHAPTER VI William H. Prescott — 1796-1859, 82 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE John Greenleaf Whittier— 1807-1892, . . . . 9^ CHAPTER VIII Nathaniel Hawthorne— 1804-1S64, 108 CHAPTER IX George Bancroft— 1800-1891, 123 CHAPTER X Edgar Allan Poe—i 809-1 849, i37 CHAPTER XI Ralph Waldo Emerson— 1803-18S2, i49 CHAPTER XII Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— 1807-1882, . . .156 CHAPTER XIII John Lothrop Motley— 1814-1877, . . .- . . i74 CHAPTER XIV Harriet Beecher Stowe — iSii , 1S8 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER XV PAGE James Russell Lowell — 1819-1892, 203 CHAPTER XVI Francis Parkman — 1823-1893, 219 CHAPTER XVn Oliver Wendell PIolmes—i 809-1 894, -234 CHAPTER I THE EARLY LITERATURE One Sunday morning, about the year 1661, a group of Indians was gathered around a noble- looking man, listening to a story he was reading. It was summer and the day was beautiful, and the little Indian children who sat listening were so in- terested that not even the thought of their favor- ite haunts by brookside or meadow could tempt them from the spot. The story was about the life of Christ and his mission to the world, and the children had heard it many times, but to-day it seemed new to them because it was read in their own language, which had never been printed before. This v/as the Mohegan tongue, which was spoken in different dialects by the Indians generally throughout Massachusetts ; and al- though it had been used for hundreds of years by the tribes in that part of the country its ap- THE EARLY LITERATURE pcarance on paper was as strange to them as if it had been a language of which they knew not a single word. It was just as strange to them, in fact, as if they had heard one of their war cries or love songs set to music, or had seen a picture of their dreams of the happy hunting grounds in that invisible western world where the sun went every night, and which they ex- pected to see only after death. The man who was reading the old story was John Eliot, an English missionary, who had de- voted his life to the Indians, and whose am- bition it was to leave behind him as his greatest gift the Bible translated into their own tongue. With this in view he set about making them familiar with the Christian faith, and established Sunday-schools among them, where men, women, and children alike were instructed. From time to time they heard read stories from the New Testament which Eliot had translated, and in which he was greatly helped by one or two Indians who had gifts as translators, and could express the English thought into Indian words more fitting and beautiful than Eliot him- THE EARLY LITERATURE self could have done. In all his earlier mission- ary work he also had the assistance of the great sachem Waban, because, as it happened, the first sermon Eliot ever preached to the Indians was delivered in Waban's wigwam. The text was from the old poetic words of Ezekiel — '' Say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God," etc. The Indian name for wind was Waban, the old sachem's name, and he thought the sermon was addressed to him. He became an ardent convert and helped Eliot greatly in his work of Christianizing the tribes, and in particular in his trouble to keep peace among the sachems, who objected to the freedom of thought which the new religion taught, thinking that it interfered with their own authority over their people. In a little book in which Eliot describes these grievances of the chiefs he calls them Pills for the Sachems, and says they were much harder to swallow than even the nauseous doses of their medicine men. For the better instruction of the Indian chil- dren Eliot prepared a small primer, which was printed in 1669, eight years after the New Testa- THE EARLY LITERATURE ment was printed. It was a curious little book, having the alphabet in large and small letters on the fly-leaf, and containing the Apostles' Creed, the Catechism, and the Lord's Prayer, w^th other religious matter. Out of this primer the Indian youth learned to read and to spell in words of one syllable. When he was able to master the whole Bible, which was printed in 1663, his edu- cation was considered complete. This old Indian Bible, which Eliot was ten years in translating, was printed at Cambridge and bound in dark blue morocco, it being the first Bible and one of the first books ever printed in America. Two hundred copies were made, and a second edition contained a dedication to Charles II. of England, praising him for his goodness in distributing the word of God among his colonies, which had not yielded him gold and silver as the Spanish colonies had yielded their sovereign, but which would nevertheless redound to his immortal glory as the first-fruits of Chris- tianity among those heathen tribes. The dedica- tion took up two pages, which was about all the English the old book contained, the rest being THE EARLY LITERATURE in that curious, half-musical, half-guttural tongue of the Mohegans, which Cotton Mather said had been growing since the time of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. Certainly some of the words are of such mighty length and awful sound that we may well believe the same old preacher when he says that he knew from personal knowledge that demons could under- stand Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but that they were utterly baffled by the speech of the Ameri- can Indians. Very few of these Bibles now exist, and those are of priceless value to lovers of old books. One of the earliest books that may be claimed as belonofinof to American letters was a volume descriptive of the early settlements in Virginia by Captain John Smith. It has great value as a representation of Indian life before its contact with white civilization. Smith had followed the army of England through the greater part of Europe and Asia and knew the life of a soldier of fortune. He had fought with Turks, hunted Tartars, and had ahvays been the hero of the occasion. The Indian to him was but another THE EARLY LITERATURE kind of hccitheii to subdue, and the book is full of adv^entures, in which he describes himself as always intrepid and victorious. This is the ear- liest book that brings the Indians of the colonies closely before our eyes, and its style is good, and shows that strong, terse, English fibre which char- acterized the writings of the adventurous English- man of that time. In another book Smith gives a charming description of inland Virginia, whose birds, flowers, wild animals, rivers, and scenery are discussed in a poetic fashion that throws a new lio^ht on the character of the adventurous soldier. There is in both volumes a richness of description in the details of Indian life that pos- sesses a rare value to the student. The story of Smith's visit to Powhatan, the father of Poca- hontas, reads like a bit of oriental fairy lore, and the great Indian chief, seated upon his couch of skins, with his savage guard around him, is brought as vividly before our eyes as the hero of a romance. And so Smith's books stand for good literature, though written only with the idea of familiarizing the people at home with the condition of the new colony, and they make THE EARLY LITERATURE no mean showing as the beginning of American letters. In New England literature from the first par- took inevitably of the Puritan character. There were long journals of the pilgrim fathers, books on books of sermons, and volume after volume of argument on the burning religious questions that had been heard in England since the first* Puritan defied the king and openly declared for freedom of conscience. Among the most cele- brated of these old books is the Bay Psalm Book of 1640, in which the psalms of David were done into metre for the use of congregations. This book, in which the beautiful Hebrew poetry is tortured into the most abominable English, is a fair example of the religious verse-making of the day. A curious book was the first almanac, pub- lished at Cambridge in 1689, and which con- tained prognostications of the weather, dates of historical events, general news of the world, and bits of poetry, having also blank spaces for the use of the owner, who could either utilize them for preserving his own verses, as Cotton Mather THE EARLY LITERATURE did, or keep therein his accounts with his wig maker and hair-dresser, as did that worthy Puri- tan Thomas Prince. Perhaps the greatest poet of those early times was Anne Bradstreet, who wrote her famous poems on the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman monarchies, and who was called the tenth muse by an admiring public. These works are long and learned, but they show less the poetic spirit of the age than do the short but pointed ballads that sprang up from time to time and which indicated the popular feeling over the events that were making the history of New England. These ballads were on every conceivable subject, from the Day of Judgment to the sale of a cow. The war between England and France for the possession of Canada gave rise to many ditties the tunes of which remained popular long afterward. The Indian wars also furnished material for many. They were printed in almanacs, or loose sheets, and sometimes not printed at all. They served as news-venders long before the first newspaper was published (in 1690) and they expressed, as nothing else THE EARLY LITERATURE could have done, the attitude of the people to- ward the church, the state, the governor, and even the " tidy m.an" (tithing-man), whose duty it was to tickle with a hazel rod any young- ster who was unlucky enough to fall asleep in church. Later, in revolutionary times, the ballad became a power second to none. Here first appears that great hero Yankee Doodle, who comes, like will-o'-the-wisp, from no one knows where, although many learned pages have been written to show his nationality. He seems to have been as great a traveller as Marco Polo or Baron Munchausen, and, like them, he must have seen many strange sights and countries. Perhaps he may have a trace of the gypsy in him and could recall, if he liked, strange wander- ings through the Far East. He may have been a camp-follower through the German and Flem- ish wars. It is more than probable that he hob- nobbed with the Italian banditti, and took an elfish delight in depriving honest travellers of their wits and purses. We know that he lived for a time in Holland, where he seems to have preferred a peaceful Hfe and was content with lO THE EARLY LITERATURE the humdrum existence of those worthy Dutch farmers who invited him to their feasts, welcomed him to their roofs, and sang his praises in their harvest-fields in such stirring words as these : Yanker didel doodel down, Didel dudel lanter; Yanke viver voover vown, Botermilk iin tanther; which means that if the lads and lassies reaped and gleaned faithfully they should be rewarded by a tenth of the grain, and an unlimited supply of buttermilk. Afterward Yankee Doodle seems to have tired of pastoral life, for we find him in the midst of Roundhead and Cavalier upon the battle-fields of England during the Civil War. No doubt such a jolly comrade felt a tinge of sadness at the misfortunes of the unlucky Charles I., and he could not have found the long-faced Puritans, with their nasal voices, very good company for such a happy-go-lucky as himself. At any rate he never became an Englishman, and seems only to have paused in England while making up his mind where to settle down and spend his old THE EARLY LITERATURE age. He probably made his first bow in America in 1/75, ^^^^1 ^t ^s evident that he took a fancy to the new country, and was pleased, and perhaps flattered, by the reception he met. With his old abandon he threw himself heart and soul into the conflict, and became, in fact, the child of the Revolution. He was a leading spirit every- where. Throwing all recollections of English hospitality to the winds, he chased the red coats at Bunker Hill, gave them a drubbing at Ben- nington, and remained bravely in the rear to watch their scouts while Washington retreated from Long Island. Many a time he w^as the sole support of the faithful few stationed to guard some important outpost ; many a time he marched along with the old Continentals, grim and faithful, expecting every moment would re- veal danger and perhaps death. He crossed the Delaware with Washington on that eventful Christmas night, in 1775, though the Italian blood in him must have shrunk a little from the cold. He stood shoul- der to shoulder with the great leader through all the misery and hopelessness of Valley Forge. 12 THE EARLY LITERATURE He was joyously welcomed by the soldiers in all their daring escapades when breaking loose from the restraints of camp life ; and the women and children w^ho had to remain home and suffer danger and privation alone, never saw his honest face without a smile. Such devotion met with its reward. When the war was over the old veteran retired from the ser- vice with full military rank, and was brevetted an American citizen besides. It is pleasant to think that he has at last found a resting place among a people who will always honor and love him. Two other ballads very popular at that time were The Battle of Trenton and The Massacre of Wyoming, while innumerable ones of lesser note were sung by fireside and camp-fire, all through the colonies. In New York the first liberty pole raised in the country was planted by the Sons of Liberty, a band of patriotic Americans, who set it up again and again as- it was cut down by the Tories, accompanying their work by singing every im- aginable kind of ballad that would irritate the breast of the British sympathizers. THE EARLY LITERATURE 1 3 During the war of 1812, came the Star Span- gled Banner, written to the accompaniment of shot and shell, while the author, Francis S. Key, was a prisoner on shipboard watching the bom- bardment of Fort McHenry by the British, in the harbor of Baltimore. The song was born in the darkness of a night of terrible anxiety, and when the dawn broke and found the flag still floating over the fort, an earnest of the vic- tory to come, its triumphant measures seemed the fitting paean of American liberty. The baflad of the camps had developed into the national anthem. CHAPTER II JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 1780 — 1851 In the days when Louisiana was a province of Spain a little dark-eyed boy used to wander among the fields and groves of his father's plan- tation studying with eager delight the works of nature around him. Lying under the orange -trees watching the mocking-bird, or learning from his mother's lips the names of the flowers that grew in every cor- ner of the plantation, he soon came to feel that he was part of that beautiful world, whose language was the songs of birds and whose boundaries ex- tended to every place where a blossom lifted its head above the green sod.- To him, as he said years afterward, the birds were playmates and the flowers dear friends, and before he could dis- tinguish between the azure of the sky and the JOHN JAMES AUDUBON I 5 emerald of the grass he had formed an intimacy with them so close and endearing that whenever removed from their presence he felt a loneliness almost unbearable. No other companions suited him so well, and no roof seemed so secure as that formed of the dense foliage under v/hich the feathered tribes resorted, or the caves and rocks to which the curlew and cormorant retired to protect themselves from the fury of the tempest. In these words, recorded by himself, we read the first chapter of the life history of John James Audubon, the American naturalist and the author of one of the early classics of American literature. In those early days his father was Audubon's teacher, and hand in hand they searched the groves for new specimens, or lingered over the nests where lay the helpless young. It was his father who taught him to look upon the shining eggs as * flowers in the bud,' and to note the dif- ferent characteristics which distinguished them. These excursions were seasons of joy, but when the 'time came for the birds to take their annual departure the joy was turned to sorrow. To the young naturalist a dead bird, though beautifully l6 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON preserved and mounted, gave no pleasure. It seemed but a mockery of life, and the constant care needed to keep the specimens in good con- dition brought an additional sense of loss. Was there no way in which the memory of these feathered friends might be kept fresh and beau- tiful ? He writes that he turned in his anxiety to his father, who in answer laid before him a volume of illustrations. Audubon turned over the leaves with a new hope in his heart, and although the pictures were badly executed the idea satisfied him. Although he was unconscious of it, it was the moment of the birth of his own great life work. Pencil in hand he began to copy nature untiringly, although for a long time he produced what he himself called but a family of cripples, the sketches being burned regularly on his birthdays. But no failure could stop him. He made hundreds of sketches of birds every year, worthless almost in themselves because of bad drawing, but valuable as studies of nature. Meantime for education the boy had been taken from Louisiana to France, the home of his father, who wished him to become a soldier, JOHN JAMES AUDUBON IJ sailor, or engineer. For a few hours daily Audu- bon studied mathematics, drawing, and geog- raphy, and then would disappear in the coun- try, returning with eggs, nests, or curious plants. His rooms looked like a museum of natural his- tory, while the walls were covered with drawings of French birds. Learning mathematics with difficulty Audu- bon became easily proficient in fencing and dancing, and learned to play upon the violin, flute, flageolet, and guitar. His drawing lessons were his greatest delight, the great French artist, David, being his teacher and critic. Once, on the elder Audubon's return from a long sea-voy- age, he was chagrined to find that although his son had probably the largest amateur natural-his- tory collection in France, he had neglected his equations, angles, and triangles, and the lad was sent to his father's station, given one day to visit the ships and fortifications, and then set to the study of mathematics, and mathematics only. For one year he wrestled with problems and theorems, counting himself happy if by any chance he could fly to the country for an hour to 1 8 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON take up his acquaintance with the birds ; and then the father admitted his son's unfitness for miHtary pursuits and sent him to America to take charge of some property. Audubon was then seventeen years of age, and had but one ambition in life — to Hve in the woods with his wild friends. As his father's es- tate was rented by a very orderly minded Quaker there was little for Audubon to do except enjoy himself. Hunting, fishing, drawing, and study- ing English from a young English girl he af- terward married, filled the day, while he never missed the balls and skating parties for which the neighborhood was famous. He was the best marksman in the region, able to bring down his quarry while riding at full speed. He was the best skater to be found ; at balls and parties he was the amateur master of ceremonies, gayly teaching the newest steps and turns that obtained in France. In the hunt it was Audubon — dressed, perhaps, in satin breeches and pumps, for he was a great dandy — who led the way through the al- most unbroken wilderness. Add to this that he was an expert swimmer, once swimming the JOHN JAMES AUDUBON I9 Schuylkill with a companion on his back ; that he could play any one of half a dozen instru- ments for an impromptu dance ; that he could plait a set of picnic dishes out of willow rushes ; train dogs, and do a hundred other clever things, and it is easy to see why he was a general fa- vorite. His private rooms were turned into a museum. The walls were covered with festoons of birds' eggs, the shelves crowded with fishes, snakes, lizards, and frogs.; the chimney displayed stuffed squirrels and opossums, and wherever there was room hung his own paintings of birds. It was the holiday of life for the young lover of nature, and he enjoyed it with good will. tiere the idea of his great work came to him as he was one day looking over his drawings and descriptions of birds. Suddenly, as it seemed to him, though his whole life had led to it, he con- ceived the plan of a great work on American ornithology. He began his gigantic undertak- ing as a master in the school of nature wherein he had been so faithful a student, for he now saw with joy that the past, which had often 20 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON seemed idle, had been in reality rich with labors that were to bear fruit. He began at once to put his work into scien- tific form, and nothing better illustrates his ener- gy and ambition than the fact that he entered on it alone and unaided, though none knew better than he the toil and ceaseless endeavor necessary for its completion. Except in a very immature form, American ornithology at that time did not exist ; it was a region almost as unknown to hu- man thought as the new world which Colum- bus discovered. Season after season, from the Gulf to Canada and back again, these winged creatures of the air wended their way, stopping to hatch and breed their young, becoming ac- quainted with Louisiana orange-groves and New England apple - orchards, now fluttering with kindly sociability round the dwellings of men and again seeking lonely eeries among inacces- sible mountain tops, pursuing their course at all times almost without the thought and cognizance of man. It was Audubon who was the con- queror, if not the discoverer of this aerial world of sons:, of which he became the immortal his- JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 21 torian. It was his untiring zeal which gave thus early to American literature a scientific work of such vast magnitude and importance that it as- tonished the scientists of Europe and won for itself the fame of being the most gigantic bibli- cal enterprise ever undertaken by a single indi- vidual. To do this meant a hfe of almost con- stant change, and Audubon can hardly have had an abiding place after his first serious beginning. The wide continent became his home and he found his dwelling wherever the winged tribes soup^ht shelter from the wind and storm. His pursuit was often interrupted by occupations necessary for the support of his family, for at his father's death he had given to his sister his share of the estate and so became entirely de- pendent upon his own efforts for a livelihood ; but at all times, no matter what his situation, his heart was in the wild retreats of nature. Trav- elling through the West and South in search of fortune as well as of specimens his experi- ences were often disenchanting. At Louisville and New Orleans he would be forced to make crayon portraits of the principal citizens in order 22 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON to raise the money for family expenses. Again he taught drawing; he served as tutor in pri- vate famihes, and in order to secure funds for the publication of his work he earned $2,000 by dancing lessons, the largest sum he had ever earned. Many business speculations en- listed Audubon's hopes, but all failed utterly. Once he embarked his money in a steam mill, which, being built in an unfit place, soon failed. At another time he bought a steamboat, which, proving an unlucky speculation, was sold to a shrewd buyer who never paid the purchase money. Again he was cheated in the clearing of a tract of timber. But his studies in natural history always went on. When he had no money to pay his passage up the Mississippi he bar- gained to draw the portrait of the captain of the steamer and his wife as remuneration. When he needed boots he obtained them by sketching the features of a friendly shoemaker, and more than once he paid his hotel bills, and saved some- thing besides, by sketching the faces of the host and his family. On the other hand, his adventures in search JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 23 of material for his work were romantic enough to satisfy the most ambitious traveller. From Florida to Labrador, and from the Atlantic to the then unknown regions of the Yellowstone he pursued his way, often alone, and not seldom in the midst of dangers which threatened life itself. He hunted buffalo with the Indians of the Great Plains, and lived for months in the tents of the fierce Sioux. He spent a season in the winter camp of the Shawnees, sleeping, wrapped in a buffalo robe, before the great camp-fire, and living upon wild turkey, bear's grease, and opossums. He made studies of deer, bears, and cougars, as well as of wild turkeys, prairie hens, and other birds. For days he drifted down the Ohio in a flat-bottomed boat, searching the uninhabited shores for speci- mens, and living the life of the frontiersman whose daily food must be supplied by his own exertions. Sometimes his studies would take him far into the dense forests of the West, where the white man had never before trod, and the only thing that suggested humanity would be the smoke rising miles away from the evening 24 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON camp-fire of some Indian hunter as lonely as himself. Once as he lay stretched on the deck of a small vessel ascending the Mississippi he caught sight of a great eagle circling about his head. Convinced that it was a new species, he waited patiently for two years before he again had a glimpse of it, flying, in lazy freedom, above some butting crags where its young were nested. Climbing to the place, and watching like an Indian in ambush until it dropped to its nest, Audubon found it to be a sea-eagle. He named it the Washington Sea Eagle, in honor of George Washington. Waiting two years longer, he was able to obtain a specimen, from which he made the picture given in his work. This is but one example of the tireless patience with which he prosecuted his studies, years of waiting counting as nothing if he could but gain his end. Some of his discoveries in this kingdom of the birds he relates with a romantic enthusiasm. Throughout the entire work there runs the note of warmest sympathy with the lives of these creatures of the air and sunshine. He tells us JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 25 of their hopes and loves and interests, from the time of the nest -making till the young have flown away. The freedom of bird life, its hap- piness, its experiences, and tragedies appeal to him as do those of humanity. The discovery of a new species is reported as rapturously as the news of a new star. Once in Labrador, when he was making studies of the eggers, his son brought to him a great hawk captured on the precipice far above his head. To Audubon's delight, it was that rare specimen, the gerfalcon, which had heretofore eluded all efforts of natu- ralists. While the rain dripped down from the rigging above, Audubon sat for hours making a sketch of this bird and feeling as rich as if he had discovered some rare gem. After twenty years the work was published. Every specimen, from the tiny humming-bird to the largest eagles and vultures, was sketched life size and colored in the tints of nature. There were four hundred and seventy-live of these plates, furnishing a complete history of the feathered tribes of North America, for they showed not only the appearance of the birds but 26 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON represented also the manners and home Hfe of this world of song. The humming-bird poised before the crimson throat of the trumpet flower, the whippoorwill resting among the leaves of the oak, the bobolink singing among the crimson flowers of the swamp maples, the snow-bird chirping cheerily among the snow-touched ber- ries of the holly, were not sketches merely but bits of story out of bird history. So also are those pictures of the swan among the reeds of the Great Lakes, of the great white heron seiz- ing its prey from the waters of the Gulf, and of the golden eagle winging its way toward the distant heights that it inhabits. The work was published by subscription in London in 1829 under the title, *'The Birds of North America." The price was eighty guineas. Later on a smaller and cheaper edition was issued. The work now is very rare. Audubon had the gratification of knowing that his labors were un- derstood and appreciated by the world of science. When he exhibited his plates in the galleries of England and France, whither he went to obtain subscriptions, crowds flocked to see them, and JOHN JAMES AUDUBON the greatest scientists of the age welcomed him to their ranks. The Birds of America was his greatest work, though he was interested somewhat in general zoology and wrote on other subjects. Audubon died in New York in 1851. The great zoologist Cuvier called The Birds of North America the most magnificent monu- ment that art has ever erected to ornithology. The Scotch naturalist Wilson said that the char- acter of Audubon was just what might have been expected from the author of such a work, brave, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, and capable of heroic endurance. CHAPTER III WASHINGTON IRVING 1783-1S59 *' Left his lodging some time ago and has not been heard of since, a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. . . . Any infor- mation concerning him will be thankfully re- ceived. " Such was the curious advertisement that ap- peared in the Evening Post under the date of October 26, 1809, attracting the attention of all New York. People read it as they sat at sup- per, talked of it afterward around their wood fires, and thought of it again and again before they fell asleep at night. And yet not a soul knew the missing old gentleman or had ever heard of him before. Still he was no stranger to them, for he was a Knickerbocker, and every- WASHINGTON IRVING one was interested in the Knickerbockers, and everyone felt almost as if a grandfather or great- grandfather had suddenly come back to life and disappeared again still more suddenly without a word of explanation. Those who could remember their childhood sent their wits back into the past and gathered up memories of these old Knickerbockers. They saw the old burghers again walking through the streets dressed in their long-waisted coats with skirts reaching nearly to the ankles, and wearing so solemnly their low-crowned beaver hats, while their small swords dangled by their sides to show their importance. They saw their wives in their close-fitting muslin caps, with their dress-skirts left open to show their numerous petticoats of every color, their gay stockings, and their low-cut, high-heeled shoes. They entered the quaint gabled houses made of brick brought from Holland, and sat in the roomy kitchen whose floor had just been sprinkled with sand brought from Coney Island, and on whose walls hung deer antlers and innumerable Dutch pipes. They passed into the parlor, whose chief orna- 30 WASHINGTON IRVING ment was the carved bedstead upon which re- posed two great feather-beds covered with a patch-work quilt. They sat in the fireplace and drank from the huge silver tankard while listen- ing to stories of Indian warfare. In the streets they saw groups of Indians standing before the shop windows, and passed by the walls of the old fort wherein cows, pigs, and horses were feeding. They noticed the queerly rigged ships in the bay, the windmills scattered everywhere, and the canal passing right through the town and filled with Dutch canal boats. They saw the Dutch maidens standing around the ponds washing the family linen, and visited the bowerie or country house of some honest burgher, and sat with him in his little garden where cabbages and roses flourished side by side. Such were the scenes that the strange adver- tisement called up, and more than one New Yorker dreamed that night that he was a child again, living over those long past days. For some time nothing was heard of Diedrich Knickerbocker, and then another advertisement appeared in the Post saying he had been seen WASHINGTON IRVING 3 1 twice on the road to Albany. Some time again elapsed, and finally the paper stated that the landlord of the inn at which he stopped gave up hope of ever seeing his guest again, and de- clared that he should sell the manuscript of a book that Mr. Knickerbocker had left behind and take the proceeds in payment of his bill. People were really excited about the fate of the old gentleman, and one of the city officials was upon the point of offering a reward for his discovery when a curious thing happened. It was found that there was no old gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker who had wandered away from his lodging ; that there was no inn at which he had lived, and no manuscript he had left behind, and that in fact, Mr. Knicker- bocker was simply the hero of a book which the author had taken this clever means of ad- vertising. The book claimed to be the true history of the discovery and settlement of New York, and began with an account of the creation of the world, passing on to the manners, customs, and historical achievements of the old Hollanders from their first voyage in the celebrated ark the 32 WASHINGTON IRVING Good Vrow, to the shores of New Jersey. Here we read how, as the Indians were given to long talks and the Dutch to long silences, they had no trouble about the settlement of the land, but all lived peacefully together. How Oloffe Van Kortlandt took his perilous journey from New Jersey as far north as Harlem and decided to build a city on Manhattan Island. Then we read of the golden reign of the first Dutch governor, Wouter Van Twiller, who was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference, and who ate four hours a day, smoked eight, and slept twelve, and so administered the affairs of the colony that it was a marvel of prosperity. Next we hear of Governor Keift, of lofty descent, since his father was an inspector of windmills — how his nose turned up and his mouth turned down, how his legs were the size of spindles, and how he grew tougher and tougher with age so that before his death he looked a veritable mummy. And then we see the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant stumping around on his wooden leg adorned with silver reliefs and follow him in his expedition against WASHINGTON IRVING 33 the neighboring Swedish colonies, when the entire population of the city thronged the streets and balconies to wave farewell to him as he left, and to welcome his return as a victorious con- queror. Lastly we see him, furious with rage, menacing the British fleet which has come to take possession of the town, threatening ven- geance dire upon the English king, and still cherishing his wrath with fiery bravery v/hen the enemy finally occupy the old Dutch town and proceed to transform it into an English city. The book was read with interest, admiration, or amazement as the case might be. Some said it appeared too light and amusing for real history, others claimed that it held stores of wisdom that only the wise could understand ; others still com- plained that the author was no doubt making fun of their respectable ancestors and had written the book merely to hold them up to ridicule. Only a few saw that it v/as the brightest, clever- est piece of humor that had yet appeared in America, and that its writer had probably a career of fame before him. The author was Washington Irving, then a 3 34 WASHINGTON IRVING young man in his twenty - seventh year and already known as the writer of some clever newspaper letters, and of a series of humorous essays published in a semi - monthly periodical called Salniagiindi. Irving vv^as born in New York on April 3, 1 783, and was named after George Washington. The Revolution was over, but the treaty of peace had not yet been signed, and the British army still remained in the city, which had been half burned down during the war. New York was then a small town, with a pop- ulation of about one seven-hundredth of what it now has ; beyond the town limits were orchards, farms, country houses, and the high road leading to Albany, along which the stage coach passed at regular times. There were no railroads, and Irving was fourteen years old before the first steam-boat puffed its way up the Hudson River, frightening the country people into the belief that it was an evil monster come to devour them. All travelling was done by means of sailing ves- sels, stage coaches, or private conveyances ; all letters were carried by the stage-coach, and every WASHINGTON IRVING 35 one cost the sender or receiver twenty-five cents for postage. The telegraph was undreamed of, and if any one had hinted the possibihty of talk- ing to some one else a thousand miles away over a telephone wire he would have been considered a lunatic, or possibly a witch. In fact New York was a quiet, unpretentious little town, whose in- habitants were still divided into English or Dutch families according to their descent, and in whose households were found the customs of England and Holland in full force. In Irving's family, however, there was doubtless greater severity practised in daily life than in the neighboring households. The father was a Scotch Presbyte- rian who considered life a discipline, who thought all amusement a waste of precious time, and who made the children devote one out of the two half weekly holidays to the study of the catechism. They were also obliged to attend church three times every Sunday, and to spend any spare moments left in reading some religious book, a discipline which had such an effect upon Irving that, to avoid becoming a Presbyterian, he went secretly to Trinity Church and was confirmed. 36 WASHINGTON IRVING Naturally Irving s love of fun was sedulously hid from such a father, and, as fun he must have, he sought amusement outside his own home. For- bidden to attend the theatre, he would risk his neck nightly by climbing out of his window to visit the play for an hour or so, and then rush home in terror lest his absence had been dis- covered and his future fun imperilled. Many a night when sent early to bed he would steal away across the adjacent roofs to send a handful of stones clattering down the wide, old-fashioned chimney of some innocent neighbor, who would start from his dreams to imagine robbers, spooks, or other unpleasant visitors in his bed-chamber ; and often when Irving was supposed to be fast asleep he was far away in the midst of a group of truant boys concocting soine scheme of mischief which was meant to startle the neighborhood and bring no end of fun to the daring perpetrators. Irving went to school kept by an old Revolu- tionary soldier, with whom he was a great favorite and who always called him General, He was not particularly btilliant in his studies, but he distinguished himself as an actor in the tragedies WASHINGTON IRVING 37 which the boys gave at times in the school-room ; at ten years of age he was the star of the com- pany, which did not even lose respect for him when once, being called suddenly upon the stage through a mistake, he appeared with his mouth full of honey-cake, which he was obliged to swal- low painfully while the audience roared at the situation. Afterward, when he rushed around the stage flourishing a wooden sabre, he was not a tragedian to be trifled with. The glory of it even paid him for the cruelty of having to run away to see a real play. It was a favorite amusement with him after school to wander down to the wharves, where he would spend hours in watching the ships load and unload, and dream of the day when he, too, should visit those beautiful regions that lay only in reach of their white sails ; for, fond as he was of boyish sports, he was much given to day-dreams, and the romantic past of the old world held a great charm for him. His favorite books were '' Robinson Crusoe," '' The Arabian Nights," *' Gulliver's Travels," and all stories of adventure and travel. The world beyond the sea 38 WASHINGTON IRVING seemed a fairyland to him ; a little print of Lon- don Bridge and another of Kensington Gardens, that hung up in his bed-room, stirred his heart wistfully, and he fairly envied the odd-looking old gentlemen and ladies who appeared to be loitering around the arches of St. John's Gate, as shown in a cut on the cover of an old maga- zine. Later his imagination was also kindled by short excursions to the then wild regions of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Drifting up the Hudson in a little sloop, day after day the pictu- resque beauty of the Highlands and Catskills impressed itself more deeply upon him, while his mind dwelt fondly upon the traditions which still lingered around the mountains and rivers forever associated with the struggles of the early settlers. Years afterward we find the remembrance of these days gracing with loving touch the pages of some of his choicest work, and it is this power of sympathy, so early aroused, that gives Irving one of his greatest charms as a writer, and makes the period of which he writes seem as real as if a part of to-day. WASHINGTON IRVING 39 At seventeen Irving left school and began to study for the bar. But his health, which had always been delicate, made it necessary for him to take a long rest from study, and he accordingly left America for two years of travel abroad. He visited England, France, and Italy, taking great delight in seeing those lands he had so often dreamed of, in meeting the fam^ous people of the day, and, above all, in indulging in frequent visits to the theatre and opera, becoming in this way acquainted with all the great singers and actors whose reputation had reached America. It was after his return home that he brought out his Knickerbocker history, a work which made him so famous that when he returned to England some time afterward he found himself very well known in the best literary circles. The results of this second visit are found in the volumes com- prising Geoffrey Crayons Sketch Book, Brace- bridge Hall, Tales of a Traveller and other miscellany, in which occur charming descriptions of English country life, delightful ghost stories, the famous description of an English Christmas, the immortal legend of Rip Van Winkle, 40 WASHINGTON IRVING and an account of a visit to the haunts of Robin Hood, whose exploits had so fascinated him as a boy that he once spent his entire holiday money to obtain a copy of his adventures. Abbotsfoi'd is an account of a visit that Ir- ving paid to Sir Walter Scott. It is a charming revelation of the social side of Scott's charac- ter, who welcomed Irving as a younger brother in art, became his guide in his visit to Yarrow and Melrose Abbey, and took long rambling walks with him all around the country made so famous by the great novelist. Irving recalled as among the most delightful hours of his life those walks over the Scottish hills with Scott, who w^as described by the peasantry as having " an awfu' knowledge of history," and whose talk was full of the folk-lore, poetry, and superstitions that made up the interest of the place. In the evening they sat in the drawing-room, while Scott, with a great hound, Maida, at his feet, read to them a scrap of old poetry or a chapter from King Arthur, or told some delight- ful bit of pea»sant fairy lore, like that of the black cat who, on hearing one shepherd tell another of WASHINGTON IRVING 4 1 having seen a number of cats dressed in mourn- ing following a coffin, sprang up the chimney in haste, exclaiming : " Then I am king of the cats," and vanished to take possession of his vacant kingdom. From this time Irving's life was one of constant literary labor for many years, all of which were spent abroad. His works on the companions of Columbus, and the Alhambra, were written during his residence in Spain, where he had access to the national archives and where he became as familiar with the life of the people as it was possible for a stranger to become. He was at home both in the dignified circles of higher life and among the picturesque and simple peasantry, whose characteristics he draws with such loving grace. After seventeen years' absence Irving returned to America, where he was welcomed as one who had won for his country great honors. He was the first writer to make American literature respected abroad, and his return was made the occasion of numerous fetes given in his honor in New York and other cities. He now built Sunnyside, on the Hudson, the home that he loved so dearly and 42 WASHINGTON IRVING that will ever be famous as the abode of Ameri- ca's first great writer. His principal works following the Spanish histories were Astoria, the history of the fur- trading company in Oregon founded by the head of the Astor family ; Captain Bonneville, the ad- ventures of a hunter in the far West ; the Life of Goldsmith and the Lives of Mahomet and Llis Successors, He returned to Spain in 1842 as ambassador, and remained four years. In the Legends of the Conqitest of Spain Irving tells the story of the conquest of Spain by the Moors, as related in the old Spanish and Moorish chronicles. The pages are full of the spirit of the warfare of the middle ages. Here we see the great Arab chief- tain, Taric, the one-eyed, with a handful of men cruising along the Spanish coast to spy out its strength and weakness, and finally making a bold dash inland to capture and despoil a city and return to Africa laden with plunder to report the richness of the land. " Behold ! " writes Taric's chief in a letter to the Caliph, " a land that equals Syria in its soil, Arabia in its tem- WASHINGTON IRVING 43 pcrature, India in its flowers and spices, and Cathay in its precious stones." And at this news the Caliph wrote back in haste that God was great, and that it w^as evidently his will that the infidel should perish, and bade the Moors go forward and conquer. In these delightful chapters Vv^'e follow Taric in his conquests from the taking of the rock of Calpe, henceforth called from him Gibraltar, the rock of Taric, to the final overthrow of the Christians and the establishment of the Moorish supremacy in Spain. The whole story is a brilliant, living picture of that romantic age. The Spanish king goes to battle wearing robes of gold brocade, sandals embroidered with gold and diamonds, and a crown studded with the costliest jewels of Spain. He rides in a chariot of ivory, and a thousand cava- liers knighted by his own hand surround him, while tens of thousands of his brave soldiers follow^ him, guarding the sacred banners em- blazoned with the cross. The Moorish vanguard, ridinof the famous horses of Arabia, advance to the sound of trumpet and cymbal, their gay robes 44 WASHINGTON IRVING and snowy turbans and their arms of burnished gold and steel glittering in the sunshine, v/hich reflects in every direction the sacred crescent, the symbol of their faith. The surroundings are equally picturesque and romantic. The famous plain of Granada, adorned with groves and gar- dens and winding streams, and guarded by the famous Mountains of the Sun and Air, forms the foreground to the picture, while in the dis- tance we see the gloomy mountain passes, the fortified rocks and castles, and the great walled cities, through which the Moors passed, always victorious and never pausing until their banners floated from every cliff and tower. Scattered through the narrative of battles and sieges we find also many legends that abounded at that time both in the Moslem and Christian faiths, translated with such fidelity from the old chroniclers that they retain all the super- natural flavor of the original. Here we learn how Arab and Christian alike beheld portents, saw visions, received messages from the spirits, and were advised, encouraged, and comforted by signs and warnings from heaven, the whole nar- WASHINGTON IRVING 45 rative being most valuable as presenting in fine literary form the e very-day life and intense relig- ious fervor of the soldier of the middle ages. For eight hundred years the Moors held Spain. They built beautiful cities and palaces, the re- mains of which are marvels to this day ; they made the plain of Granada a garden of flowers ; they preserved classical literature when the rest of Europe v/as sunk in ignorance ; they studied the sciences, and had great and famous schools, which were attended by the youth of all nations ; they rescued the Jewish people from the oppression of the Spaniards, and made them honorable citizens ; and they impressed upon their surroundings an art so beautiful that its in- fluence has extended throughout Christendom. Their occupation of Spain at that time prob- ably did more for the preservation of literature, science, and art than any other event in history. In his chapters on the Alhambra, the beauties of that celebrated palace, the favorite abode of the Moorish kings, is described by Irving as seen by him during a visit in 1829. Even at that date, nearly four hundred years after its 46 WASHINGTON IRVING seizure by the Spaniards, the Alhambra retained much of its original magnificence. The great courts, with their pavements of white marble, and fountains bordered with roses, the archways, balconies, and halls decorated with fretwork and filigree and incrusted with tiles of the most ex- quisite design ; the gilded cupolas and panels of lapis lazuli, and the carved lions supporting the alabaster basins of the fountains, all appealed to Irving so strongly that wdien he first entered the palace it seemed, he relates, as if he had been transported into the past and was living in an enchanted realm. Irving remained some months in the Alham- bra, livino: over ao-ain the scenes of Moorish story, and so catching the spirit of the lost gran- deur of the old palace, that his descriptions read like a bit of genuine Arabian chronicle, which had been kept safe until then in the grim guar- dianship of the past. The chapters of the Alhambra are also full of delightful legends, the fairy tales which time had woven around the beautiful ruin, and which the custodians of the place related gravely to Irving WASHINGTON IRVING 47 as genuine history. It calls up a pleasant pict- ure to think of Irving sitting in the stately hall or in his balcony, listening to one of these old tales from the lips of his tattered but devoted domestic, while the twilight was gathering and the nightingale singing in the groves and gar- dens beneath. He himself said that it was the realization of a day-dream which he had cherished since the time when, in earliest boyhood on the banks of the Hudson, he had pored over the story of Granada. In his work, The Conquest of Granada, Irving relates the story of the retaking of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella, during a war which lasted ten years and which held nothing but disaster for the Moors. Ferdinand and Isabella took the field with an army composed of the nobles of Spain and their followers, and which represented the chivalry of Europe, for all Chris- tendom hastened to espouse the holy cause of driving the infidel from the land. The Spanish camps glittered with the burnished armor and gold-embroidered banners of foreign knights ; 48 WASHINGTON IRVING and whether on the march, in the field, or in camp, the whole pageant of the war as depicted by Irving passes before our eyes^ like a brilliant panorama. We see the Moorish king looking down from the towers of the Alhambra upon the plains once green and blooming but now desolate with fire and sword by the hand of Ferdinand. We follow the Moors as they rush from their walls in one of their splendid but hopeless sallies, to return discomfited, and hear the wail of the women and old men — " Woe ! woe ! to Granada, for its strong men shall fall by the sword and its maidens be led into cap- tivity." We watch the Spaniards, tireless in endeavor, building the fortified city of Santa Fe, the city of holy faith, to take the place of the camp destroyed by fire, and which has re- mained famous as the place where Columbus received from Isabella his commission to sail westward until India was reached. And in the end we see the Moors in their retreat looking sadly from the hill which is called to this day, The Last Sigh of the Moor, upon the beauti- ful valley and mountains lost to them forever. WASHINGTON IRVING 49 So graphically is the scene described that Irving must ever remain the historian of the Moors of Spain, whose spirit seemed to inspire the beau- tiful words in which he celebrated their con- quests, their achievements, and their defeats. A favorite among Irving's books was the Life of Washington, based upon the correspondence of the great statesman. It is an appreciative story of the life work of Washington, written by one whose own work connected the past and present, and who, as a child, had felt the hand of the nation's hero laid upon his head in blessing. In the Chronicle of Wolferfs Roost Irving follows in imagination old Diedrich Knicker- bocker into the famous region of Sleepy Hollow, where much of the material for the celebrated Knickerbocker's History was said to have been collected. This chronicle, it was claimed, was written upon the identical old Dutch writing desk that Diedrich used ; the elbow chair was the same that he sat in ; the clock was the very one he consulted so often during his long hours of composition. In these pages old Diedrich so WASHINGTON IRVING walks as a real person and Irving follows him with faithful step through the region that he loved so fondly all his life. Everything here is dwelt upon with lingering touch ; the brooks and streams, the meadows and cornfields, the orchards and gardens, and the groves of beech and chestnut have each their tribute from the pen of one who found their charms ever fresh, who sought in them rest and happiness, and who came back to them lovingly to spend the last days of his life in their familiar companionship. Irving died in 1859 ^^^^ ^^^^ buried at Sunn}^- side, in sight of the Hudson whose legends he had immortalized and whose beauty never ceased to charm him from the moment it first captivated his heart in his boyhood days. CHAPTER IV JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 1789-1S51 The region of Otsego Lake, New York, was at the last of the eighteenth century a wilderness. Here and there rose a little clearing, the birth- place of a future village, but westward the pri- meval forest extended for miles around the little lake, which reflected the shadows of wooded hills on every side. Here roved deer, wolves, panthers, and bears unmolested in the green depths and following the same runways which their species had trodden for centuries. Here also lurked the red man, suspicious and cautious and ever ready to revenge on the white man the wrongs of his race. In this beautiful spot lived the boy, James Fenimore Cooper, in the family mansion built by his father and named Otsego Hall, the start- 52 JAMES FENTMORE COOPER ing point of the now famous village of Coopers- town. It was a fitting home for the boy who was hereafter to immortahze the Indian race in the pages of fiction. His life was almost as simple as that of the Indian lads who roamed through the forest fishing and hunting and know- ing no ambition beyond. The little hamlet lay far away from the high- ways of travel. The nearest villages were miles distant and only to be reached on foot or on horseback through miles of unbroken forest. A visitor was rare, and meant perhaps a warning that the Indians were on the war-path. Oc- casionally a new settler drifted into the little valley, and the village grew slowly through the lad's boyhood, Otsego Hall keeping its dignity as the Manor House. Sometimes a visitor of note brought news of the great political troubles in Europe, and thus Cooper met many men of distinction whose visits seemed to bring the great world very close to the little settlement. This glimpse of a broader life, v/ith attendance at the village school and an intimate companion- ship with nature, made up his early education. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 53 It was not bad training for the future novelist. The acquaintanceship of celebrated men widened his horizon and fed his imagination ; his daily life kept his mind fresh and active with the spirit that was fast turning the uninhabited regions of the frontier into busy settlements ; and the familiar intercourse with nature kept pure the springs of poetry that lie in every child's heart. He learned wood-lore as the young Indian learned it, face to face with the divinities of the forest. He knew the calls of the wild animals far across the gloomy wilderness. He could follow the deer and bear to their secluded haunts. He could retrace the path of the re- treating wolf by the broken cobwebs glistening in the early sunlight ; and the cry of the panther high overhead in the pines and hemlocks was a speech as familiar as his own tongue. When he was thirsty he made a hunter's cup of leaves and drank in the Indian fashion. When fatigued he lay down to rest with that sense of security that comes only to the forest bred. When thought- ful he could learn from the lap of the waves against the shore, the murmur of leaves, and the 54 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER rustle of wings, those lessons which nature teaches in her quiet moods. These experiences and impressions sank into Cooper's heart, and were re-lived again long after in the pages of his romances. While still a boy Cooper went to Albany to study, and in 1803 entered Yale College, at the age of thirteen. He played as much and studied as little as he possibly could, and the first year's preparation perhaps accounts for his dismissal from college in his junior year. This in turn led to a life much more to his liking. His father took his part in the trouble at Yale, but was now anxious to see his son embarked on the serious business of life. Both father and son liked the idea of a naval career for the boy, and it was decided that Cooper should go to sea. He left New York in the autumn of 1806 on a vessel of the mer- chant marine. There was then no Naval Acade- my in America, and a boy could fit himself for entering the navy as an officer only by serving before the mast. Cooper was away nearly a year, his ship, the Sterling, visiting London, Portu- JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 55 gal, and Spain, carrying cargoes from one port to another in the leisurely manner of the merchant sailing-vessels of that clay. It was a time of peculiar interest to all seamen, and his mind was keenly ahve to the new life around him. The English were expecting a French invasion, and the Channel was full of ships of war, while every southern port was arming for defence. The Mediterranean was terrorized by the Barbary pirates, who, under cover of night, descended upon any unprotected merchant vessel, stole the cargo, scuttled the ship, and sold the crew into slavery, to Tripolitan and Algerine hus- bandmen, whose orchards of date and fig were cultivated by many an American or English slave. Cooper saw all this and remembered it, being even then a student of men and events. His work was hard and dangerous ; he was never ad- mitted to the cabin of the ship ; in storm or wind his place was on the deck among the rough sailors, who were his only companions. But this training developed the good material that was in him, and when in 1808 he received his 56 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER commission as midshipman he was well equip- ped for his duties. Cooper remained in the navy three years and a half. He spent part of this time at the port of Oswego, Lake Ontario, superintending the building of a war vessel, the Oneida, intended for the defence of the Canadian frontier in case of a war with England. The days passed in this wild region were not fruitless, for here in the solitude of the primeval forest Cooper found later the background of a famous story. It was the land of the red man, and during the long winter months of his residence there Cooper dwelt in spirit with the wild natives, though he little dreamed that he was to be the historian that would give the story of their lives to a succeeding generation. Cooper saw no active service during the time, and resigned his com- mission on his marriage. Several succeeding years were passed partly in Westchester County, his wife's former home, and partly in Cooperstown. Here he began the erection of a stone dwelling, in Fenimore, a sub- urb of the old village. While living at Scars- JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 57 dale, Westchester County, N. Y., he had pro- duced his first book. Already thirty years old, a literary career was far from his thoughts. This first novel was merely the result of a challenge springing from a boast. Reading a dull tale of English life to his wife, he declared that he could write a better story himself, and as a re- sult produced a tale in two volumes, called Pre- caution. It was founded upon English society life, and it obtained some favorable notices from English papers. But it showed no real talent. But in the next year, 182 1, he published a story foreshadowing his fame and striking a new note in American literature. At that time Americans still cherished stirring memories of the Revolu- tion. Men and women could still recall the vic- tories of Bunker Hill and Trenton, and the dis- asters of Monmouth and Long Island. Cooper's own first impressions of life were vivid with the patriotism that beat at fever heat during his youth, when the birth of American independence was within the recollection of many. In choosing a subject for fiction Cooper therefore naturally turned to the late struggle, 58 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER and American literature owes him a large debt for thus throwing into literary form the spirit of those thrilling times. This novel, The Spy, was founded upon the story of a veritable spy who had been employed by the Revolutionary officer who related to Cooper some of his daring adventures. Taking this scout for a hero Cooper kept the scene in Westchester and wove from a few facts the most thrilling piece of fiction that had yet appeared in the United States. The novel appeared in December, 1821, and in a few months it had made Cooper famous both in America and Europe. It was published in Eng- land by the firm which had brought out Irving's Sketch Book, and it met with a success that spoke highly for its merit, since the story de- scribed English defeat and American triumphs. The translator of the Waverley novels made a French version, and before long the book ap- peared in several other European tongues, while its hero, Harvey Birch, won and has kept for himself an honorable place in literature. Cooper had now found his work, and he con- tinued to illustrate American life in fiction. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 59 His most popular books are the Leather Stock- ing Tales and his novels of the sea. The Leather Stocking Tales consist of five stories, The Deer slayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie, concerning the same hero, Leatherstocking. In The Deer slayer the hero of the series makes his appearance as a youth of German de- scent whose parents had settled near a clan of the Mohegans on the Schoharie River. At a great Indian feast he receives the name Deer- slayer from the father of Chingachgook, his Ind- ian boy friend, and the story is an account of his first war-path. The tale was suggested to the author one afternoon as he paused for a moment while riding to gaze over the lake he so loved, and whose shores, as he looked, seemed suddenly to be peopled with the figures of a vanished race. As the vision faded he turned to his daughter and said that he must write a story about the lit- tle lake, and thus the idea of Deerslayer was born. In a few days the story was begun. The scene is laid on Otsego Lake, and in the tale are incorporated many tender memories of Cooper's 6o JAMES FENIMORE COOPER own boyhood. It portrays Leatherstocking as a young scout just entering manhood, and em- bodies some of the author's best work. Perhaps no one was so well-fitted to illustrate the ideal friendship between Deerslayer and Chingachgook as he, who in his boyhood stood many a time be- side the lakeside as the shadows fell over the forest, not knowing whether the faint crackling of the bushes meant the approach of the thirsty deer, or signalled the presence of some Indian hunter watching with jealous eye the white intruder. In The Last of the Mohicans, Leatherstock- ing, under the name Hawk eye, is represented in the prime of manhood, his adventures forming some of the most exciting events of the series. Here his old friend Chingachgook and the lat- ter's son Uncas follow Deerslayer hand in hand, and make, next to the hero, the principal char- acters of the story, the scene of which is laid near Lake Champlain during the trouble between the French and English for the possession of Can- ada. In The Pathfinder the famous scout, under JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 6l the name which gives the title to the book, is carried still further in his adventurous career. The scene is laid near Lake Ontario where Cooper spent some months while in the navy. These three tales are not only the finest of the series from a literary standpoint, but they illus- trate as well the life of those white men of the forest who lived as near to nature as the Indian himself and whose deeds helped make the his- tory of the country in its beginnings. T/ie Pioneers finds Leatherstocking an old hunter living on Otsego Lake at the time of its first settlement by the whites. The character was suggested by an old hunter of the regions who in Cooper's boyhood came frequently to the door of his father s house to sell the game he had killed. The hero is in this book called Natty Bumppo and the story is one of the primitive life of the frontiersmen of that period. Their occupations, interests and ambitions form the background to the picture of Leatherstocking, the rustic philosopher, who has finished the most active part of his career, and who has gathered from nature some of her sweetest les- 62 JAMES FENIMORE COOPEK sons. Many of the scenes in the book are trans- scriptions from the actual hfe of those hardy pioneers who joined Cooper's father in the settle- ment of Cooperstown, while the whole is tinged with that tender reminiscence of the author's youth which sets it apart from the rest though it is, perhaps, the least perfect story of the series. Leatherstocking closes his career in The Prairie, a novel of the plains of the great West, whither he had gone to spend his last days. It is the story of the lonely life of the trapper of those days, whose love of solitude has led him far from the frontier, and whose dignified death fitly closes his courageous life. It is supposed that the actual experiences of Daniel Boone sug- gested this ending to the series. The story of the war of the frontiersmen with nature, with circumstances and with the red man is told in these books. It is the romance of real history and Leatherstocking was but the picture of many a brave settler whose deeds were unre- corded and whose name remains unknown. Side by side with Leatherstocking stand those Indian characters which the genius of Cooper immor- JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 63 talized and which have passed into histoiy as typical. Cooper began the tales without any thought of making a series, but the overwhelming suc- cess of The Pioneers, the first which appeared, led him to produce book after book until the whole life of the hero was illustrated. Cooper's series of sea novels began with The Pilot, published in 1824. It followed The Pi- oneers, and showed the novelist to be equally at home on sea and land. In his stories of fron- tier life. Cooper followed the great Scott, wiiose thrilling tales of Border life and of early English history had opened a new domain to the novelist. Cooper always acknowledged his debt to the great Wizard of tlie North, and, indeed, spoke of himself as a chip of Scott's block. But in his sea stories Cooper was a creator. He was the first novelist to bring into fiction the ordinary, every-day life of the sailor afloat, whether em- ployed on a peaceful merchant vessel or fighting hand to hand in a naval battle. And it is interest- ing to know that the creation of the sea story was another debt that he owed to Scott, though 64 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER in a far different way. Scott's novel, The Pi- rate, had been criticised by Cooper as the work of a man who had never been at sea. And to prove it the work of a landsman he began his own story, The Pilot. The time chosen is that of the Revolution, and the hero is the famous adventurer John Paul Jones, introduced under another namiC. It was so new a thing to use the technicalities of ship life, and to describe the details of an evolution in a naval battle, that, familiar as he was with ocean life. Cooper felt some doubts of his success. To test his power he read one day to an old shipmate that now famous account of the passage of the ship through the narrow channel. The effect was all that Cooper hoped. The old sailor fell into a fury of excitement, paced up and down the room, and in his eagerness for a moment lived over again a stormy scene in his own life. Satisfied with this experiment Cooper finished the novel in content. The Pilot met with an instant success both in America and Europe. As it was his first, so it is, perhaps, his best sea story. Into it he put JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 65 all the freshness of reminiscence, all the haunting memories of ocean life that had followed him since his boyhood. It was biographical in the same sense as The Pioneers. A part of the romance of childhood drafted into the reality of after life. The Red Rover, the next sea story, came out in 1828. By that time other novehsts were writing tales of the sea, but they were mere imitations of The Pilot. In The Red Rover the genuine adventures of the sailor class were again embodied in the thrilling narrative that Cooper alone knew how to write, and this book has always been one of the most popular of novels. The Red Rover, so called because of his red beard, and whose name gives the title to the book, is a well born Englishman who has turned pirate, and whose daring adventures have made him famous along the coasts of America, Europe and Africa. The scene opens in the harbor of Newport in the days when that town was the most important port of the Atlantic coast, -and from there is carried to the high seas, whereon is 5 66 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER fouo^ht that famous last sea fiorjit of the Red Rover, the description of which forms one of Cooper's best efforts. JVzno- a7id Wing is a tale of the Mediter- ranean during the exciting days of privateers and pirates in the latter part of the eighteenth cen- tury. The great admiral, Nelson, is introduced in this book, which abounds with incidents of the tropical seas and reflects much of Cooper's ex- perience during his apprenticeship on the Sterl- ing. The story is one of Cooper's masterpieces, and, like so much of his work, has preserved in literature a phase of life that has forever passed away. In The Tiuo Admirals is introduced, for the first time in fiction, a description of the evolution of great fleets in action. The scene is taken from English history, and in many instances the story shows Cooper at his best. The Water' Witch, and Ned Myers, or Life Before the Mast, a biography almost of Cooper's own early life at sea, must be included among the tales which illustrate the author's genius as a writer of tales of the sea. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 67 Nothing can be more different tlian the pict- ure of Leatherstocking and his Indian friends in the forest retreats of nature and that of the reck- less sailor race which found piracy and murder the only outcome for their fierce ambitions. Yet both are touched with the art of a master, and both illustrate Cooper's claim as one of the greatest masters of fiction. Besides his Leather Stocking Tales and the sea stories Cooper wrote novels, sketches of trav- el, essays on the social and political condition of America, and innumerable pamphlets in an- swer to attacks made upon him by adverse critics. But his rank in American literature will ever be determined by the Leather Stocking Tales and his best sea stories. His place is similar to that of Scott in English literature, while he enjoys also the reputation of having opened a new and enchanted realm of fiction. Next to Hawthorne, he will long be held, prob- ably, the greatest novelist that America has pro- duced. With the exception of seven years abroad, Cooper spent his life in his native land. While in Europe he wrote some of his best novels, and 6S JAMES FENIMORE COOPER though he grew to love the old world he never wavered in his devotion to America. Cooper's popularity abroad Vv^as equalled only by that of Scott. His works were translated and sold even in Turkey, Persia, Egypt and Jerusa- lem in the language of those countries. It was said by a traveller that the middle classes of Europe had gathered all their knowledge of American history from Cooper's works and that they had never understood the character of American independence until revealed by this novelist. In spite of defects of style and the poor quality of some of his stories, Cooper has given to fiction many creations that must Hve as long as literature endures. He died in his sixty-second year at Coopers- town. CHAPTER V WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 1 794-1878 William Cullen Bryant was born in 1 794 in a log farmhouse in the beautiful Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. His father was the country doctor and the child was named after a celebrated physician. He began his school days in a log school-house beside a little brook that crept down from the hills and went singing on its way to the valley. All around stood the great forest-covered hills, haunted by wolves, bears, deer and wild-cats, which occasionally crept down even to the set- tlements carrying terror to the hearts of the women and children. Wherever the slopes were cleared, the farm lands had taken possession, the forest often creeping up close to the little homes. From the door-yard of the Bryant homestead 70 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT the whole world seemed to be made up of hills and forest, and fertile fields, while in the woods grew the exquisite New England wild flowers, the laurel and azalea, the violet, the tiger lily, and the fringed gentian. Here also lived the summer birds of New England, the robins, the blue bird and the thrush, haunting the woods from early spring until late autumn. All these sights and sounds sunk into the boy's heart and made themselves into a poem which he wrote down in words many years after, and which is as clear and fresh as the voice of the little brook itself after which it was named. This poem is called The Rivulet and it shows the poet-child standing upon the banks of the little stream listening to the song of the birds or gathering wild flowers. It was his first lesson in that wonder-book of nature from which he translated so much that was beautiful that he became the distinctive poet of the woods and streams. Lessons from books he learned in the little log school-house, preparing himself for ordeals when the minister came to visit the school. At WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 7 1 these times the pupils were dressed in their best and sat in solemn anxiety while the minister asked them questions out of the catechism and made them a long speech on morals and good behavior. On one of these occasions the ten- year-old poet declaimed some of his own verses descriptive of the school. In Bryant's boyhood New England farm life was very simple. The farmers lived in log or slab houses, whose kitchens formed the livinof room, where the meals were generally taken. Heat was supplied by the great fireplaces that sometimes filled one whole side of the kitchen and were furnished with cranes, spits, and pot- hooks. Behind the kitchen door hung a bundle of birch rods with which mischievous boys were kept in order, and in the recess of the chimney stood the wooden settle where the children sat before bed-time to watch the fire or glance up through the wide chimney at the stars. Here, when three years old, Bryant often stood book in hand and with painful attention to gesture repeated one of Watts's hymns, while his mother listened and corrected. Here he pre- 72 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT pared his lessons, and wrote those first childish poems so carefully criticised by his father, who was his teacher in the art of composition. In the poem called A Lifetime Bryant long after- ward described many incidents of his childhood and the influence of his father and mother upon his art, one developing his talent for composi- tion, and the other directing his imagination to and enlisting his sympathies with humanity. This poem shows the boy by his mother's knee, reading the story of Pharaoh and the Israelites, of David and Goliath, and of the life of Christ. As he grew older Bryant shared the usual amusements of country life. In the spring he took his turn in the maple-sugar camp ; in the autumn he attended the huskings when the young people met to husk the corn in each neighborhood barn successively, until all was done. He helped at the cider-making bees, and the apple parings, when the cider and apple sauce were prepared for the year's need ; and at the house raisings, when men and boys raised the frame of a neighbor's house or barn. In those times the farmers depended upon each other for WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 73 such friendly aid, and the community seemed like one great family. On Sunday every one went three times to meet- ing, listened to long sermons, and sang out of the old Bay Psalm Book. If an}^ unlucky child fell asleep he was speedily waked up by the tith- ingman, who would tickle his nose with a hare's- foot attached to a long pole. Once in a while a boy might be restless or noisy, and then he was led out of the meeting-house and punished with the tithingman's rod, a terrible disgrace. Throughout his childhood Bryant wrote verses upon every subject discussed in the family, and in those days New England families discussed all the great events of the time. The listening children became public-spirited and pa- triotic without knowing it. At thirteen Bryant wrote a most scathing satire upon the policy of Thomas Jefferson, intended to make the President hang his head in shame. It was quoted in all the newspapers opposed to Jeffer- son, and a second edition of this pamphlet was called for in a few months. Bryant here prophesies the evils in store for the 74 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT country if the President insisted on the em- bargo that was then laid upon American ves- sels, and advises him to retire to the bogs of Louisiana and search for horned frogs ; advice which Jefferson did not feel called upon to fol- low. It was Bryant's first introduction to the reading public, but it was not that path in litera- ture that he was destined to follow. Only one or two of his earliest verses give any hint of the poet of nature, though it was during this time that he absorbed those influences that directed his whole life. It is from the retrospective poem, Green Rivei^, that we really know the boy Bryant to whom the charm of sky and wood and singing brook was so unconscious that it seemed a part of life itself. In Gree^i River, written after he became a man, we hear the echoes of his young days, and we know that th© boy's soul had already entered into a close com- munion with nature. But Bryant had not yet reached manhood when the true voice of his heart was heard in the most celebrated poem that he ever wrote, and one of the most remarkable ever written by a WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 75 youth. This was Thanatopsis, which his father discovered among his papers and sent to the North American Reviezu without his son's knowledge, so little did the poet of eighteen, who five years before had published the tirade against Jefferson, realize that he had produced the most remarkable verses yet written in America. Thanatopsis attracted instant attention in this country and in England. It had appeared anonymously, and American critics insisted that it could not be the work of an American author, as no native poet approached it either in sub- limity of thought or perfection of style. But Thanatopsis bears no trace of English influ- ence, nor was it strange that an heir of the Puri- tan spirit, who had lived in daily communion with nature, should thus set to the music of poetry the hopes and inspirations of his race. Thanatopsis is the first great American poem, and it divides by a sharp line the poetry hitherto written on our soil from that which was to follow. Henceforth the poets of the newer England ceased to find their greatest inspiration ^6 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT in the older land. At the time of the publica- tion of the poem Bryant was studying law in Great Barrington, Mass., having been obliged by poverty to leave college after a two years' course. It was in the brief interval before be- ginning his office studies that he wrote Thaiia- topsis putting it aside for future revision. He was already hard at work upon his profes- sion when his sudden literary success changed all his plans. Destined by nature to be a man of letters, he poured forth verse and prose during the whole time he was studying and practising law. Six months after the publication of Thana- top sis the poem entitled To a Waterfowl, sug- gested by the devious flight of a wild duck across the sunset sky, appeared. It is a perfect picture of the reedy river banks, the wet marshes, and the lonely lakes over which the bird hovered, and it is full of the charm of nature herself. From this time on Bryant's touch never faltered. He was the chosen poet of the wild beauty of his native hills and val- leys, and his own pure spirit revealed the most sacred meanings of this beauty. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT "J^ In 1 82 1 he published his first volume of poems under the title, Poems by William Culleji Bry- ant, It was a little book of forty pages, con- taining Thanatopsis, Green River, To a Watei^- fowl, and other pieces, among which was the charming. The Yellozu Violet, a very breath of the spring. This little book was given to the world in the same year in which Cooper pub- lished The Spy and Irving completed The Sketch Book. In 1825 Bryant removed to New York to as- sume the editorship of a monthly review, to which he gave many of his best-known poems. A year later he joined the staff of the Evening Post, with which he was connected until his death. From this time his life was that of a literary man. He made of the Evening Post a progres- sive, public-spirited newspaper, whose field em- braced every phase of American life. When he became its editor five days were required for the reports of the Legislature at Albany to reach New York, these being carried by mail coach. The extracts printed from English newspapers 78 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT were a month old, and even this was considered enterprising journalism. All the despatches from different cities of the United States bore dates a fortnight old, while it was often impossible to obtain news at all. The paper contained adver- tisements of the stage lines to Boston, Philadel- phia, and the West ; accounts of projects to explore the centre of the earth by means of sunken w^ells ; reports of the possibility of a railroad being built in the United States ; adver- tisements of lottery tickets ; a list of the un- claimed letters at the post-office, and usually a chapter of fiction. Such was the newspaper of 1831. During the fifty-two years of his editorship the United States were developed from a few struggling colonies bound together by common interests into one of the greatest of modern nations. And through all the changes incident to this career Bryant stood always firm to the principles which he recognized as the true foun- dations of a country's greatness. When he was born the United States con- sisted of a strip of land lying between the "WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 79 Atlantic and the Alleghany Mountains, of which more than half was unbroken wilderness. At his death the Republic extended from the Atlan- tic to the Pacific and from the Gulf to Canada. His life-time corresponded with the growth of his country, and his own work was a noble con- tribution to the nation's prosperity. In all times of national trouble the Evening Post championed the cause of justice, and Bryant was everywhere respected as a man devoted above all to the ''cause of America and of human nature." The conduct of the Evening Post did not, however, interfere with his work as a poet, and • in 1832 he published in one volume all the poems which he had written, most of which had i previously appeared in magazines. A few j months later an edition appeared in London with an introduction by Irving. It was this volume which gave Bryant an English reputa- tion as great as that he enjoyed in America. Like Cooper, he revealed an unfamiliar nature as seen in American forests, hills, and streams, taking his readers with him into those solitary and quiet places where dwelt the wild birds and 8o WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT wild flowers. The very titles of his poems show how closely he lived to the life of the world around him. The Walk at Sunset, The West Wind, The Forest Hymn, A ntiunn Woods, The Death of the Flowe^^s, The FiHnged Gentian, The Wind and Stream, The Little People of the Snow, and many others disclose how Bryant gathered from every source the beauty which he translated into his verses. Among the poems which touch upon the Indian traditions are The Indian GirTs Lament, Monument Mountain, and An Lidian at the Bitrial-place of his Father, In these he lingers upon the pathetic fate of the red man driven from the home of his race and forced into exile by the usurping whites. They are full of sad- ness, seeming to wake once again the memories of other times when the forest was alive with the night -fires of savage man and the days brought only the gladness of freedom. Besides his original work Bryant performed a noble task in the translation of the Iliad and Odyssey oi Homer. He was over seventy when he began this work, and was five years in com- WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 8 1 pleting it. The poems are put into blank verse, of which Bryant was a master, and they have caught the very spirit of the old Greek bard ; so faithfully did the modern poet understand that shadowy past that he might have watched with Helen the burning of Troy, or journeyed with Ulysses throughout his wanderings in the peril- ous seas. The light of Bryant's imagination burned steadily to the end. In his eighty-second year he wTOte his last important poem. The Flood of Years. It is a beautiful confession of faith in the nobility of life and the immortality of the soul, and a fitting crown for an existence so beneficent and exalted. His last public work was to participate in unveiling a monument to the Italian statesman Mazzini in Central Park, when he was the orator of the day. On the same evening he was seized with his last illness. He died on June 12, 1878, and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, one of his favorite country homes. CHAPTER VI WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 1796-1859 One of the stories that mankind has always liked to believe is that of the existence of a mar- vellous country Vv^hose climate was perfect, whose people were happy, whose king was wise and good, and where wealth abounded. The old travellers of the Middle Ages dreamed of finding this land somewhere in the far East. Many books were WTitten about it, and many tales told by knight and palmer of its rivers of gold, mines of precious stones, and treasure vaults of inex- haustible riches. But, although from time to time some famous traveller like Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville described the great wealth of Ormus or Cathay, yet no one ever found the real country of his imagination, and the dream passed down from generation to generation un- WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 83 fulfilled. The Spaniards called this country El Dorado, and perhaps their vision of it was the wildest of all, for not only were they to find inexhaustible riches, but trees whose fruit would heal disease, magic wells which yielded happi- ness, and fountains of immortal youth. Thus dreamed the Spaniard of the fifteenth century, and when Columbus found the new world it was believed that it included El Dorado. Leader after leader mustered his knights and soldiers and sought the golden country. They traversed forests, climbed mountains, forded rivers, and waded through swamps and morasses ; they suf- fered hunger, thirst, and fever, and the savage hostility of the Indians ; they died by hundreds and were buried in unmarked graves, and expe- dition after expedition returned to Spain to re- port the fruitlessness of their search. But the hope was not given up. New seekers started on the quest, and it seemed that the ships of Spain could hardly hold her eager adventurers. In a strange way this dream of El Dorado was realized. Two soldiers of fortune, bolder, hardier, luckier than the rest, actually found not 84 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT one country but two, which were in part at least like the golden world they sought. High upon the table-land of Mexico and guarded by its snow-capped mountains they found the king- dom of the Aztecs, with their vast wealth of gold and silver. Safe behind the barrier of the An- des lay the land of the Incas, whose riches were, like those of Ophir or Cathay, not to be meas- ured. Both of these countries possessed a strange and characteristic civilization. In fact, even to this day, scholars are puzzled to know the source of the knowledge which these people possessed. In Mexico Hernando Cortez found a govern- ment whose head was the king, supported by a tribunal of judges who governed the principal cities. If a judge took a bribe he was put to death. In the king's tribunal the throne was of gold inlaid with turquoises. The walls were hung with tapestry embroidered with figures of birds and flowers. Over the throne was a can- opy flashing with gold and jewels. There were officers to escort prisoners to and from court, and an account of the proceedings was kept in hieroglyphic paintings. All the laws of the WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 85 kingdom were taught by these paintings to the people. The Aztecs had orders of nobility and knighthood ; they had a military code and hos- pitals for the sick. Their temples glittered with gold and jewels, and they had ceremonies of baptism, marriage, and burial. They had mo- nastic orders, astrologists and astronomers, physi- cians, merchants, jewellers, mechanics, and hus- bandmen. Their palaces were treasure-houses of wealth. In fact, they were as unlike the Indians of the eastern coast of America as the Englishman of to-day is unlike the half-naked savage who in the early ages roamed through England, subsisting upon berries and raw flesh. In Peru Francisco Pizarro found a great and powerful empire, ruled over by a wise sovereign. In the whole length and breadth of the land not one poor or sick person was left un cared for by the state. Great highways traversed mountain passes and crossed ravines and precipices to the most distant parts of the kingdom. Huge aqueducts of stone carried the mountain streams for hundreds of miles to the plains below. Mas- sive fortresses, whose masonry was so solid that 86 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT it seemed part of the mountain itself, linked the cities together, and a postal system extended over the empire composed of relays of couriers who wore a peculiar livery and ran from one post to another at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles a day. The walls of temples and palaces were covered with plates of gold encrusted with pre- cious stones. The raiment of the king and nobles was embroidered with jewels. The lakes in the royal court-yards were fringed with wild flowers brought from every corner of the empire and representing every degree of climate. In a word, it was the dream of El Dorado fulfilled. Although these two countries were alike peopled by races who had lived there since re- mote antiquity, neither had ever heard of the existence of the other, and thus we have the picture of two civilizations, very similar, spring- ing up independently. The conquest of Mexico by Cortez in 152 1 changed the entire life of the people. Their forts and cities were ruined ; three of their kings had fallen during the struggle ; the whole country had been divided among the conquerors, and the WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 8/ Aztecs were made slaves. Cortez rebuilt the City of Mexico and filled the country with cathedrals and convents. He tried to convert the natives to Christianity, and Mexico became Spanish in its laws and institutions. But the old civilization had passed away ; there was no more an Aztec nation ; and though in time the Indians and Spaniards formed together a new race, it did not partake of the spirit of the old. What Cortez did for Mexico, Pizarro accom- plished twelve years later in Peru. On the death of their monarch, the Inca, the Peruvians lost spirit and were more easily conquered than the Aztecs. Peru became a Spanish province, and, like Mexico, was considered by the crown only as a treasure-house from which to draw endless wealth. No regret was felt for the two great and powerful nations that had ceased to exist. In the meantime the settlement of America went on rapidly. Florida, the valley of the Mississippi, Canada, and New England became powerful colonies forming the nucleus of new' countries, which had never heard of the civiliza- WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT tions of Mexico and Peru, and whose only knowl- edge of Indians was gathered from the savage tribes from which they had wrested the soil. In 1610 the Spanish historian Solis wrote an ac- count of the subjugation of Mexico, in which the conquerors were portrayed in glowing colors. This work was read chiefly by scholars. In 1779 the English historian Robertson gave in his History of the New World a brilliant sketch of the Spanish conquests in America. But not until 1847 ^v^s the world offered the detailed narrative of the conquest and ruin of the Aztec empire. This work was from the pen of the American scholar, William H. Prescott, who was already known as the author of a history of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, a work which had brought him a European reputation. Prescott was born in Salem, Mass., in 1796, in an old elm-shaded house. From his earliest years he was a teller of stories, and had a high reputation among his boy friends as a romancer. Walking to and from school with his compan- ions he invented tale after tale, sometimes the WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 89 narrative being continued from day to day, lessons and home duties being considered but tiresome interruptions to the real business of life. Very often one of these stories begun on Mon- day would be continued through the whole week, and the end be celebrated on Saturday by a visit to the Boston Athenaeum, into whose recesses he would beguile his fellows, while they buckled on the old armor found there, and played at joust and tournament, imagining themselves to be Lancelot, Ronsard, or Bayard, as the case might be. A life of Gibbon which Prescott read in his teens led to an enthusiastic study of history and to the resolve to become if possible a historian himself. While a student at Harvard one of his eyes was so injured by the carelessness of a fellow pupil that he lost the entire use of it ; but he kept to the resolution to fulfil the task he had set for himself. His fame began with the pub- lication of the History of Ferdinand and Isa- bella, which was published almost simultaneously in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Russia. It covers the history of Spain from the Moorish 90 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT invasion through the period of national glory which illumined the reign of Isabella. The civil wars, the Jewish persecutions, the discovery of the New World, the expulsion of the Moors, the Italian wars, and the social life of the people, their arts and pursuits, their amusements, and the literature of that age, are vividly pre- sented. The recognition of his merits was welcome to Prescott. While doubting which subject to choose for his labors he had heard several lect- ures upon Spanish literature, prepared for de- livery at Harvard College, and at once applied himself to the study of the Spanish language, history, and romance as a preparation for his life work, and two years after began his celebrated work. The book was eleven years in prepara- tion, and is full of enthusiasm for the romance and chivalry of the Old World. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico began with a sketch of the ancient Aztec civilization, proceeded to a description of the conquest by Cortez, and concluded with an account of the after career of the great commander, the whole WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT work seeming a brilliant romance rather than sober history. The materials for Prescott's work were gath- ered from every known available source. The narratives of eye-witnesses were brought forth from their hiding-places in the royal libraries of Spain, and patiently transcribed ; old letters, un- published chronicles, royal edicts, monkish leg- ends, every scrap of information attainable, was transmitted to the worker across the sea, who because of his partial blindness had to depend entirely upon others in the collection of his au- thorities. These documents were read to Pres- cott by a secretary, who took notes under the author's direction ; these notes were again read to him, and then after sifting, comparing and, retracing again and again the old ground, the historian began his work. He wrote upon a noctograph with an ivory stylus, as a blind man writes, and because of great physical weakness he was able to accomplish only a very little each day. But week by week the work grew. His marvellous memory enabled him to recall sixty pages of printed matter at once. His wonderful 92 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT imagination enabled him to present the Mexico of the sixteenth century as it appeared to the old Spanish cavaliers, and as no historian had ever presented it before. He made of each episode of the great drama a finished and perfect picture. In fact, the History of the Conquest of Mexico is more than anything else a historical painting wrought to perfection by the cunning of the master hand. Prescott spent six years over this work, which enhanced his fame as a historian and kept for American literature the high place won by Irv- ing. Indeed, Irving himself had designed to write the history of the conquest of Mexico, but withdrew in favor of Prescott. Three months after the publication of his work on Mexico, Prescott began the History of the Conquest of Pent, the materials for which had already been obtained. But these documents proved much more complete than those describ- ing the Mexican conquest. The conquest of Mexico was achieved mainly by one man, Cortez ; but while Pizarro was vir- tually the head of the expedition against Peru, WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 93 he was accompanied by others whose plans were often opposed to his own, and whose personal devotion could never be counted upon. Each of these men held regular correspondence with the court of Spain, and Pizarro never knew when his own account of the capture of a city or set- tlement of a colony would be contradicted by the statement of one of his officers. After the capt- ure and death of the Inca, which was the real conquest of the country from the natives, Pi- zarro was obliged to reconquer Peru from his own officers, who quarrelled with him and among themselves continually. The conquest is shown to be a war of ad- venturers, a crusade of buccaneers, who wanted only gold. The sieges and battles of the Span- iards read like massacres, and the story of the death of the Inca like an unbelievable horror of the Dark Ages. This scene, contrasted with the glowing description of the former mag- nificence of the Inca, shows Prescott in his most brilliant mood as a writer. Perhaps his great- est gift is this power of reproducing faithfully the actual spirit of the conquest, a spirit which, 94 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT in spite of the glitter of arms and splendor of religious ceremonial, proves to have been one of greed and lowest selfishness. The Conquest of Pertc, published in 1847, when Prescott was fifty-two years old, was the last of his historical works. These three histories, with three volumes of an uncompleted life of Philip II., which promised to be his greatest work, and a volume of essays comprise Prescott's contribu- tion to American literature, and begin that series of brilliant historical works of which American letters boast. Prescott, during the most of his literary life, was obliged to sit quietly in his study, leaving to other hands the collection of the materials for his work. For, besides the accident which during his college life deprived him of one eye, he was always delicate. Sometimes he would be kept for months in a darkened room, and at best his life was one of seclusion. The strife of the world and of action was not for him. In his library, surrounded by his books and assisted by his secretary, he sought for truth as the old al- chemists sought for gold. Patient and tireless WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT g$ he unravelled thread after thread of the fabric from which he was to weave the history of the Spanish conquests. If Prescott had had access to documents which have since come to light, if he had been able to visit the places he described, and to study their unwritten records, his work would have been a splendid and imperishable monument to the dead civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian. As it is, it must serve as a guiding light point- ing to the right way, one which shed lustre on the new literature of his country and opened an unexplored region to the American writer. CHAPTER VII JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 1807-1892 In an old New England farm-house kitchen, a barefoot boy, dressed in homespun, one day sat listening to a lazy Scotch beggar who piped the songs of Burns in return for his meal of bread and cheese and cider. The beggar was good-natured, and the boy was an eager listener, and Bon7tze Doon, Highland Mary, and Atild Lang Syne were trilled forth as the master him- self may have sung them among the Scottish "banks and braes." Never before had the farmer boy heard of the famous peasant, and a new door was opened through which he passed into an undreamed of world. A few months later the school - master gave him a copy of Burns's poems, and with this gift the boy became a poet himself. For these songs of roadsides JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 9/ and meadows, of ploughed fields and wet hedge- rows, were to him familiar pictures of every-day life, whose poetry, once revealed, had to express itself in words. The boy was the son of John and Abigail Whittier, Quaker farmers owning a little home- stead in the valley of the Merrimac, near the tov/n of Haverhill, Mass. In honor of an ances- tor he had been named John Greenleaf Whit- tier, the Greenleaf, as he tells us in one of his poems, having become Americanized from the French feiiille vcide, gi^ccn leaf, a suggestion, perhaps, of far away days in which the fam- ily might have been men of the wood, keep- ers of the deer or forest guarders in France dur- ing feudal ages. In his boyhood, life in the Merrimac valley was primitive enough. The house was small and plain, the kitchen being the living room, and the })arlor dedicated to Sunday and holiday use only. The floor was sanded and on the wide fire-place benches the men and children of the family sat at night to whittle axe- handles, mend shoes, crack nuts, or learn the next day's lessons. Often a stranger was found 7 98 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER among them ; some Quaker travelling on busi- ness, or a stranger on his way to some distant town, or perhaps a professional beggar to whom the hospitality of the place was well known. Once when the mother had refused a night's shelter to an unprepossessing vagabond, John was sent out to bring him back. He proved to be an Italian artisan, and after supper he told them of the Italian grape gatherings and festivals, and of the wonderful beauty of Italy, paying for his entertainment by presenting to the mother a recipe for making bread from chestnuts. Sometimes the visitor would be an uncanny old crone who still believed in witches and fairies, and who told how her butter refused to come, or how her candle had been snuffed out by a witch in the form of a big black bug. One old woman in the neighborhood was renowned for her tales of ghosts, devils, fairies, brownies, sprenties, enchanted towers, headless men, haunted mills that were run at night by ghostly millers and witches riding on broom-sticks by the light of the full moon, and descending un- JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 99 guarded chimneys to lay their spells upon cream- pot and yeast-bowl. After such an evening's entertainment the boy needed courage to leave the bright kitchen fire and climb up the narrow stairs to the loft where he slept, and where the sound of the night-wind crept through the frosty rafters, and the voice of the screech-owl came dismally from the trees outside. Haverhill boasted at that time its village con- jurer, who could remove the spells of those wicked spirits, and whose gaunt form could be seen any day along the meadows and streams gathering herbs to be stewed and brewed into love-potions, cures for melancholy, spells against witchcraft, and other remedies for human ills. Fie was held in great respect by the inhabitants, and feared almost as much as the witches them- selves. An ever-welcome guest at the Whittiers was the school-master, whose head was full of the local legends, and whose tales of Indian raids and of revolutionary struggles were regarded as authentic history. This Yankee pedagogue, 100 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER moreover, could, with infinite spirit and zest, re- tell the classic stories of the Greek and Latin poets. Twice a year came to the little homestead the Yankee pedler, with his supply of pins, needles, thread, razors, soaps, and scissors for the elders, and jack-knives for the boys who had been saving their pennies to purchase those treasures. He had gay ribbons for worldly minded maids, but these were never bou2:ht for Quaker Whittier's daughters. But to Poet John's thinking the pedler s choicest wares were the songs of his own composing, printed with wood-cuts, which he sold at an astonishingly low price, or even, upon occasions, gave away. These songs celebrated earthquakes, fires, shipwrecks, hangings, mar- riages, deaths, and funerals. Often they were improvised as the pedler sat with the rest around the hearth fire. If a wedding had occurred during his absence he was ready to versify it, and equally ready to lament the loss of a fa- vorite cow. To Whittier this gift of rhyming seemed marvellous, and in after years he de- scribed this wanderinsf minstrel as encircled, to JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER lOI his young eyes, with the very nimbus of immor- taHty. Such was the home-Hfe of this barefooted boy, who drove the cows night and morning through the dewy meadows, and followed the oxen, break- ing the earth into rich brown furrows, whose sight and smell suggested to him always the generous bounty of nature. From early spring, when the corn was planted in fields bordered by wild rose- bushes, to late autumn, when the crop lay bound into glistening sheaves, his life was one of steady toil, lightened sometimes by a day's fishing in the mountain streams or by a berrying excursion up among the hills. In cold weather he went to school in the little school-house that he celebrates in one of his poems, and very often, as he confessed, he v/as found writing verses instead of doing sums on his slate. This old phase of New-England life has now passed away, but he has preserved its memory in three poems, which are in a special sense bio- graphical. These poems are. The Barefoot Boy, My Schoolmaster, and Snoiu-Boimd. The first I02 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER two are simple, boyish memories, but the last is a description not only of his early home, but of the New-England farm life, and is a Puritan idyl. All are full of the idealization of childhood, for the poet could never break loose from the charm which had enthralled him as a boy. The poetry of common life which lay over the meadow lands and fields of grain, which gave a voice to the woodland brook, and glorified the falling rain and snow, was felt by Whittier, when, as a child, he paused from his work to listen to the robin's song among the wheat or watch the flocks of clouds making their way across the sum- mer sky. When he was nineteen years of age the coun- try-side mail-carrier one day rode up to the farm and took from his saddle-bags the weekly paper, which he tossed to the boy, who stood mending a fence. With trembling eagerness Whittier opened it, and saw in the " Poet's Corner" his first printed poem. He had sent it with little hope that it would be accepted, and the sight of it filled him with joy, and determined his literary career. A few months later the editor of the JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 103 paper, William Lloyd Garrison, drove out to the homestead to see the young verse-maker. Whittier was called from the field where he was hoeing, and in the interview that followed Gar- rison insisted that such talent should not be thrown away, and urged the youth to take a course of study at some academy. But, although the farm supplied the daily needs of the family, money was scarce, and the sum required for board and tuition was impossible to scrape to- gether. A young farm assistant, however, offered to teach Whittier the trade of shoemaking, and his every moment of leisure was thereafter spent in learning this craft. During the following winter the lad furnished the women of the neigh- borhood v/ith good, well-made shoes, and with the money thus earned he entered Haverhill Academy in April, 1827, being then in his twen- tieth year. For the next six months his favorite haunts in field and wood were unvisited, except on the Saturdays and Sundays spent with his family. Fie gained some reputation as a poet by the publication of the ode which he wrote in honor of the new academy, and although he I04 JOHN GREENLEAF WIIITTIER returned to the farm after six months of study, it was only to earn more money for further schooling. His poems and sketches now began to ap- pear in the different newspapers and periodi- cals, and he did some editing for various papers. This work brought him into notice among liter- ary people, but it was his political convictions that first gave him a national reputation. From the first Whittier stood side by side with William Lloyd Garrison in his crusade against slavery, and many of his best poems appeared in the Liberator, Garrison's own paper. These poems, with others, were collected in a volume called Voices of Freedom. It was these songs, which rushed onward like his own mountain brooks, that made Whittier known from one end of the country to the other as an apostle of liberty. All Whittier's poems of this period be- long to the political history of the country, of v/hich they are as much a part as the v/ar records. In all this work there is no trace of bitterness or enmity. His songs of freedom were but the bugle-notes calling the nation to a higher human- JOHN GREENLEAF WlilTTlER 105 ity. Like the old Hebrew prophets, he spared not his own, and many of his most burning words are a summons to duty to his brothers in the North. If he could remind the South that the breath of slavery tainted the air " That old Dekalb and Sumter drank," he could also, in Barbara Frictchie, pay loving tribute to the noble heart of one of her best-loved sons. His was the dream of the great nation to be — his spirit that of the preacher who saw his people unfaithful to the high trust they had re- ceived as guardians of the land which the world had been taught to regard as the home of liberty. It was this high conception that gave to his work its greatest povvxr, and that made Whittier, above all others, the poet of freedom ; so that although the mission of these poems has ceased, and as literature they will not appeal to succeed- ing generations as forcibly as they did to their own, as a part of national history they v/ill be long preserved. Whittier's other poems deal so largely with the home-life of his day that he is called the poet of I06 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER New England. All its traditions, memories, and beliefs are faithfully recorded by him. In Snow- Boitnd we have the life of the New-England farmer. In Mabel Martin we see again the old Puritan dogmatism hunting down witches, burn» ing or hanging them, and following with relent- less persecution the families of the unhappy wretches who thus cam^e under the ban. In Mogg Megone is celebrated in beautiful verse one of those legends of Indian life which linger immor- tally around the pines of New England, while the Grave by the Lake, the Changeling, the Wreck of River moiitJi, the Dead Ship of Harps- well, and others in the collection called the Tent on the Beach, revive old traditions of those early days when history mingled with legend and the belief in water-spirits and ghostly warnings had not yet vanished. In some exquisite ballads, such as School Days, we have the memory of the past, fresh as the wild violets which the poet culled as a boy, while Ma2id Midler is a very idyl of a New-England harvest-field in the poet's youth. In Among the Hills we have some of Whittier's best poems of JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER lO/ country life, while many minor poems celebrate the hills and streams of which he was so fond. Whittier wrote, also, miany beautiful hymns, and his poems for children, such as King Solomon and the Ants and The Robin, show how easy it was for his great heart to enter into the spirit of childhood. Child Life, his compilation of po- ems for childhood, is one of the best ever made, w^hile another compilation, called Songs of Three Centuries, shows his wide familiarity and appre- ciation of all that is great in English poetry. After the sale of the old home of his child- hood Whittier lived in the house at Amesbury, wdiich for many years his sister shared. His last collection of poems, called Siindown, was pub- lished in 1890, for some friends only, as a me- mento of his eightieth birthday. He died two years later, and was buried in the yard of the Friends' meeting-house in Amesbury, a short distance from his birthplace. CHAPTER VIII NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 1804-1864 In 1804 the town of Salem, In Massachusetts, was the most important seaport in America. With the regularity of the tides its ships sailed to China, the East Indies, the Feejee Islands, South America, and the West Indies, and its seamen were as well known in the harbors of these dis- tant places as in their native town. Throughout the Revolution Salem, with some neighboring smaller ports, was the hope of the colonists. No American navy existed ; but the merchants and marines turned their vessels into ships of war, and under the name of privateers swept the seas of British cruisers, capturing in six years over four hundred and fifty prizes. During the war of 181 2, again, the naval service was led by the hardy Salem captains, and the brave little NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE IO9 seaport gave generously to the cause of the nation. Salem from the first was identified with American independence. Upon her hillsides one memorable day the inhabitants gathered to w^atch the fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, and through her streets, a few weeks later, the body of the heroic Lawrence w^as borne in state. Among the thronging crowds that day must have wandered the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne, then in his tenth year. Born in Salem, he came of a line of seafaring men who had fought their way to fame and fortune in the teeth of wind and wave ; his family having its American beginning at the time when Indian and white man alike made their homes in the shadowy aisles of the New-England forests. These ocean-roving ancestors w^ere among the first to take an American ship to St. Petersburg, Sumatra, Australia, and Africa. They fought pirates, overcame savages, suffered shipwreck and disaster, and many of them found their graves in the waters of some foreign sea. Haw- thorne's own father was lost on a voyage. From this race of hardv sailors Hawthorne no NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE inherited the patience, courage, and endurance which were the basis of his character, a character touched besides by that melancholy and love of solitude which is apt to distinguish those born by the sea. It is this combination, perhaps, of Puritan steadfastness of purpose and wild adven- turous life that descended to Hawthorne in the form of the most exquisite imagination tinctured with the highest moral aspirations. It was the sturdy, healthy plant of Puritanism blossoming into a beautiful flower. In this old town of Salem, with its quaint houses, with their carv^cd doorways and many windows, with its pretty rose-gardens, its beauti- ful overshadowing elms, its dingy court-house and celebrated town-pump, Hawthorne passed his early life, his picturesque surroundings forming a suitable environment for the handsome, imagi- native boy who was to create the most beautiful literary art that America had yet known. Be- hind the town stood old Witch Hill, grim and ghastly with memories of the witches hanged there in colonial times. In front spread the sea, a golden argosy of promise, whose wdiarves and NAniANIEL HAWTHORNE warehouses held priceless stores of merchandise. Between this haunting spirit of the past and the broader, newer life of the future, Hawthorne walked with the serene hope of the youth of that day. The old, intolerant Puritanism had passed away. Only the fine gold remained as the priceless treasure of the new generation. Hawthorne's boyhood was much like that of any other boy in Salem town. He went to school and to church, loved the sea and prophe- sied that he should go aw^ay on it some day and never return, was fond of reading, and ready to fight with any school-fellows who had, as he ex- pressed it, " a quarrelsome disposition." He was a healthy, robust lad, finding life a good thing whether he was roaming the streets, sitting idly on the wharves, or stretched on the floor at home reading a favorite author. Almost all boys who have become writers have liked the same books, and Hawthorne, like his fellows, lived in the magic world of Shakespeare and Milton, Spenser, Froissart, and Bunyan. T/ie Pilgrinis Progress was an especial favorite with him, its lofty spirit carry- 112 -NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE ing his soul into those spiritual regions which the child mind reverences without understand- ing. For one year of his boyhood he was su- premely happy in the wild regions of Sebago Lake, Me., where the family lived for a time. Here, he says, he led the life of a bird of the air, with no restraint and in absolute freedom. In the summer he would take his gun and spend days in the forest, doing v/hatever pleased his vagabond spirit at the moment. In the winter he would follow the hunters through the snow, or skate till midnight alone upon the frozen lake with only the shadows of the hills to keep him company, and sometimes pass the remainder of the night in a solitary log cabin, warmed by the blaze of the fallen evergreens. But he had to return to Salem to prepare for college, whither he went in .1821, in his seven- teenth year. He entered Bovvdoin, and had among his fellow -students Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, afterward President of the United States. Here Hav\^- thorne spent happy days, and long afterward, in writing to an old college friend, he speaks of NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE the charm that lingers around the memory of the place when he gathered blueberries in study hours, watched the great logs drifting down the current of the Androscoo^O^in from the lumber districts above, fished in the forest streams, and shot pigeons and squirrels in hours which should have been devoted to the classics. In this same letter, w^hich forms the dedication to one of his books, he adds that it is this friend, if any one, who is responsible for his becoming a writer, as it w^as here, in the shadow of the tall pines which sheltered Bowdoin College, that the first prophecy concerning his destiny was made. He was to be a writer of fiction, the friend said, little dreaming of the honors that were to crown one of the great novelists of the world. After leaving Bowdoin Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he passed the next twelve years of his life. Here he produced, from time to time, stories and sketches which found their way to the periodicals and won for him a nar- row reputation. But the years which a man usually devotes to his best work were spent by Hawthorne in a contented half-dream of a 114 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE great future, for good as is some of the work produced at this time, it never would have won for the author the highest place in American literature. These stories and sketches were afterward collected and published under the title Twice-Told Tales and The Snow Triage. Full of the grace and beauty of Hawthorne's style, they were the best imaginative work yet produced in America, but in speaking of them Hawthorne himself says that in this result of twelve years there is little to show for its thought and industry. But the promise of his genius was fulfilled at last. In 1850, when Hawthorne was forty-six years old, appeared his first great romance. Hawthorne had chosen for his subject a picture of Puritan times in New England, and out of the tarnished records of the past he created a work of art of marvellous and im.perishable beauty. In the days of which he wrote, a Puritan town v^^as exactly like a large family bound together by mutual interests, the acts of each life being regarded as affecting the whole community. Hawthorne has preserved this spirit of colonial NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE New England, with all its struggles, hopes, and fears, and the- conscience-driven Puritan, who lived in the new generation only in public rec- ords and church histories, was given new life. In Hawthorne's day this grim figure, stalking in the midst of Indian fights, village pillories, town- meetings, witch - burnings, and church-coun- cils was already a memory. With his steeple- crowned hat and his matchlock at his side he had left the pleasant New-England farm lands and was found only in the court-houses, where his deeds were recorded. Hawthorne brought him back from the past, set him in the midst of his fellow-elders in the church, and showed him a sufferer for conscience' sake. This first romance, published under the title The Scarlet Lettei^, revealed to Hawthorne him- self, as well as to the world outside, the tran- scendent power of his genius. Hawthorne, who was despondent of the little popularity of his other books, told the publisher who saw the first sketch of The Scarlet Letter, that he did not know whether the story w^as very good or very bad. The publisher, however, at once perceived Il6 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE its worth and brought it out one year from that time, and the pubhc saw that it had been enter- taining a genius unawares. Hawthorne's next book, The House of the Seven Gables, is a story of the New England of his own day. A clever critic has called it an impression of a summer afternoon in an elm -shadowed New -England town. Through its pages flit quaint contrasting figures that one might find in New England and nowhere else. The old spinster of ancient family, obliged to open a toy and gingerbread shop, but never forgetting the time when the house with seven gables was a mansion of limit- less hospitality, is a pathetic picture of disap- pointed hope and broken-down fortune. So is her brother, who was falsely imprisoned for twenty years, and who in his old age must lean upon his sister for support ; and the other char- acters are equally true to the life that has almost disappeared in the changes of the half-century since its scenes were made the inspiration of Hawthorne's romance. TJie Hottse of the Seven Gables was followed by two beautiful volumes for children, The Won- NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 11/ der Book and Taiiglewood Tales. In The Won- der Book Hawthorne writes as if he were a child himself, so simple is the charm that he weaves around these old, old tales. Not content with the Greek myths, he created little incidents and impossible characters that glance in and out with elfin grace. One feels that these were the very stories that were told by the centaurs, fauns, and satyrs themselves in the shadows of the old Attic forests. Here we learn that King Midas not only had his palace turned to gold, but that his own little daughter. Marigold, a fancy of Hawthorne's own, was also converted into the same shining metal. We learn, too, the secrets of many a hero and god of this realm of fancy which had been unsuspected by any other histo- rian of their deeds. Every child who reads The Wonder Book doubts not that Hawthorne had hobnobbed many a moonlit night with Pan and Bacchus in their vine - covered grottos by the riverside. This dainty, ethereal touch appears in all his work for children. A like quality gives distinction to his fourth great novel, which deals with a man supposed to Il8 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE be a descendant of the old fauns. This creation, named Donatello, from his resemblance to the celebrated statue of the Marble Faun, is not wholly human, although he has human inter- ests and feeling. Hawthorne makes Donatello ashamed of his pointed ears, though his spirit is as wild and untamed as that of his rude ances- tors. In this book there is a description of a scene where Count Donatello joins in a peasant dance around a public fountain. And so vividly is his half-human nature here brought out that Hawthorne seems to have witnessed somewhere the mad revels of the veritable fauns and sa- tyrs in the days of their life upon the earth. Throughout this story Hawthorne shows the same subtle sympathy with uncommon natures, the mystery of such souls having the same fascination for him that the secrets of the earth and air have for the scientist and phil- osopher. The book coming betv/een The House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Fatni is called The Blithedale Romance. It is in part the record of a period of Hawthorne's life when NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 1 19 he joined a community which hoped to improve the world by combining healthy manual labor with intellectual pursuits, and proving that self- interest and all differences in rank must be hurt- ful to the commonwealth. This little society lived in a suburb of Boston, and called their association Brook Farm. Each member per- formed daily some manual labor on the farm or in the house, hours being set aside for study. Here Hav/thorne ploughed the fields and joined in the amusements, or sat apart while the rest talked about art and literature, danced, sang, or read Shakespeare aloud. Some of the cleverest men and women of New England joined this community, the rules of which obliged the men to wear plaid blouses and rough straw hats, and the women to content themselves with plain calico gowns. These serious-minded m.en and women, who tried to solve a great problem by leading the lives of Arcadian shepherds, at length dispersed, each one going back to the world and working on as bravely as if the experiment had been a great success. The experiences of Brook Farm 120 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE were shadowed forth in The Blithedale Romance, although it was not a literal narrative. Immediately after this Hawthorne was married and went to live in Concord, near Boston, in a quaint old dwelling called The Manse. And as all his work partakes of the personal flavor of his own life, so his existence here is recorded in a delightful series of essays called Mosses from a7i Old Manse. Here we have a description of the old house itself, and of the author's family life, of the kitchen-garden and apple-orchards, of the meadows and woods, and of his friendship with that lover of nature, Henry Thoreau, whose writ- inors form a valuable contribution to American literature. The Mosses from an Old Manse must ever be famous as the history of the quiet hours of one of the greatest American men of letters. They are full of Hawthorne's own per- sonality, and reveal more than any other of his books the depth and purity of his poetic and rarely gifted nature. In 1853 his old friend and schoolmate, Pres- ident Pierce, appointed Hawthorne American Consul at Liverpool. He remained abroad NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 121 seven years, spending the last four on the Conti- nent, some transcriptions of his experience be- ing found in the celebrated Mai^blc Faitn and in several volumes of Note-Books. The Mai^ble Faun^ published in Europe under the title Trans- for?nation, was written in Rome, and w^as partly suggested to Hawthorne by an old villa which he occupied near Florence. This old villa pos- sessed a moss-covered tower, "haunted," as Hawthorne said in a letter to a friend, " by owls and by the ghost of a monk who was confined there in the thirteenth century previous to being burnt at the stake in the principal square in Florence." He also states in the same letter that he meant to put the old castle bodily in a romance that was then in his head, which he did by making the villa the old family castle of Donatello, although the scene of the story is laid in Rome. After Hawthorne's return to America he began two other novels, one founded upon the old legend of the elixir of life. This story was probably suggested to him by Thoreau, who spoke of a house in v/hich Hawthorne once 122 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE lived at Concord having been, a century or two before, the abode of a man who believed that he should never die. This subject was a charming one for Hawthorne's peculiar genius, but the story, with another. The Dollive?^ Romance, was interrupted by the death of Hawthorne in 1864. In point of literary art the romances of Haw- thorne are the finest work yet done in America, and their author was a man of high imagination, lofty morality, and pure ideals ; an artist in the noblest meaning of the word. CHAPTER IX GEORGE BANCROFT 1800-1891 Seventy years ago the Round Hill School at Northampton, Mass., was perhaps the most famous school in New England. The founder, George Bancroft, had modelled it upon a cele- brated school in Switzerland, in the hope that it would prove a starting-point for a broader sys- tem of elementary training than had yet existed in America, and everything was done to develop the physical and moral, as well as the mental, traits of the pupils. The school was beautifully situated, commanding a superb view, and had, besides the school-rooms, a gymnasium and pla}^- rooms that were kept warm in cold weather and furnished with tools for carpentering. Here the boys could make bows and arrows, squirrel- traps, kites, sleds, and whatever their fancy die- 124 GEORGE BANCROFT tated. There were large play-grounds on the slopes of the hiil, and here was the village of ^'Cronyviile," every house, hut, or shanty in which had been built and was owned by the boys themselves. There were many varieties of architecture in '' Cronyville," but each dweUing had at least a large chimney and a small store- room. After school hours each shanty was its owner's castle, where entertainments were held, and the guests feasted with roasted corn, nuts, or apples, v/hich the entire company had helped to prepare on the hearth of the wide chimney. Sometimes the feast was enlivened by recita- tions, poems, and addresses by the pupils, among whom was at one time the future historian, John Lothrop Motley, and very often the festiv- ities would end in one of those earnest talks that boys fall into sometimes when tired out with play. Bancroft's assistant and partner in the school was Dr. Cogswell, who superintended the course of study, which was carried out by the best teachers procurable in America, England, and France. The boys were in the main good students, some of them brilliant ones, and they GEORGE BANCROFT 12$ enjoyed so much freedom that their spirits gained them sometimes an unenviable reputa- tion. The solemn keeper of a certain inn on the stage line between Northampton and Boston suffered so much from their pranks that he re- fused to allow them to stop over night, and only consented to give them dinner upon promise of good behavior. The school became so popular that the best families in all parts of the country sent their boys there, but, financially, it was not a success, and after seven years' trial Bancroft was forced to abandon it, though his partner struggled on a few years longer. If the experiment had been entirely successful the cause of education might have been advanced fifty years ahead of the old method, for both founders were men devoted to the cause of education and longed to see newer and broader methods supersede the old ones. As a boy Bancroft had studied at the Exeter Academy ; finishing his course there he entered Harvard at thirteen, was graduated in his seven- teenth year, and a year later was sent abroad by Harvard to fit himself for a tutorship in the 1 26 GEORGE BANCROFT University. During his four years' absence he studied modern languages and literatures, Greek philosophy and antiquities, and some natural his- tory. But he made history the special object of study, and bent all his energies to acquiring as wide a knowledge as possible of the sources and materials that m^ake up the records of modern history. During his vacations he visited the different countries of Europe, travelling in regu- lar student fashion. He would rise at dawn, breakfast by candlelight, and then fill the morn- ing with visits to picture galleries, cathedrals, and all the wonders of foreign towns ; after a light luncheon he would start again on his sight- seeing, or visit some person of note, meeting during his travels almost every distinguished man in Europe. At night, if not too tired, he would study still politics, languages, and history, and when he returned to America he had made such good use of his time that he was equipped for almost any position in its intellectual life. His obligations to Harvard led him to accept a tutorship there, which, however, proved so dis- tasteful to him that he only held it one year. It GEORGE BANCROFT 12/ was after this experience that he founded his school at Round Hill. During the years that he was trying to make the Round Hill school a model for boys' schools, the idea of his work as the historian of the United States came to him. Undismayed by the scope of the work, which he meant should include the history of the United States from the time of the landing of Colum- bus to the adoption of the Constitution in 1 789, Bancroft, month after month, settled the plan more definitely in his mind ; and when the time came for him to begin the work he only looked forward eagerly to the task of writing the records of three hundred years of the world's progress during the most absorbing period known to his- tory. It is doubtful if at this time there was any other man living better qualified for this task than Bancroft. He had been a student of history and politics since boyhood. He had traced the stream of history from its sources in the East through the rise of the great modern nations. He had mastered the politics of the ancient world, whose language, literature, and art were also familiar to him, and civilized 128 GEORGE BANCROFT Europe had been his field of study during the years which leave the most profound impres- sions upon the mind. To him the rise and establishment of the United States as a great nation presented it- self as one of the most brilliant passages of the world's history, and no labor seemed tire- some which should fittingly chronicle that event. Besides his literary requirements Bancroft possessed eminent qualities for practical life. He was successively Governor of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Navy, and for a time Acting- Secretary of War ; he served his country as Minister to Great Britain. He was made Min- ister to Prussia and afterw^ard Minister to Ger- many when that country took its place as a united nation. Some of the most important treaties between the United States and foreign powers were made during Bancroft's diplomatic career, and in every act of his political life showed a talent for practical affairs. While he was Secretary of the Navy he founded the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Previous to this there was no good system by GEORGE BANCROFT 1 29 which the boys who desired to enter the navy could receive instruction in any other branch than that of practical seamanship. In the old navy the middies were taught, while afloat, by the chaplains, who gave them lessons in odd hours in writing, arithmetic, and navigation ; if the pupils were idle they were reported to the captain, whose discipline was far from gentle. A boy eager to learn could pick up a great deal by asking questions and noticing what was going on about him, and sometimes the officers would volunteer their help in a difficult subject. Later each ship had one regular school-master, who made the voyage with the ship, twenty middies being appointed to each man-of-war. This sys- tem was superseded by schools, which were established at the different navy-yards, and which the boys attended in the intervals of sea duty ; but, as in the case of the other methods, the instruction was desultory, and the pupils had not the advantage of education enjoyed by the cadets of the West Point Military Academy, though it was evident the necessity for it was the same. 9 130 GEORGE BANCROFT Bancroft brought to the office of Secretary of the Navy his old love for broad principles of education, and eight months after he took of- fice the United States Naval Academy was in full operation, with a corps of instructors of the first merit, and with a complement of pupils that spoke well for the national interest in the cause. At first the course was for five -years, the first and last of which only were spent at the Academy and the rest at sea, but this was later modified to its present form. Ban- croft's generous policy placed the new institu- tion upon a firm basis, and it became at once a vital force in the life of the United States Navy. Bancroft began his history while still at Round Hill, and published the first volume in 1834. Previous to beginning his history he had pub- lished a small volume of verse, a Latin Reader, and a book on Greek politics for the use of the Round Hill School, and various translations and miscellaneous writings in the different peri- odicals of the day. But none of these had seemed serious work to him, and he brought to his history a mind fresh to literary labor, and GEORGE BANCROFT 131 a fund of general information that was invalu- able. While he was minister to Great Britain he visited the state archives of England, France, and Germany for additional historical material. From this time he devoted himself as exclu- sively to his work as the diplomatic positions he held would allow. His official administration in his own country was also far-reaching. Besides the establish- ment of the Naval Academy, it was he who, while acting as Secretary of Y'J^.r pro tern,, gave the famous order for General Taylor to move forward to the western boundary of Texas, which had been annexed to the United States after seceding from Mexico and setting up as a republic. General Taylor's appearance on the borders was the signal to Mexico that the United States intended to defend the new ter- ritory, and eventually led to the war with Mex- ico, by which the United States received the territorry of New Mexico and California. When the lookout on the Pinta called out '' Land ho ! " he really uttered the first word of 132 GEORGE BANCROFT American history, and Bancroft's narrative begins almost at this point. The first volume embraces the early French and Spanish voyages ; the set- tlement of the Colonies ; descriptions of colonial life in New England and Virginia; the fall and restoration of the house of Stuart in England, which led to such important results in Ameri- can history, and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, v/hich was the first note of warning to England that the American Colonies would not tolerate English injustice without a protest. To the reader who loves to find in history facts more marvellous than any imaginations of fairy lore, the first volume of Bancroft's history must ever be a region of delight. The picturesque figure of Columbus fronting undismayed the terrors of that unknov/n sea, which the geographers of the period peopled w4th demons and monsters ; the adventures of the French and Spanish courtiers in search of fabled rivers and life-giving foun- tains ; the trials of the gold-seekers, De Soto, Navarez, Cabeca de Vaca, and others, who sought for the riches of the romantic East; and the heroic suffering of those innumierable bands who GEORGE BANCROFT I 33 first looked upon the wonders of the New World, and opened the way to its great career, are such stories as are found in the sober history of no other country. To the Old World, whose begin- nings of history were lost in the mists of the past, this vision of the New World, with its beauty of mountains, river, and forest, with its inex- haustible wealth and its races yet living in the primitive conditions of remote antiquity, was indeed a Vv^onder hardly to be believed. It is something to be present at the birth of a new world, and Bancroft has followed the voyagers and settlers in their own spirit, made their ad- ventures his own, and given to the reader a brilliant as well as faithful picture of the historic beginning of the American continent. In his second volume Bancroft takes up the history of the Dutch in America ; of the occu- pations of the Valley of the Mississippi by the French ; of the expulsion of the French from Canada by the English, and the minor events which went toward the accomplishment of these objects. Here are introduced the romantic story of Acadia and the picturesque side of Indian life. 134 GEORGE BANCROFT " The Indian mother places her child, as spring does its blossoms, upon the boughs of the trees while she works," says Bancroft in describing the sleeping-places of the Indian babies, and we see the same sympathetic touch throughout his descriptions of these dark children of the forest, to whom the white man came as a usurper of their rights and destroyer of their woodland homes. The remaining volumes of the history consist almost entirely of the causes which led up to the American Revolution, the Revolution itself, and its effect upon Europe. One-half of the whole work is devoted to this theme, which is treated with a philosophical breadth that makes it com- parable to the work of the greatest historians. Here we are led to see that, besides its influence upon the history of the New World, the Ameri- can Revolution was one of the greatest events in the world's history; that it followed naturally from the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and the Revolution of the English people against the tyranny of Charles I., and that, like them, its highest mission was to vindicate the cause of liberty. GEORGE BANCROFT I 35 In two Other volumes, entitled History of the Formation of the Constitution of the Uni- ted States, Bancroft gave a minute and careful description of the consolidation of the States into an individual nation after the Revolution, and the draughting and adopting of the Consti- tution by which they have since been governed. This, with some miscellaneous papers, among which may be mentioned the dramatic descrip- tion of the Battle of Lake Erie, comprise the remainder of Bancroft's contribution to Ameri- can literature. Bancroft said that there were three qualities necessary to the historian : A knowledge of the evil in human nature; that events are subordinate to law, and that there is in man something greater than himself. To these qualifications, which he himself eminently possessed, may be added that of untiring industry, which distinguished his work. A passage was written over and over again, sometimes as many as eight times, until it suited him. And he was known to write an entire volume over. He carried his labor into his old age, being eighty-four years of age when 136 GEORGE BANCROFT he made the last revision of the history which had occupied fifty years of his life. His diplomatic career also extended over many years, he being seventy-four when at his own request the Government recalled him from the Court of Berlin where he was serving as Min- ister. Bancroft died in 1891, in his ninety-second year. The most famous of his own countrymen united in tributes to his memory, and the sover- eigns of Europe sent wreaths to place upon his coffin. As historian, diplomatist, and private citizen, he had honored his country as is the privilege of few. CHAPTER X EDGAR ALLAN POE 1809-1849 In the play-ground of an old-fashioned Eng- lish school the boy Edgar Allan Poe, then in his ninth year, first entered that world of day- dreams, whose wonders he afterward transcribed so beautifully in his prose and poetry. The school was situated in the old town of Stoke Newington, and the quaint, sleepy village, with its avenues shaded by ancient trees and bordered by fragrant shrubberies, aiid with its country stillness broken only by the chime of the church- bell tolling the hour, seemed to the boy hardly a part of the real world. In describing it in after years he speaks of the dream-like and soothing influence it had upon his early life. The school building, also the village parsonage, as the mas- ter of the school was a clergyman, had a similar 138 EDGAR ALLAN POE effect ; it was a large, rambling house, whose passages and rooms had a labyrinthine irregu- larity which charmed the young student and made him regard it almost as a place of enchant- ment. It had many nooks and corners in which one might lose one's self and dream day-dreams out of the books, poetry and history, with which it was pretty well stocked. The school-room itself was low-walled and ceiled with oak, and filled with desks and benches that had been hacked and hewed by generations of boys. It was of great size, and seemed to Poe the largest in the world. In this room he studied mathe- matics and the classics, while in the play-ground outside, which was surrounded by brick walls topped with mortar and broken glass, he spent many of his leisure hours, taking part in those sports so loved by the English school-boy. The boys were allowed beyond the grounds only three times in a week ; twice on Sunday, when they went to church, and once during the week, when, guarded by two ushers, they were taken a solemn walk through the neighboring fields. All the rest of life lay within the walls that sep- EDGAR ALLAN POE I 39 arated the school from the village streets. In this quiet spot Poe spent five years of his life, speaking of them afterward as most happy years and rich in those poetic influences which formed his character. In his thirteenth year he left England and re- turned to America with his adopted parents, Mr. and Mrs. Allan, of Baltimore, spending the next four or five years of his life partly in their beautiful home and partly at school in Rich- mond. The parents of Poe had died in his infancy. They had both possessed talent, his mother hav- ing been an actress of considerable repute, and from them he inherited gentle and winning manners and a talent for declamation, which, combined with his remarkable personal beauty, made him a favorite in the Allan home, where he was much petted and caressed. The child returned the interest of his adopted parents, and though he was sometimes wilful and obstinate he never failed in affection. To Mrs. Allan especially he always showed a devotion and gratitude that well repaid her for the love I40 EDGAR ALLAN POE and care she had bestowed upon the orphan child. Though fond of books, especially books of poetry, and loving to be alone in some quiet place where he could indulge in the day-dreams that formed so large a part of his life, Poe yet had the fondness of a healthy boy for athletic sports, and some of his feats of strength are still found recorded in the old newspapers of Balti- more. Once on a hot day he swam a distance of seven miles on the James River against a svv^ift tide ; in a contest he leaped twenty-one feet on a level, and in other feats of strength he also excelled. He was very fond of animals, and was always surrounded by pets which returned his affection with interest, and v/hich, wath the flowers he loved to tend and care for, took up many of his leisure hours. When he was seventeen Poe entered the Uni- versity of Virginia, where he remained not quite a year, distinguishing himself as a student of the classics and modern languages. Upon his re- turn to Baltimore he had a disagreement with EDGAR ALLAN POE 141 his foster-father because of some college debts, and though Poe was very much in the wrong he refused to admit it, and, leaving the house in a fit of anger, went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm. He had already published a volume of poems, and now being forced to depend upon himself he issued a second edition. But this brought him neither fame nor money, and after a two years' struggle with poverty he was glad to accept a cadetship at West Point, obtained for him through the influence of Mr. Allan. Mrs. Allan had in the meantime died, and in her death Poe lost his best friend, one who had been ever ready to forgive his faults, to believe in his repentance, and to have faith in his prom- ises of amendment. Poe v/as charmed with the life at West Point, and in his first enthusiasm decided that a sol- dier's career was the most glorious in the world. The hard study, the strict discipline, the rigid law and order of cadet life seemed only admira- ble, and he soon stood at the head of his class. But it was impossible that this enthusiasm should last long. Poe v/as endowed by nature 142 EDGAR ALLAN POE with the dreamy and artistic temperament of the poet, and discipHne and routine could not fail to become in a short time unbearable. When this period arrived the prospective life of the soldier lost its charm, and he was seized with a desire to leave the Academy and bid a final farewell to military life. It was impossi- ble to do this without the consent of his guar- dian, and as Mr. Allan refused this, Poe was forced to carry his point in his own way. This he did by lagging in his studies, writing poetry when he should have been solving problems, and refusing point blank to obey orders. Mili- tary discipline could not long brook this. Poe was court-martialed, and, pleading guilty, was discharged from the Academy, disgraced but happy. During his stay there he had published a third edition of his poems, containing a num- ber of pieces not included in the other editions. It was dedicated to his fellow-cadets, and was subscribed for by many of the students. Almost immediately after his departure from West Point, Poe went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter Virginia, who EDGAR ALLAN POE 143 afterward became his wife ; and from this time forward he never seems to have had any serious idea of a career otherwise than literary. In 1832, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, prizes were offered by a Baltimore paper for the best short story and best poem that should be presented. Among the material offered in com- petition the judges found a sm.all collection of tales bound together, and written in neat Roman characters. These stories were the last ones read by the committee which had about decided that there had been nothing oft^ered worthy the prize ; their unmistakable signs of genius were instantly recognized. It was decided that the prize of one hundred dollars belonged to this author, and out of the series the story entitled A Maniisc7Hpt Foicnd in a Bottle was selected as the prize tale, though all were so excellent that it was difficult to determine which was best. This little volume had been submitted by Poe, and when the poetry came to be examined it was found also that the best poem in the collec- tion was his. He was not, however, awarded the prize for poetry, that being given to another 144 EDGAR ALLAN POE competitor, whose work the committee thought worthy the second prize, in view of the fact that Poe had obtained the first. It was in this manner that Poe was intro- duced to the world of hterature, his previous productions having excited no attention other than that generally given to the work of a clever or erratic boy. The workmanship of these stories v/as so fine and the genius so apparent as to give them a distinct place in American fiction, a place to which at that time the promise of Haw- thorne pointed. Besides the reputation and money thus earned, the story brought him a stanch friend in the person of Mr. Kennedy, one of the members of the committee, who, from that time, was devoted to the interests of the young author. Poe now became busy with the composition of those beautiful tales which appeared from time to time in the periodicals of the day, and which speedily won him a reputation both in America and Europe. Fie was also employed in editorial work for different magazines, and became known as the first American critic who EDGAR ALLAN POE 145 had made criticism an art. It was his dream at this time to establish a magazine of his own, and for many years one project after another with this object in view was tried and aban- doned. He was never able to start the maga- zine and felt the disappointment keenly always. Through all his disappointments he still lived much in that dream-world which had always been so real to him, and much of his best work found there its inspiration. His exquisite story of Ligeia came to him first in a dream. This world, so unreal to many, was to Poe as real as his actual life. Like Coleridge in English lit- erature, he had the power of presenting the visions which came to him in sleep or in his waking dreams, surrounded by their own at- mosphere of mystery and unreality, thus pro- ducing an effect which avv^ed as well as fas- cinated. No other American writer has ever brought from the dream-world such beautiful creations, which charm and mystify at the same time, and force the most unimaginative reader to beheve for the time in the existence of this elusive realm of faery. 146 EDGAR ALLAN POE Poe's poems have this same character, and found their inspiration in the same somxe. While enoraored in editorial work in New York o o Poe wrote his first great poem, The Raven, which was first published under an assumed name. It was not until he recited the poem by request at a gathering of the literary workers of New York that his authorship was suspected. Immediately afterward the poem was published under his name. It was regarded by critics in England and America as illustrating the highest poetic genius. From this time Poe, who had hitherto been ranked among the best prose writ- ers of his native land, now took precedence among the poets. It is, indeed, as a poet that he is always thought of first. It was during the next five years after the publication of The Raven that he produced the series of remarkable poems that has given him immortality. The Bells, the original draft of which consisted of only eighteen lines, is, perhaps, next to The Raven, the poem that has brought him the most fame. But the number of exquisite shorter poems which he produced would in themselves EDGAR ALLAN POE I47 give him the highest rank as a poet. Chief among these is the Httle idyll, Annabel Lee, a transcription of the ideal love which existed be- tween Poe and his young wife. While engaged in literary work in New York Poe lived for the greater part of the time in the suburb of Fordham, in an unpretentious but charming cottage, bowered in trees and sur- rounded by the flower garden, which was the especial pride of the poet and his wife. Perhaps the happiest days of his life were spent in this quiet place, to which he would retire after the business of the day was over, and occupy him- self with the care of the flowers and of the nu- merous pet birds and animals, which were re- garded as a part of the family. Over this otherwise happy existence hung always the clouds of poverty and sickness, his wife having been an invalid for many years. It was in this little cottage, at a time when Poe's fortunes were at their lowest ebb, that his w^ife died amid poverty so extreme that the family could not even afford a fire to heat the room in which she lay dying. Poe remained at Ford- 148 EDGAR ALLAN POE ham a little over two years after his wife's death, leaving it only a few months before his ov/n death, in October, 1849. Poe is undoubtedly to be ranked among the greatest writers of American literature. His prose works would grace any literary period ; his poetry is alive with the fire and beauty of genius, and his criticisms marked a new era in critical writing in America. Twenty-six years after his death a monument was erected to his memory in the city of Balti- more, mainly through the efforts of the teachers of the public schools. Some of the most dis- tinguished men of America were present at the unveiling to do honor to the poet whose work was such a noble contribution to the art of his native land. CHAPTER XI RALPH WALDO EMERSON I 803-1 S8 2 Walking the streets of Boston, in the days when old-fashioned gambrel-roofed houses and gardens filled the space now occupied by dingy warehouses, might be seen a serious-eyed boy who, whether at work or at play, seemed always to his companions to live in a world a little dif- ferent from their own. This was not the dream- world so familiar to childhood, but another which few children enter, and those only who seem destined to be teachers of their race. One enters this world just as the world of day-dreams is entei:ed, by forgetting the real world for a time and lettina^ the mind think what thouo^hts it will. In this world Milton spent many long hours when a child, and Bunyan made immor- tal in literature the memory of these dreams of ISO RALPH WALDO EMERSON youth. Never any thought of the real world en- ters this place, whose visitors see but one thing, a vision of the soul as it journeys through life. To Bunyan this seemed but a journey over danger- ous roads, through lonely valleys, and over steep mountain sides ; to Milton it seemed a war be- tween good and evil ; to this little New-England boy it seemed but a vision of duty bravely accom- plished, and in this he was true to the instincts of that Puritan race to which he belonged. The boy's father was the Rev. William Emerson, pastor of the First Church in Boston, who had died when this son, Ralph Waldo, was in his ninth year ; but for three years longer the family continued to reside in the quaint old parson- age, in which Emerson had been born. The father had left his family so poor that the con- gregation of the First Church voted an annuity of five hundred dollars to the widow for seven years, and many were the straits the little family was put to in order to eke out a comfortable living. The one ambition was to have the three boys educated. An aunt who lived in the fam- ily declared that they were born to be educated, RALPH WALDO EMERSON 15I and that it must be brought about somehow. The mother took boarders, and the two eldest boys, Ralph and Edward, helped do the house- Vv'ork. In a little letter written to his aunt, in his tenth year, Ralph mentions that he rose be- fore six in the morning in order to help his brother make the fire and set the table for prayers before calling his mother — so early did the child realize that he must be the burden- sharer of the family. Poverty there was, but also much happiness in the old parsonage, whose dooryard of trees and shrubs, joined on to the neighboring gardens, made a pleasant outlook into the world. When school work was over, and household duty disposed of, very often the broth- ers would retire to their own room and there find their own pecuHar joy in reading tales of Plu- tarch, reciting poetry, and declaiming some favor- ite piece, for solitude was loved by all, and the great authors of the world were well studied by these boys, whose bedchamber was so cold that Plato or Cicero could only be indulged in when the reader was wrapped so closely in his cloak that Emerson afterward remarked, thg smell of RALPH WALDO EMERSON woollen was forever afterward associated with the Greek classics. Ralph attended the Latin Gram- mar School, and had private lessons besides in writing, which he seems to have acquired with difficulty, one of his school-fellows telling long afterward how his tongue moved up and down as the pen laboriously traversed the page, and how on one occasion he even played truant to avoid the dreaded task, for which misdemeanor he was promptly punished by a diet of bread and water. It was at this period that he wrote verses on the War of 1812, and began an epic poem which one of his school friends illustrated. Such skill did he attain in verse-making that his efforts were delivered on exhibition days, being rendered with such impressiveness by the young author that his mates considered nothing could be finer. From the Latin school Emerson passed to| Harvard in his fifteenth year, entering as ■■ Presi- dent's Freshman," a post which brought with it a certain annual sum and a remission of fees in exchange for various duties, such as summoning unruly students to the president, announcing the RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 53 orders of the faculty, and serving as waiter at commons. At college Emerson was noted as a student more familiar with general literature than with the college text-books, and he was an ardent member of a little book club which met to read and discuss current literature, the book or maga- zine under discussion being generally bought by the member who had the most pocket-money at the time. But in spite of a dislike for routine study, Emerson was graduated with considerable honor, and almost immediately afterward set about the business of school-teaching. But Emerson was not able to take kindly to teaching, and in his twenty-first year began prep- arations to enter the ministry. These were in- terrupted for a while by a trip South in search of health, but he was finally able to accept a posi- tion as assistant minister at the Second Church. A year or two later he was 'again obliged to leave his work and go abroad for his health. After he returned home he decided to leave the ministry, and he began that series of lectures which speedily made him famous and which 154 RALPH WALDO EMERSON have determined his place in American litera- ture. From this time Emerson began to be recog- nized as one of the thought-leaders of his age. To him literature appealed as a means of teaching those spiritual lessons that brace the soul to brave endurance. While Hawthorne was living in the world of romance, Poe and Lowell creating American poetry, and Bancroft and Motley plac- ing American historical prose on the highest level, Emerson was throwing his genius into the form of moral essays for the guidance of conduct. To him had been revealed in all its purity that vision of the perfect life which had been the inspiration of his Puritan ancestors. And with the vision had come that gift of expression which enabled him to preserve it in the noblest literary form. These essays embrace every variety of subject, for, to a philosopher like Emerson every form of life and every object of nature represented some picture of the soul. When he devoted himself to this task he followed a true light, for he became and remains to many the inspiration of his age, the American writer above all oth- RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 55 ers whose thought has moulded the souls of men. Much of Emerson's work found form in verse of noble vein, for he was a poet as well as phi- losopher. He also was connected with one or two magazines, and became one of the most pop- ular of American lecturers ; with the exception of several visits to Europe and the time given to his lecturing and other short trips, Emerson spent his life at Concord, Mass. To this place came annually, in his later years, the most gifted of his followers, to conduct what was known as the Concord School of Philosophy. Throughout his whole life Emerson preserved that serenity of soul which is the treasure of such spiritually gifted natures. He died at Concord in 1882, and was buried in the village cemetery, which he had consecrated thirty years before. CHAPTER XII HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 1807-1882 Almost any summer day in the early part of the century a blue-eyed, brown-haired boy might have been seen lying under a great apple-tree in the garden of an old house in Portland, forget- ful of everything else in the world save the book he was reading. The boy was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the book might have been Robiiison Crusoe, The Arabiaji Nights, or Doit Qttixote, all of which were prime favorites, or, possibly, it was Irving's Sketch-Book, of which he was so fond that even the covers delighted him, and whose charm remained unbroken throughout life. Years afterward, when, as a famous man of let- ters, he was called upon to pay his tribute to the memory of Irving, he could think of no more HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I 5/ tender praise than to speak with grateful affec- tion of the book which had so fascinated him as a boy, and whose pages still led him back into the '' haunted chambers of youth." Portland was in those days a town of wooden houses, with streets shaded with trees, and the waters of the sea almost dashing up to its door- ways. At its back great stretches of woodland swept the country as far as the eye could see, and low hills served as watch-towers over the deep in times of war. It was during Longfellow's child- hood that the British ship Boxer was captured by the Enterprise in the famous sea-fight of the War of 1 8 1 2 ; the two captains, who had fallen in the battle, were buried side by side in the cemetery at Portland, and the whole town came together to do honor to the dead commanders. Long afterward Longfellow speaks of this in- cident in his poem entitled My Lost Youth, and recalls the sound of the cannon booming across the waters, and the solemn stillness that followed the news of the victory. It is in the same poem that we have a picture of the Portland of his early life, and are given 158 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW glimpses of the black wet wharves, where the ships were moored all day long as they worked, and also the Spanish sailors '' with bearded lips " who seemed as much a mystery to the boy as the ships themselves. These came and went across the sea, always watched and waited for with greatest interest by the children, who loved the excite- ment of the unloading and loading, the shouts of the surveyors who were measuring the contents of cask and hogshead ; the songs of the negroes working the pulleys, the jolly good-nature of the seamen strolling through the streets, and, above all, the sight of the strange treasures that came from time to time into one home or another — bits of coral, beautiful sea-shells, birds of resplendent plumage, foreign coins, which looked odd even in Portland, where all the money nearly was Spanish — and the hundred and one things dear to the hearts of children and sailors. Longfellow's boyhood was almost a reproduc- tion of that of some Puritan ancestor a century before. He attended the village school, played ball in summer and skated in winter, went to church twice every Sunday, and, when service w^as HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I 59 over, looked at the curious pictures in the family Bible, and heard from his mother's lips the stories of David and Jonathan and Joseph, and at all times had food for his imagination in the view of bay stretching seaward, on one hand, and on the other valley farms and groves spreading out to the west. But although the life was severe in its sim- plicity, it was most sweet and wholesome for the children who grew up in the home nest, guarded by the love that was felt rather than expressed, and guided into noble conceptions of the beauty and dignity of living. This home atmosphere impressed itself upon Longfellow unconsciously, as did the poetic influences of nature, and had just as lasting and inspiring an effect upon his character, so that truth, duty, fine courage v/ere always associated with the freshness of spring, the early dawn, the summer sunshine, and the linger- ing sadness of twilight. It is the spiritual insight, thus early developed, that gives to Longfellow's poetry some of its greatest charms. It was during his school-boy days that Long- l6o HENRY WADSWORTtI LONGFELLOW fellow published his first bit of verse. It was inspired by hearing the story of a famous fight which took place on the shores of a small lake called Lovell's Pond, between the hero Lovell and the Indians. Longfellow was deeply im- pressed by this story and threw^ his feeling of ad- miration into four stanzas, which he carried with a beating heart down to the letter-box of the Portland Gazette, taking an opportunity to slip the manuscript in when no one was looking. A few days later Longfellow watched his father unfold the paper, read it slowly before the fire, and finally leave the room, when the sheet was grasped by the boy and his sister,- who shared his confidence, and hastily scanned. The poem w^as there in the *' Poets' Corner" of the Gazette, and Longfellow was so filled with joy that he spent the greater part of the remainder of the day in reading and re-reading the verses, becoming con- vinced toward evening that they possessed re- markable merit. His happiness was dimmed, however, a few hours later, when the father of a boy friend, with whom he was passing the evening, pronounced the verses stiff and entirely HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW i6t lacking in originality, a criticism that was quite true and that was harder to bear because the critic had no idea who the author was. Lons^- fellow slipped away as soon as possible to nurse his wounded feelings in his own room, but in- stead of letting the incident discourage him, began, with renewed vigor, to write verses, epi- grams, essays, and even tragedies, which he pro- duced in a literary partnership with one of his friends. None of these effusions had any liter- ary value, being no better than any boy of thir- teen or fourteen would produce if he turned his attention to composition instead of bat and ball. Longfellow remained in Portland until his sixteenth year, when he went to Bowdoin Col- lege, entering the sophomore class. Here he remained for three years, gradually winning a name for scholarship and character that was second to none. His love for reading still continued, Irving re- maining a favorite author, while Cooper was also warmly appreciated. From the Sketch-Book he would turn to the exciting pages of The Spy, and the announcement of a new w^ork by either 1 62 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW of their authors was looked forward to as an event of supreme importance. From time to time he wrote verses which appeared in the periodicals of the day, and as his college life neared its close he began to look toward litera- ture as the field for his future work, and it was with much disappointment that he learned that his father wished him to study law. But what the effect of such a course may have had upon his mind so filled with the love of poetry, and so consecrated to the ideal, will never be known, as the end of his college life brought to him a chance which, for the mo- ment, entirely satisfied the desire of his heart. This was an offer from the college trustees that he should visit Europe for the purpose of fitting himself for a professorship of mod- ern languages, and that upon his return he should fill that chair, newly established at Bow- doin. This was the happiest fortune that could come to Longfellow in the beginning of his literary career. Accordingly, at the age of nineteen, he sailed for France in good health, HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 1 63 with fine prospects, and with as fair a hope for the future as ever was given. Longfellow remained abroad three years, studying and absorbing all the new conditions which were broadening his mind, and fitting him for his after-career. He visited France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, meeting with adventure everywhere, and storing up memory after mem- ory that came back to his call in after-years to serve some purpose of his art. We have thus preserved in his works the im- pressions that Europe then made upon a young American, who had come there to supplement his education by studying at the universities, and whose mind was alive to all the myriad forms of culture denied in his own land. The vividness of these early impressions was seen in all his work, and was perhaps the first reflection of the old poetic European influence that began to be felt in much American poetry, where the charm of old peasant love-songs and roundelays, heard for centuries among the lower classes of Spain, France, and Italy, was wrought into translations and transcriptions so perfect 164 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW and spirited that they may almost rank with original work. One of Longfellow's great pleasures while on this trip was the meeting with Irving in Spain, where the latter was busy upon his Life of Co- lumbus ; and Irving's kindness on this occasion was always affectionately remembered. Longfellow returned to America after three years' absence, and at once began his duties at Bowdoin College, where he remained three years, when he left to take a professorship at Harvard, which he had accepted with the under- standing that he was to spend a year and a half abroad before commencing his work. The results of his literary labors while at Bowdoin were the publication of a series of sketches of European life called Outre Mer, in two volumes ; a translation from the Spanish of the Coplas de Maiirique, and some essays in the North Ainerican Reviezu and other peri- odicals. And considering the demand upon his time which his college duties made, this amount of finished work speaks well for his industry, since it does not include a number of text-books HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 16$ prepared for the use of his pupils, and number- less papers, translations, and other literary mis- cellany necessary to his work as a teacher of foreign languages. OiUrc Mcr, which had first appeared in part in a periodical, was very favorably received. It was really the story of picturesque Europe translated by the eye and heart of a young poet. After his return to America Longfellow set- tled down to the routine of college work, which was interrupted for the next ten years only by his literary work, which from this time on began to absorb him more and more. Two years after his return he published his first volume of poems and his romance HypeiHon. In Hyperion Longfel- low related some of the experiences of his own travels under the guise of the hero, who wanders through Europe, and the book is full of the same biographical charm that belongs to Outre Mer. Here the student life of the German youth, the songs they sang, the books they read, and even their favorite inns are noted, while the many translations of German poetry opened a new field of delight to American readers. It l66 HENRY VVADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was well received by the public, who appre- ciated its fine poetic fancy and its wealth of serious thought. But it was not by his prose that Longfel- low touched the deepest sympathies of his read- ers, and the publication of his first volume of poetry a few months later showed his real position in the world of American letters. This little book, which was issued under the title Voices of the Night, consisted of the poems that had so far appeared in the various maga- zines and papers, a few poems written in his college days, and some translations from the French, German, and Spanish poets. In this volume occurs some of Longfellow's choicest works, the gem of the book being the celebrated A Psalm of Life. It is from this point that Longfellow goes on- ward always as the favorite poet of the Ameri- can people. The Psalm of Life had been pub- lished previously in a magazine without the author's name, and it had no sooner been read than it seemed to find its way into every heart. Ministers read it to their congregations all over HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 167 the country, and it was sung as a hymn in many churches. It was copied in ahnost every news- paper in the United States ; it was recited in every school. To young and old alike it brought its message, and its voice was recognized as that of a true leader. The author of Oittre Mer and Hyperio7i had here touched hands with millions of his brothers and sisters, and the clasp was never unloosened again while he lived. In the same collection occurs The Footsteps of Angels, another well-beloved poem, and one in which the spirit of home-life is made the in- spiration. Longfellow's poems now followed one another in rapid succession, appearing generally at first in some magazine and afterward in book form in various collections under different titles. His greatest contributions to American liter- ature are his Evangeli7ie and Hiawatha, and a score of shorter poems, which in themselves would give the author a high place in any liter- ature. In Evangeline Longfellow took for his theme the pathetic story of the destruction of the 1 68 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW Acadian villages by the English during the strug- gle between the English and French for the pos- session of Canada. In this event many families and friends were separated never again to be re- united, and the story of Evangeline is the fate of two young lovers who were sent aw^ay from their homes in different ships, and who never met again until both were old, and one was dying in the ward of a public hospital. Long- fellow has made of this sad story a wondrously beautiful tale, that reads like an old legend of Grecian Arcadia. The description of the great primeval forests, stretching down to the sea ; of the villages and farms scattered over the land as unprotected as the nests of the meadow lark ; of the sowing and harvesting of the peasant folk, with their fetes and churchgoing, their weddings and fes- tivals, and the pathetic search of Evangeline for her lost lover Gabriel among the plains of Louisiana, all show Longfellow in his finest mood as a poet w^hom the sorrows of mankind touched always with reverent pity, as well as a writer of noble verse. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 1 69 Everywhere that the English language is read Evangeline has passed as the most beautiful folk- story that America has produced, and the French Canadians, the far-away brothers of the Aca- dians, have included Longfellow among their national poets. Among them Evangeline is known by heart, and the cases are not rare where the people have learned English expressly for the purpose of reading Longfellow's poem in the original, a wonderful tribute to the poet who could thus touch to music one of the saddest memories of their race. In Hiawatha Longfellow gave to the Indian the place in poetry that had been given him by Cooper in prose. Here the red man is shown with all his native nobleness still unmarred by the selfish injustice of the whites, while his in- ferior qualities are seen only to be those that belong to mankind in general. Hiawatha is a poem of the forests and of the dark-skinned race who dwelt therein, who were learned only in forest lore and lived as near to nature's heart as the fauns and satyrs of old. Into this legend Longfellow has put all the I/O IlENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW poetry of the Indian nature, and has made his hero, Hiawatha, a noble creation that compares favorably with the King Arthur of the old British romances. Like Arthur, Hiawatha has come into the world with a mission for his peo- ple ; his birth is equally mysterious and invests him at once with almost supernatural qualities. Like Arthur, he seeks to redeem his kingdom from savagery and to teach the blessing of peace. From first to last Hiawatha moves among the people, a real leader, showing them how to clear their forests, to plant grain, to make for themselves clothing of embroidered and painted skins, to improve their fishing-grounds, and to live at peace with then neighbors. Hiawatha's own life was one that was lived for others. From the time when he was a little child and his grandmother told him all the fairy-tales of nature, up to the day when, like Arthur, he passed mysteriously away through the gates of the sunset, all his hope and joy and work were for his people. He is a creature that could only have been born from a mind as pure and poetic as that of Longfellow. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I7I All the scenes and images of the poem are so true to nature that they seem like very breaths from the forest. We move with Hiawatha through the dewy birchen aisles, learn with him the language of the nimble squirrel and of the wise beaver and mighty bear, watch him build his famous canoe, and spend hours with him fishing in the waters of the great inland sea, bordered by the pictured rocks, painted by nat- ure herself. Longfellow's first idea of the poem was suggested, it is said, by his hearing a Har- vard student recite some Indian tales. Search- ing among the various books that treated of the American Indian, he found many legends and incidents that preserved fairly well the tradi- tional history of the Indian race, and grouping these around one central figure and filling in the gaps with poetic descriptions of the forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and plains, which made up the abode of these picturesque people, he thus built up the entire poem. The metre used is that in which the Kalevala, the national epic of the Finns is written, and the Finnish hero, Wainamoinen, in his gift of song and his brave 172 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW adventures, is not unlike the great Hiawatha. Among Longfellow's other long poems are : The Spanish Student, a dramatic poem founded upon a Spanish romance ; The Divine Tragedy, and The Golden Legend, founded upon the life of Christ ; TJie Courtship of Miles Standish, a tale of Puritan love-making in the time of the early settlers, and Tales of a Wayside Inn, which were a series of poems of adventure sup- posed to be related in turn by the guests at an inn. But it is with such poems as Evangeli^ie and Hiaioatha, and the shorter famous poems like A Psalm of Life, Excelsior, The Wreck of the Hes- perus, The B^tilding of the Ship, The Footsteps of Angels that his claim as the favorite poet of America rests. Evangeline and Hiawatha marked an era in American literature in intro- ducing themes purely American, while of the farhous shorter poems each separate one was greeted almost with an ovation. The Building of the Ship was never read during the struggle of the Civil War without raising the audience to a passion of enthusiasm, and so in each of HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 1/3 these shorter poems Longfellow touched with wondrous sympathy the hearts of his readers. Throughout the land he was revered as the poet of the home and heart, the sweet singer to whom the fireside and family gave ever sacred and beautiful meanings. Some poems on slavery, a prose tale called Kavanagh, and a translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante must also be included among Longfellow's works ; but these have never reached the success attained by his more popu- lar poems which are known by heart by mill- ions to whom they have been inspiration and comfort. Longfello\v died in Cambridge in 1882, in the same month in which was written his last poem, The Bells of San Bias, wiiich concludes with these words : ♦• It is daybreak everywhere." , CHAPTER XIII JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY 1S14-1877 One day in the year 1827, a boy of thirteen first entered the chapel of Harvard College to take his seat there as a student. His schoolfellows looked at him curiously first, because of his re- markable beauty, an. second because of his rep- utation as a linguist, a great distinction among boys who looked upon foreign tongues as so many traps for tripping their unlucky feet in the thorny paths of learning. He had come to Har- vard from Mr. Bancroft's school at Northamp- ton, where he was famous as a reader, writer, and orator, and was more admired, perhaps, than is good for any boy. Both pupils and masters recoQ^nized his talents and overlooked his lack of industry. But neither dreamed that their praise JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 75 was but the first tribute to the genius of the future historian, John Lothrop Motley. Motley was born in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, April 15, 1 8 14. As a child he was del- icate, a condition which fostered his great natural love for reading. He devoured books of every kind, history, poetry, plays, orations, and partic- ularly the novels of Cooper and Scott. Not sat- isfied with reading about heroes, he must be a hero himself, and when scarcely eight he bribed a younger brother wich sweetmeats to lie quiet, wrapped in a shawl, while he, mounted upon a stool, delivered Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Ceesar. At eleven he began a novel, the scene of which was laid in the Housa- tonic Valley, because that name sounded grand and romantic. On Saturday afternoon he and his playmates, among whom was Wendell Phil- lips, would assemble in the garret of the Motley house, and in plumed hats and doublets enact tragedies or stirring melodramas. Comedy was too frivolous for these entertainments, in which Motley was always the leading spirit ; the chief bandit, the heavy villain, the deadliest foe. 1/6 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY In the school-room also Motley led by div^ine right, and expected others to follow. Thus, in spite of his dislike for rigid rules of study, he was always before the class as one to be deferred to and honored wherever honor might be given. While still at college Motley seems to have had some notion of a literary career. His writing- desk v/as constantly crammed with manuscripts of plays, poetry, and sketches of character, which never found their way to print, and which were burned to make room for others when the desk became too full. With the exception of a few v^erses published in a magazine, this work of his college days served only for pastime. Graduated from Harvard at seventeen. Motley spent the next two years at a German university, where he lived the pleasant, social life of the German stu- dent, one of his friends and classmates being young Bismarck, afterv/ard the great Chancellor, who was always fond of the handsome young American, whose wit was the life of the student company and whose powers of argument sur- passed his own. Coming back to America, Motley studied law JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 7/ until 1 84 1, when, in his twenty-seventh year, he received the appointment of Secretary of Lega- tion to St. Petersburg. His friends now looked forward to a brilliant diplomatic career for him, but the unfavorable climate soon led him to resign the appointment and return to America. But the St. Petersburg visit was not fruitless, for three years afterward he published an essay in the North American Reviezv v/hich showed a keen appreciation of Russian political conditions. The article was called "A Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great," and its appearance surprised the critics who had justly condemned a novel previously published by the young author. Plis essay por- trayed the character of the great Peter, half king and half savage. It showed a full appreciation of the difficulties that hindered the establish- ment of a great monarchy, and paid due honor to that force of will, savage courage, and ideal patriotism that laid the foundations of Russia's greatness. The reader is made to see this fiery Sclav, building up a new Russia from his ice- fields and barren valleys ; a Russia of greatcities, 12 178 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY imperial armies, vast commerce, and splendid hopes. It was a brilliant and scholarly narrative of the achievement of a great man, and it placed Motley among the writers of highest promise. A year later he began collecting materials for the serious work of his life. For his subject he chose the story of the old Frisians or Hollanders who rescued from the sea a few islands formed by the ooze and slime of ages, and laid thereon the foundations of a great nation. They raised dykes to keep back the sea, built canals to serv^e as roads, turned bogs into pasture-lands and morass- es into grain -fields, fought with the Romans, founded cities, laid the foundations of the vast maritime commerce of to-day, and finally, in the sixteenth century, when the wealth of their mer- chants, the power of their cities, and the progress of their arts were the wonder of the world, met their worst foe in the person of their own king, Philip II. From the beginning the Hollanders or Neth- erlanders had cherished a savage independence which commanded respect even in barbarous ages, and this characteristic insured a quarrel between JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 79 them and their ruler. Philip II. was King of Spain and of Sicily as well as of Holland. Born in Spain, he could not speak a word of Dutch. He was haughty, overbearing, and unscrupulous, and he resolved to make the Hollanders see in him a master as well as a king. Already in his father's reign there had been trouble because of the grow- ing Protestantism which many of the Hollanders favored. Already some of the chief Dutch cities had been punished for resisting the Emperor's authority, and their burghers sentenced to kneel in sackcloth and beg him to spare their homes from destruction. These things happened in his father's time and had made an impression upon Philip II., who saw that in every case the royal power had been triumphant, and he believed him- self invincible. Motley painted the life of Philip from the day of his inauguration through all the years of re- volt, bloodshed, and horror which marked his reign. He saw that this rebellion of the Hol- landers meant less the discontent of a people with their king than the growth of a great idea, the idea that civil and religious liberty is the right l80 JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY of all men and nations. To Motley's mind the struggle seemed like some old battle between giants and Titans. Unlike other historians, who looked over the world for a subject, rejecting first one and then another, Motley's subject took pos- session of him and would not be rejected. His work was born, as a great poem or picture is born, from a glimpse of things hidden from other eyes. But at once he discovered that Prescott had already in contemplation a history of Philip 11. This was a severe blow to all his hopes. But he resolved to see Prescott, lay the matter before him, and abide by his decision, feeling that the master of history, who was the author of the Conquest of Mexico and the Conqitest of Pe7^2i, would be the best adviser of a young and un- known writer. Prescott received the idea with the most gen- erous kindness, advised Motley to undertake the work, and placed at his disposal all the mate- rial which he himself had collected for his own enterprise. After several years the book appeared in 1856, under the title The Rise of the Dutch Republic. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY l8l To write this book Motley dwelt for years in the world of three hundred years ago, when the whole of Europe was shaken by the new Protest- antism, when Raleigh and Drake were sailing the Atlantic and adding the shores of the new world to English dominion, the French settling Canada and the Mississippi Valley, Spain send- ing her mission priests to California, and the Huguenots establishing themselves in Florida. Thus the foundations of the American Republic were being laid, while Philip was striving to overthrow the freedom of the Netherlands. Leaving the nineteenth century as far behind him as he could. Motley established himself suc- cessively at Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, and Brussels, in order to consult the libraries and archives of state which contained documents re- lating to the revolt of the Netherlands against Philip n. In speaking of his work in the li- braries of Brussels, he says that at this time only dead men were his familiar friends, and that he was at home in any country, and he calls himself a worm feeding on musty mulberry leaves out of which he was to spin silk. Day after day, year 1 82 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY after year, he haunted the old Hbraries, whose shadows held so many secrets of the past, un- til the personalities of those great heroes who fought for the liberty of Holland were as famil- iar as the faces of his own children. William ot Orange, called the Silent, the Washington of Dutch independence, Count Egmont, Van Horn, and all that band of heroes who espoused the cause of liberty, came to be comrades. And the end rewarded the years of toil. Out of old mouldy documents and dead letters Mot- ley recreated the Netherlands of the sixteenth century. Again were seen the great cities with their walls miles in extent, their gay streets, their palaces, and churches, and public buildings, and the great domains of the clergy, second to none in Europe. The nobles possessed magnificent estates and entertained their guests with jousts and tourneys like the great lords of England and France. The tradespeople and artisans who com- prised the population of the cities were divided into societies or guilds, which were so powerful that no act of state could be passed without their consent, and so rich that to their entertainments JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY I 83 the proudest nobles came as guests, to see a luxuriousness which vied with that of kings. The Dutch artists were celebrated for their noble pictures, for their marvellous skill in w^ood and stone carving, and for the v/onderful tapestries which alone would have made Dutch art famous.- In the midst of this prosperity Philip 11. came to the throne, and soon after his corona- tion the entire Netherlands were in revolt. Motley has described this struggle like an eye- witness. We see the officers of the Inquisition dragging their victims daily to the torture-cham- ber, and the starved and dying rebels defending their cities through sieges which the Spanish army made fiendish in suffering. Motley's de- scription of the siege of Leyden, and his portrait of William the Silent, are among the finest speci- mens of historical composition. The work ends with the death of the Prince of Orange, this tragic event forming a fitting climax to the great revolution which had ac- knowledged him its hope and leader. Motley carried the completed manuscript of The Rise, of the Dutch Republic to London, l84 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEV but failing to find a publisher willing to under- take such a work by an unknown author, he was obliged to produce it at his own expense. It met with the most flattering reception, and the reviews which appeared in England, France, and America placed Motley's name among the great historians. The book was soon translated into Dutch, German, and Russian. Motley's two other great works were similar in character to the first. The second work, called The History of the United Netheidands, began with the death of William the Silent, and ended with the period known as the Twelve Years' Truce, when by common consent the in- dependence of the Netherlands was recognized throughout Europe. This work consists of four volumes, the first two having been published in i860, and the re- maining tv/o in 1867. These volumes embrace much of the history of England, which became the ally and friend of Holland, and are full of the great events which made up that epoch of English history. The names of Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Leices- JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 85 ter, Lord Burghley, and the noble and chival- rous Sir Philip Sidney, who lost his life on one of the battle-fields of this war, figure as largely in its pages as those of the Dutch themselves. The war had ceased to be the revolt of Holland against Spain, and had become a mighty battle for the liberty of Europe. Every nation was interested in its progress, and all men knew that upon its success or failure would depend the fate of Europe for many centuries. In this work Motley's pen lost none of its art. The chapters follow one another in harmonious suc- cession, the clear and polished style giving no hint of the obscurities of diplomatic letters, the almost illegible manuscripts, and the contradic- tory reports which often made up the original materials. Like its predecessor, it was at once classed among the great histories of the world. The Life of John of Bameveld, who shares with William of Orange the glory of achieving Dutch independence, was the subject of Motley's next and last work. The book is not in a strict sense a biography. It is rather a narrative of the 1 86 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY quarrel of the Netherlands among themselves over theological questions. The country was now Protestant, and yet the people fought as fiercely over the different points of doctrine as when they were struggling for their inde- pendence. The book appeared in 1874, com- pleting the series, which the author called The History of the Eighty Years War for Inde- pendence. During this period of literary work Motley was twice appointed to represent the United States at foreign courts. He was Minister to Austria from 1861 to 1866, and during the stormy period of the Civil War showed his powers as a statesman in his diplomatic relations with the Austrian Court, which honored him always both as a diplomatist and as a patriot, his devotion to his country being a proverb among his fellows. In 1868 he was appointed Minister to Eng- land, but held the office only two years. On both these occasions Motley proved his ability to meet and master questions of state, and there is no doubt that, had fortune led him into active JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 8/ political life, he would have made a brilliant rep- utation. He died in May, 1877, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near London, Eng- land. CHAPTER XIV HARRIET BEECHER STUWE 1811- Harriet Beecher Stowe, the first distinguished woman vyriter of America, was born at Litch- field, Conn., in those old New England days when children were taught that good little girls must always speak gently, never tear their clothes, learn to knit and sew, and make all the responses properly in church. Such is her own story of her early education, to which is also added the item that on Sunday afternoons she was expected to repeat the catechism, and on the occasion of a visit to her grandmother, her aunt made her learn two catechisms, that of her own faith, the Episcopal, and that of Harriet's father, who was a Presbyterian minister. This discipline, however, had no depressing effect upon the child, whose family consisted of a half- HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 189 dozen healthy, clever brothers and sisters, a father who was loved more than revered even in those days when a minister w^as regarded with awe, and a stepmother whose devotion made the home-life a thing of beauty to be held in all after-years in loving memory. The old Presbyterian parsonage where Har- riet was born had in it one room that was the child's chief delight. This was her father's study, in a corner of which she loved to en- sconce herself with her favorite books gathered around her, and read or day-dream, while her father sat opposite in his great writing-chair com- posing the sermon for the next Sunday. Chil- dren's books were not plentiful in those days, and Miss Edgeworth's Tales and Cotton Ma- ther's Magiialia were her principal resource, until one joyful day, rummaging in a barrel of old ser- mons, she came upon a copy of The Arabian Nights, These flowers of fairy lore took healthy root in the imagination of the little Puritan child, whose mind had hitherto resembled the prim flower-beds of the New England gardens, where grew only native plants. The old stories 190 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Opened a new world of thought, and into this unknown reahn she entered, rambhng amid such wonderful scenes that never again could their mysterious charm cease ; when some time later her father came down from his study one day with a volume of Ivanhoe in his hand, and said : '' I did not intend that my children should ever read novels, but they must read Scott," another door into the realm of fairy was opened to the delighted child. This power to lift and lose herself in a region of thought so different from her own, became thereafter the peculiar gift by which she was en- abled to undertake the work which made her name distinguished. The library corner, however, did not hold all the good things of life, only part of them. Out- side was the happy world of a healthy country child, who grew as joyously as one of her own New England flowers. In the spring there were excursions in the woods and fields after the wild blossoms that once a year turned the coun- try-side into fairy-land ; in the summer was the joy of picnics in the old forests, and of fishing HARRIET BEECHER STOWE I9I excursions along the banks of the streams ; in the autumn came nutting parties, when the chil- dren ran races with the squirrels to see who could gather the most nuts ; and in the winter, when the snow and ice covered the earth, life went on as gayly as ever, with coasting and snow- balling, and the many ways in which the child's heart tunes itself to the spirit of nature. By the time she was five years old Harriet was a regular pupil at a small school near by, whither she also conducted, day after day, her younger brother, Henry Ward Beecher, after- ward the celebrated preacher. She was a very conscientious little pupil, and besides her school lessons, was commended for having learned twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters in the Bible during one summer. School-life henceforth was the serious business of existence, and in her twelfth year she appears as one of the honor pu- pils at the yearly school exhibition, and was grati- fied by having her composition read in the pres- ence of the distinguished visitors, her father, the minister, being among the number. The sub- ject of the composition was the immortality of 192 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE the soul, and into it Harriet had woven, as only a clever child could, all the serious thoughts that she had gleaned from theological volumes in the library, or sermons that her father preached, or from the grave conversations that were com- mon among the elders of the family. It w^as listened to with great approval by the visitors, who saw nothing absurd in the idea of a child of twelve discoursing upon such a subject, and it was especially pleasing to Harriet's father, which so delighted the affectionate heart of the little writer that she felt no higher reward could be hers. Harriet's first flight from the home nest came in her thirteenth year, when she left Litchfield to attend her sister Catherine's school in Hart- ford. As her father's salary did not permit any extra expense, Harriet went to live in the fam- ily of a friend, who in turn sent his daughter to the parsonage at Litchfield that she might attend the seminary there. This exchange of daughters was a very happy arrangement as far as Harriet was concerned, as she enjoyed the responsibility of being so much her own guardian, and took care HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 193 of herself and her little room with what she her- self calls *' awful satisfaction." Here she began the study of Latin, which fas- cinated her, the Latin poetry making such an im- pression on her mind that it became her dream to be a poet. Pages and pages of manuscript were now written in the preparation of a great drama called '' Cleon," the scene of which was laid in the time of the Emperor Nero. Every moment that could be spared from actual duties was given to this play, which might have grown to volumes had not the young author been suddenly brought up sharply by her sister, who advised her to stop writing poetry and discipline her mind. Where- upon Harriet plunged into a course of Butlers Analogy and other heavy reading, forgot all about the drama, and was so wrought upon by Baxter's Samfs Rest that she longed for nothing but to die and be in heaven. The next years of Harriet's life were spent almost entirely at the Hartford school, where she was successively pupil and teacher until her father removed to Cincinnati, whither she ac- companied him with the intention of helping 13 194 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE her sister to found a college for women. And, although all undreamed of, it was in this place that she was first to feel the inspiration of the work that made her famous. During a short visit across the Ohio River into Kentucky, she saw for the first time a large plantation and something of the life of the negro slaves. Though apparently noticing little of what was before her eyes, she was really absorbing every- thing with all the keenness of a first impression. The mansion of the planter and the humble cot of the negro, the funny pranks and songs of the slaves, and the pathos that touched their lives, all appealed to her so strongly that, years after- ward, she was able to reproduce with utmost faithfulness each picturesque detail of planta- tion life. In her twenty-fifth year Harriet was married to Professor Stowe, of Lane Seminary. She had for some time been a contributor to various periodicals, and continued her literary work af- ter her marriage, producing only short sketches for various papers, an elementary geography, and a collection of sketches in book form under the HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1 95 title, The Mayflower. These efforts had been well received by publishers, and friends prophe- sied a satisfactory career, but it was many years afterward before the author gave herself to the literary life with the earnestness and devotion which so characterized her nature. Some of her experiences in this Western home, where living was so primitive, were very funny, and some were very trying ; but through them all Mrs. Stowe kept a clear head and brave heart. Sometimes she would be left without warning with the entire care of her house and children ; often her literary work was done at the sick-bed of a child ; and more than once a promised story was written in the intervals of baking, cooking, and the superintendence of other household matters ; one of her stories at this time was finished at the kitchen table, while every other sentence was addressed to the ignorant maid, who stood stupidly awaiting in- structions about the making of brown bread. After seventeen years' experience in the West- ern colleges, Professor Stowe accepted a profes- sorship at Bowdoin, and the family removed to 196 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Brunswick, Me. Here her stories and sketches, some humorous, some pathetic, still continued to add to the household's income, and many a com- fort that would have been otherwise unknown was purchased with the money thus obtained. Mrs. Stowe's first important book took the form of an appeal for the freedom of the slaves of the South. One day, while attending com- munion service in the college chapel, she saw, as in a mental picture, the death-scene of Uncle Tom, afterward described in her celebrated book. Returning home, she wrote out the first draft of that immortal chapter, and calling her children around her read it to them. The two eldest wept at the sad story, which from this beginning grew into the book which made its author famous over the civilized world. In Uncle Tonis Cabin it was Mrs. Stowe's aim to present the every-day life of the Southern plantation. She chose for her hero one of those typical negro characters whose faithfulness and loyalty would so well illustrate the fidelity of his race, while his sad story would make an appeal for the freedom of his people. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1 9/ Into this stoiy she wove descriptions of South- ern life, delineations of negro character, and so many incidents, pathetic and humorous, that it seemed to present when finished a life-like picture of plantation life. The pathetic figure of Uncle Tom, the sweet grace of Eva, the delightful Topsy, and the grim Yankee spinster show alike the sympathetic heart and mind of the author, who linked them so closely together in the invis- ible bonds of love. The beautiful tribute that St. Clair pays to his mother's influence in one of the striking passages of the book, was but a memory of Mrs. Stowe's own mother, who died when her daughter was four years old. No one could read this pathetic tale without being touched by the sorrows beneath which the negro race had bowed for generations, and through which he still kept a loyal love for his white master, a pride in the family of which he counted himself a member, and that pathetic patience which had been the birthright of his people. The book Uncle Toms Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, ran first as a serial, and came out in book form in 1852. Into it the author had thrown IQS HARRIET BEECHER STOWE all the seriousness of her nature, and it met with overwhelming success. It was translated into twenty different languages, and Uncle Tom and Eva passed, like the shadow and sunlight of their native land, hand in hand into the homes, great and humble, of widely scattered nations. Another plea for the negro called Dred, a Tale of the Dismal SwaiJip, followed Uncle Toms Cabin within a few years, after which Mrs. Stowe turned her attention to the material that lay closer at hand, and began the publication of a series of New England life. Into these she put such a wealth of sympathetic reminiscences, with such a fund of keen observation, that they stand easily as types of the home-life of her na- tive hills. The first of this series was The Minis- ter s Wooing, a story of a New England minister's love. It is full of the sights and scenes familiar to the author from childhood, and is a faithful picture of Puritan village life, wherein are intro- duced many characters as yet new in fiction. Unlike Hawthorne, who sought inspiration in the spiritual questions which so largely made up the life of the Puritans, Mrs. Stowe found her HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1 99 delight in giving the home-life, the household ambitions, the village interests, a place in liter- ature, thus preserving a phase of society which has passed away even in her own lifetime. The Minister s /^d?