^/. v^' O x^^^<<^ ° .^^ -^c^. ^^K <' -^ "^^ '^ N ' ^> ^-i> .^♦'* i>< >'\' •=!r f ^ \ ..^ ^1: N^ V^ ^ ^ " A ^ 5l - *^ ^ « * s ^ A J^ "c l^ * N ^^ ^0- \^ c c^'^>. .x«^- ^M^. '., "c ^/^ * N o ^ S <^o '*^ %^ ^ ^^v X -*,^.^ ,0^^ -'.>;'- s" .A ■^oo^ ;\ ^%- ,' ^-^.K^^ ■- ^.^ "^ '^c^ « ^^> ^ « ' ^ C' °/J" V' "tp ..#• : . ^> ^0 ^. ''v ^c.. ^^ . -V^ ^\ ^^^'^ ^. v^ ^"'"^ > "^' c^^' : .#• .\ ,. > O >< ,, LETTERS IISCELLAIIES PEOSE, RHYME, AND BLANK-VEESE, BY LOUISE ELEMJAY, A LADY OF THE SOUTH. A sigh, a smile, and folly's tinkling chime, These are our footprints on the sands of time. SECOND EDITION. CINCIXKATI: MOORE, AN■DERSO]S^ WILSTACH & KEYS, 28 WEST FOURTH STREET. 1853. 3 fei 1^1 Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1852, by WM. E. ASIIMORE, for the AUTHOR, In the Clerk's Office of the District of Kentucky. sK! \ CINCINNATI: MOKGAN the emhers al- ready prejyared to receive the unconscious child, now firmly grasped in the arms of one, who, more intelligent than the rest, had observed the value ^^luhite people^'^ set upon their children, and resisted all their threats and promises, exclaiming "J/z^-^^rw^ Picaninny ! Mistrus Picaninny! " He afterward said that in his counti'y it was nothing uncommon for a father to take his child from the mother'' s arms^ bury it in the warm ashes and set his foot or war club on it till its struggles were over. And the gang, I am told, were more astonished at the unreasonable and unheard of opposition they had met, than enraged at their disappointment. What, not al- low them a Picaninny to roast when tired of other food ? Absurd ! what else were they good for 1 There is Arca- dian life for you. mony" is very apt to be " forgotten" — omitted — and, as might be ex- pected, the obnoxious conditions are almost uniformly evaded in pres- ence of company. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 149 But you will ask, why slaves ever plot against or abandon their masters, if, on the whole they are com- fortable or contented ? I answer, because they, like other people, do not always feel content to "let ''well enough^ alone" — for the same reason that mankind are alway sighing after an unattained and unattainable some- thing beyond their reach. It is because "the uneradica- ble taint of sin " has spread its foul contamination, wide and deep, over a whole moral universe. '^Aye, but has not the whip some agency in the matter," you exclaim. " We do not inflict corporal punishment on oury^^^ ser- vants" — I beg your pardon, "helps" — groiv7i ones^ you mean — and true you do not, hecause you have it in your power to turn them from your doors when idle or refrac- tory, to send them to the police if dishonest ; the case is no longer parallel, take something else which is correlative, as for instance, the minority of children, apprentice in- dentures, state's prison regulations, naval and military discipline ; and what do their annals proclaim ? Why, that when one human being comes in possession of an- other, "to have and to hold," "for better for worse" — peaceable if possible^ forcible if necessary^ is the motto upon which mankind, in all countries and all ages, have universally been constrained to act. If there is a bet- ter, I should like to see it exemplified. But why do I reply ? Let the tale of the English sailor on Lake Erie answer. From such ruthless bar- barity the strong arm of law protects the American slave, though the free-born Briton perish in its fangs; and the much stronger one of public opinion brands with indelible infamy the master who is cruel to his slave. The mark of Cain is upon him; let him go where he will, his reputation haunts him like a shadow ; 13 150 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. he is set down for a dangerous neighbor, an unkind hus- band, an unnatural father, a monster in the shape of a man. This correct moral feeling must inevitably exert a powerful sway over the passions of a people, nervously, I had almost said ridiculously, sensitive on the score of reputation. And that I have read the feeling of the South on this point correctly, witness the sudden and stern retribution that fell on the mistress of the "female slave in New Orleans," whose case the Misses Grimke so triumphantly quote, to prove that such scenes are frequently enacted in families, though the guest knows it not. A lady may conceal her domestic mismanage- ment from a morning visitor, but will not an intimate acquaintance detect it in the course of a week, think you ? Visits at the South are not limited to hours, and your Southron is not the man to go about with a smiling brow, "nursing his wrath to keep it warm," much less to perpetrate an act of cold-blooded ferocity. Having alluded to the Misses Grimke, who I suppose are still "exhibiting" at the North, I will add, that they are the daughters of Judge, and sisters of the late Hon. Thos. S. Grimke, of Charleston, S. C, of course from the first circles of society, and I am told, ^''very in- telligent ^ But while I respect their " undoubted good intentions," I cannot but surmise, that the fact of their being still "^A^ Misses Grhnke'^^ (though old enough, it seems, to manage their own affairs their own way,) has something with their faith and practice. Energetic minds, my dear C. — and some such there are even in woman's fragile form — must have scope for action, and if it be not found in the hallowed home of affection, it will be sought elsewhere, it may chance to be in the surveillance of their neighbor's affairs, politics, speech- TETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 151 making, "pill-taking, or the like innocent amusements." Perhaps they may learn in their travels, that people must take the world as they find it, not as they fancy they would like to make it, and that while wealth con- fers power, poverty must yield submission. But the respect so freely accorded to tJieir integrity of purpose I cannot extend to their coadjutors. Some may have commenced impostors and ended dupes ; a very few who are neither fanatics nor fools may still rank among them ; but the majority, I fear, act upon the Demetrius princi- ple — "Sirs, know ye not that by this craft we have our wealth ?" If "proofs" to the contrary are extant, what and where are they ? As yet I see nothing more than the petty punctuality of an adroit swindler, bent on defraud- ing you to a large amount. Of course you will under- stand it is of the leaders I speak ; but who are they, pray ? It seems not even infamy can drag them from obscurity. Before entering upon the last "count in the indict- ment," it is necessary to advert, (slightly as possible,) to another grave charge very seriousl}^ brought against slavery by advocates of emancipation, namely, that "it encourges licentiousness." This is a bad subject for a lady's pen, and were it not that omission might be con- strued admission, most gladly would I pass it over alto- gether. But having observed for several years, that nearly all ''runaways" were described as "yellow," or "bright" — that is, with a cross of the white blood more or less remote — I suppose there must be some grounds for the allegation. Still if certain infamous statistics — I mean exactly what I say, infamous statistics^ not merely statistics of infamy — published a few years since in some of the northern cities, contained one truth to ten falsehoods, the reproach does not come with a good 152 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. grace from that quarter — they are not entitled to "cast the first stone." And I put it to any man of common sense and common honesty, to say, if in his opinion, the evil would be like to be obviated, by bringing superiors and inferiors of the same race and color into the fre- quent and familiar contact and association which must inevitably ensue wherever negro slavery is abolished ? If so, where is that High Priest of "Moral Reform," Rev. Mr. M'Dowal, the arch panderer, with all his vir- tuous furor? "Othello's occupation's gone," though, now I come to think of it, I believe he and his journal were both suppressed long ago as a public nuisance. If they were not they ought to have been, for never was a more pestilent device for running all decency out of ex- istence in an ill-judged crusade against vice. However, peace to his ashes, if he has made his apotheosis ; though, I fear, if one were to examine too nicely, his mantle might be found to have fallen on some shoulders where it sits quite as ungracefully as it would on any this side 37 ° 28' north. I do not mean to assert, that no such thing as illicit intercourse ever exists between master and slave, for if the cause require a single falsehood or mis- representation in its defense, it shall be abandoned at once to those more expert than myself in the use of such weapons, if there be any truth in the old adage, that "practice makes perfect." Better to worship truth al- ways at the bottom of the well, than see her elevated to the surface only to become the foot-ball of every intellec- tual gladiator. But I do very sincerely believe such conduct to be far kss frequent than you of the north suppose; not quite so common, at least, as to reconcile a Southern community to the idea of Amalgamation. ^^ Disru;ption of family ties^' might be urged with LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 153 far gi'eater propriety, for, indeed, this is no small evil ; though, fortunately, mutual pride and aftection, as well as religion and humanity, are continually rising up more and more for its suppression. I dare say, the idea of ^^ mutual affection" is all "heathen Greek" to you; but only turn to old Scottish history or romance, and see the devotion of clansman to chief — the pertinacity with vrhich laird and foster-brother just rvill wink at each other's enormities — and you will have a much clearer conception of the case. It's a pity the really honest and humane wouldn't, instead of looking only at the side of the shield their own hands have painted, take time to observe how often the freed slaves of New York are driven back, as pests and nuisances, naked and destitute, to the shelter of their old homes, by those who have no knowledge of, and no forbearance with, the real ingrain negro nature. Probably they never dream of one man's ofiering " two prices" for another's slave, or taking half the value for his own, rather than part man and wife, and another's saying, ' ' Choose your inaster^'' (which means that a hundred or so, more or less, isn't to stand in the way of such choice), and a third, virtually " throwing in a child or two," to avoid separating young ones from their mother, or of servants, put up at public sale or hire, saying, ''^ I shanH serve you^ sir^''^ an intimation which few venture to disre- gard at the risk of being "bedeviled out of time, money, and patience into the bargain ; " but I think they would be apt to get pretty much out of conceit of themselves, or disgusted with the objects of their commiseration, could they only hear the universal cry of horror — Oh^ Massh\ they is so hard to please ! " — with which the poor creatures invariably recoil from living a single 154: LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. year with any of these seif-same sympathizers that happen to settle among them. " Take you down the river to some of them Frenchmeyi or Yankees in New Orleans^^ is about the ne plus ultra of threats to an idle or vicious servant ; and " thankless as a Southern slave to a Northern Abolitionist^''^ as good an illustra- tion of ingratitude as any mortal, aic fait to slavery as it is, would ever need: for while the master regards said Abolitionist as a sort of rabid animal, whom it is perfectly right and necessary to hunt down, the slave unquestionably despises hiin^ from the very bottom of his soul, as neither more nor less than one of those wretched Pariahs so immeasurably inferior to all " 'spect- able colored ladies and gemmen," that there is almost contamination in the very name ! But you should hear a negro say, ^^ Poor white folks ! ^^ if you want to know how completely the vocabulary opprobrious, the air con- tumelious, and the intendment infamous, can be ex- hausted in a single breath. Yet, after all, the fact still vQ-m^m^— families are separated^ and sometimes, perhaps, (though very rarely, I believe), capriciously ; and could this result be traced primarily or exclusively to slavery, it would of itself be an unanswerable argument against the institution. But if this is to be abolished in mercy to "the poor, injured African," what, or who, is to stand between him and that stern master of the free, " the unspiritual god, Cir- cumstance ; " and what is to be done with his minion, Common Law: for who has not seen the household of the Caucasian scattered, like leaves before the autumn blast, at the very shadow of his coming ? These and the like considerations prove, most conclu- sively to me, that Abolition is not a question of religion LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 165 or morality, or humanity even ! What is it, then ? Simply a political hobby. And now, according to my own showing, I am about to give irrefragable evidence that Celibacy has marked me for her own ! "Well, so it is; but let that pass. "A w^oman meddling with poli- tics is like a one-eyed dog in a meat-shop," says some elegant writer ; but not having his fear before my eyes, I shall venture — consoling myself, meantime, with a re- flection w^hich, it seems, never occurred to him, namely, that a dog with no eyes has still tico senses by which to distinguish fresh meat from stale. To satisfy yourself that my position is correct, mark the persevering, uniform effort to bring this same anti- slavery question to bear upon elections, and the use made of it in the Congressional halls of the country. Did you never see the mother of an unruly urchin keep a venerable birch suspended over her mantle-piece, to be hinted at, specially referred to, and even taken down and brandished about the ears of the refractory subject, as occasion might require ? Well, just such another rod of correction is this slave question in the hands of a politician. No sooner is an obnoxious measure in dan- ger of being carried, than up starts some one with ^^ slave representation ;''"' another chimes in '^ eq^ical rights;^'' a third follows up the cry with "jurisdiction OF THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT ; " and Mr. Adams shall ''^ ask leave to present a petition^"' and Mr. Yan Buren have his " doiibts^^ till the house is distracted, the mem- bers in a frenzy, and the original subject, for the time being, a forgotten dream to all but the makers of the uproar. And this is legislation 1 By-the-by, has your father forgiven the last-named gentleman his success, in consideration of his " doubts 156 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. respecting the District of Columbia ? " Aye, he doubts^ does he? So do not I, that, let him flourish the old birch as much as he will, the time to use it will never come in his day, if he can prevent it. He has no ambi- tion to "damn himself to everlasting fame" as the dis- memberer of the Union : in the very characteristics of the man the country has the best of all possible as- surances that the emergency is not yet. Should it ever come at all, he knows very well there is no alternative but war — ^'' war to the Jcnife^^ — yes, to the hilt! He knows the South will 7ieve7' succumb to this foreign domination ; that it cannot — it ought not. He knows every son of the soil would pour out his life-blood like water, and repel such an aggression on his rights to the last gasp of existence ! And there is not a demagogue of the North who talks, " like a sick man in his dreams," of " coercing the South into measures," but knows, too, in his inmost soul, that he " would cavil with the devil for the ninth part of a hair," were he similarly situated. Daughter of America! what dost thou here in this field of unhallowed strife ? Is it to stand, like the Sa- bine wife, between your country and destruction ; or, like the Scripture's madman, " to scatter around fire- brands, arrows and death ! " Beware ! The fiery mass of human passion, once ignited, will bury in undistin- guished ruin all that is " lovely and of good report" in public character, all that is estimable and dear in pri- vate life, and leave their burning ashes on the soul! And shall woman's breath fan the flame of civil dis- cord, and woman's hand whet the dagger that is to drink the warm blood of a brother ? Forbid it, genius OF MY COUNTRY ! Do not do me the injustice to suppose I have forgotten LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 157 for a moment that I was once a child of the l^orth. No, JSTew York contains the ashes of my father, to me it is consecrated ground. It was the birthplace of my brother, and every spot whereon he trod is JloIij^ and I love it as those only can who have little else to cling to but their country. Her lofty highlands and lowly glens, her mighty lakes and noble rivers, and rushing cataracts, have all their place in my affections. I am proud of her noble motto Excelsior, of her unrivaled civil, re- ligious, and literary institutions ; above all, I love her for her good old aristocracy — pillars on which the vast fabric of social rights must rest. But while I thus look to her with exultation and pride, it is with indignation and shame I behold the moral scavengers of the old world, pouring wave after wave of human corruption through all the portals of that fair edifice, till every avenue is filled to the gorge with the foul pollution. It is as if the Temple of Cloacis had crushed the Par- thenon ! New York suffers for a fault not her own ; she has been cheated of her identity by an impudent impostor, who goes swaggering up and down in her cast-clothes, and caricatures her to her face. But shall the country, by its naturalization law^s, connive at this innovation on her domestic quiet, and then complain that her family is not well regulated, and that she herself "plays most fantastic tricks before high heaven ? " It is a wonder she has not gone frantic before now; but the day is not far distant, I hope, when her majestic voice shall be heard, hushing into silence the babbling crew, who have so long usurped her honors and dishonored her name, at once and forever. The above, my dear C, is written exclusively for your 168 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. benefit, not to enable anything or anybody that ever chanced to meet me in the streets, to talk herself into a blue-stocking oracle pro tem.^ on the strength of having "seen a letter from an acqiiaintance at the South." You know who will translate for you, and he and one or two others are welcome to the perusal if their courage does not fail them "upon sight;" but no more. I have contemned the majesty of mob, and set at naught the dignity of canaille^ and even were it not so, I am not conceited enough to expect my opinion to have any Weight with abolitionists, who are well known to be ex officio^ as impervious to argument as India-rubber to water. So as no good can come of the exposal, if this is circulated as my Letters from Virginia were, it will be without my consent; "I would rather print before I publish," as a certain clergyman used to say of his ser- mons. Adieu ma chere Gousine. L. REMINISCENCE. "He who sits above In his calm gloiy, will forgive the love His creatures bear each other, even though blent With a vain worship; for its close is dim Even in tears, which lead the wrong soul back to him." We were but Two. Early unkindness drew Its line of hated demarcation round Our childhood's hearth, shutting us coldly out From kindred sympathies. We were but Two; Each was to each the other's world — for us There was no other. He whose sunny smile, Illumed life's early dawn, might never more LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 159 Dispense that cheering light to guide ns through Its wanderings ! And she, who should have held Unto the parched and fevered lip, the cup Of living waters, pure from the fount Of woman's holy love — why she, aye she Had given e'en thee, thou sinless one, To Death's embrace, ''''most cheerfully^ so it Had pleased God ! " There was another then. To walk with me life's "peopled desert!" Such destiny I knew was mine. Full oft I had been warned by sneering lip, and eye Flashing in anger and in scorn ; and by A thrilling tenderness of look and tone, Whose melancholy sweetness haunts me yet, That /was born for this. I knew it well, E'en in that hour of tearless agony. When first returning reason vainly strove To put away the fearful consciousness. Of what mistaken kindness had concealed. It was not well ; they should have told me / Was fatherless ! That the radiant eye. Which ever turned with mellowed light to mine, Had closed on earth to ope in heaven. They should have told me that the smile so like To moonlight upon mist, or as the rays Of setting sunbeams on a ruined fane. Holy, and bright, and glorious, yet sad. Was now a gem for memory's casket Only ! They should have told all this, ere 1 Was strong to suffer and endure ; and then, Perhaps, I had not vainly yearned to feel 160 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. The cold, damp grave-clods, pressing heavy down Upon my throbbing heart, so they would lay Me by his side — e'en in the grave to seek Companionship denied on earth. But Death, (Grown dainty,) battens not on refuse food ; And therefore the unloved lived on — the dead Mocking the living — a bed of lava In its own crater frozen ! Such I knew Must be my life's brief history, not thine. Oh not for thee, thou young and guileless one, Were dark forebodings of untimely blight, And early death! I had not dreamed of this For thee. Oh it is little, that the brief Vain struggle with despair, should shed the frosts Of age upon the brow of youth, pouring Contempt on manhood's j)ride ; but it is much. When stern oppression flings his ruthless grasp Upon the slumb'ring passions of a child, Scarce conscious of their name, and gifts them with A giant strength to war with fate! Then girds The mail of conflict on thy shrinking heart, Oh woman ! saying to such as thee. Go forth , and match with power, and cope with guile, And battle to the death in passion's warfare! Woe for thy budding hopes and young afiections ! They are ever first and noblest victims In the strife. And woman's gentle nature. Her happy, trusting sjpirit. they, oh tluy^ Are traitors and must die the death. I do Remember me of such an hour; madly LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 161 Through all the depths of outraged nature, Its very elements were nerved for strife, And from the mingled voice of agony, And love, and pride, there came a vow not heard On earth, but known in heaven, ever to guard And shield thee with the might of strong affection, So that no burning blight should lay its seal Of withering on thy youthful heart, bowing Its lofty aspirations down. Then, too, There came the stern resolve ; no Christian grace, Kor woman-weakness, nor love of God, nor man, Nor hope in life, nor fear of death, should win Me from my haughty purpose, ere I saw That spurner of the infant boy, bowed low Before the honored man, and scorn for scorn Returned the saintly scorner ! And well That vow was kept, till Death, the officious And unwelcome, interposed to cancel all. She, whose joy it was to make the fountains Of young life o'erflow in bitterness, he, Whose pride had been to cast the healing salt Into the troubled tide — Death, death, these Are thy chosen ! Wherefore, oh God, so sternly Hast thou tried thy creature? I could forego The paltry triumph over pride abased, I might have spared the winner from the race Before the goal was won ; but not, oh not From out my inmost soul thy priceless love, My more than brother! I was believing 162 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. Hoping, trusting all for thee ; but dreaming Never once, that Death's stern hand was feeling For thy heart-strings, and mine not yet grown cold. Men talh of disappointment, when they mourn Some little germ of promise blighted, ere The touch of hope's creative hand had formed And fashioned it to beauty ! When the tree, The stately tree, whose stem was sown in hope And nursed in fear, until the heart's best blood Would flow like water out to yield its root One drop of moisture — when this is stricken down, Before the very eyes that looked to it For shelter from life's wintry storms, and suns Of sultry summer — eyes that had grown dim Watching its growth and watering it with tears ; Then, then 'tis felt! All, all is over now ; And that which ivas an adamant, and braved The fury of the elements in strife. Is now the veriest reed that floats upon The tide of time, unknowing w^here to anchor. God grant it may be on the "Rock of Ages." — , Dec, 1837. TO THE LOVED IN HEAVEN. Twelve weary years, twelve weary years, I've lingered on since thou wert gone ; Pygmalion's statue, bathed in tears. To mourn the breathing spirit flown. And yet I would not have thee back. To tread with me life's thorny way ; LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 163 My heart's best blood is on its track, Oh God ! I would I were away ! Away from sin, away from strife. Away from doubt, away from fear, Away from all that makes this life A stifled sigh, a falling tear. I would not have thee back to grieve, O'er blighted hope and baffled fame ; I would not have thy heart to weave. Of burning thought, its pall of flame. But I would blend thy dust with mine. When in the grave I rest my head ; Earth has no love for me like thine, I would I too were with the dead. Laudex-dale, Tenn., June IQth, 1848. FOURTH OF JULY ADDRESS TO THE SONS OF TEMPERANCE. Prepared for a young lady to deliver^ with Bible and Banner to a newly organized Division. (inserted by request.) Rev. Sir and Worthy Brother : As the honored agent of your humble auxiliaries, al- low me to express to yourselves and the Sons of Tem- perance in this town and vicinity, their high estimate of your incalculable services in a field where the immor- tal seeds of Faith, and Hope, and Love are sown in time, to blossom and expand for all eternity ! But while millions are congregated to celebrate this anniversary of a nation's birth, let us remember, that 164 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. there are more potent enemies of human weal than for- eign domination or political vassalage ; and not forget in the peans due to the past the untiring vigilance de- manded for the future. The edicts of civil despotism may reach life and property, its chains chafe and gall the athletic form and sinewy limb ; but what are they to the ''iron gyves " that eat into the soul^ the fierce sirocco that scorches and withers up the brain, the cold palsy that paral^^zes the will, the fell grasp that crushes out the very life of life from every phase of existence ? The regal or military despot may sometimes require a vic- tim ; war here and there claim his holocaust. ''''But who slew all these f " All these, whose bones bleach and moulder from the shores of the Atlantic to the strand of the Pacific i Who reduced that strong man to the helplessness of infancy — who sent that venerable father, that soul- stricken mother, transfixed on many a spear from the broken stafi* of their old age, down mourning to the grave? Who betrayed those silver hairs to the dust, and soiled the glory of their crown with the mire of the street? Who bathed the face of that proud boy in scalding tears for a father's shame, and sent that promis- ing young man to the scaffold, that stalwart form to the felon's cell? Who dragged that minister of the Most High God from the very "horns of the altar," to wal- low in the filth of his own degradation? Who planted that moral Upas to distil its deadly miasma over all who repose in its shade, till the very breath of heaven — "God's blessing breathed upon a fainting earth" — is redolent and reeking with the foul effluvia of the bot- tomless pit? Who wrested that last crust from the famishing daughter of affluence, and foi'ced her to the LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 165 gate of the alms-house, or the grave of the suicide? Who launched that young girl — despair at her heart, a father's curse ringing in her ears, and a father's dis- honor clinging to her name — into that vortex where health, and innocence, and peace, and all are lost? Who forced that frantic v^oman to fly from the husband of her youth, and chained that living, breathing, sentient being to the foul and loathsome carcass of a soulless, senseless brute ? Who baptized that child in its mother's gore, and laid the wretched parent in a bloody grave by a husband's hand? Who turned that other home into a pandemonium, whose frenzied inmates would gladly choose ''strangling and death rather than life?" Who transformed that once gentle, loving wife into an incarnate fiend — who made her a foul plague-spot in crea- tion, a burning stigma on her sex and race, over which angels well might weep ? At whose bidding does " Love " thus "laugh at faith," man's honor and woman's peace, all promise of distinction, all sense of security, all dream of happiness here and hereafter, flit away like the shadow of a shade? who is it that thus chases reason, and penitence, and pardon, and hope, and faith, from the couch of the dying, while the poor conscionce-stricken maniac is already raving in the agonies of the "second death?" Ah, they vanish, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," before the breath of that "pestilence that walketh in darkness and wasteth at noonday," and the iron nerve, and herculean frame, and giant intellect, bow down al- most vnthoiit a struggle: and the "worm of the still" winds coil after coil of his serpentine fold around the unresisting victim, till thought, and life, and all, are strangled in his deadly embrace! And is there no 14 166 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. hand outstretched to save — no bulwark for defense — 710 shout "to THE RESCUE?" Oh, yes ! they are coming — • aye coming — from every valley and hill-top in our land, weak and impotent it may be in their own individual strength, but mighty as the overwhelming avalanche in the resistless momentum of concentrated power; and thank God, there is hope at last, that the progress of King Alcohol may yet be stayed ! It is because the noble "Sons," whom you this day represent, have enrolled their names in this band of moral heroes, that we, your few and feeble allies, would give to our admiration and gratitude a more enduring expression, than the trembling sounds which now vibrate on the air, in their passage to oblivion. And, therefore, we turn with one accord, not to diamond or opal, but to that "pearl of exceeding price, whose beauty shall not decay," for it concentrates and refracts the rays of Di- vinity, to irradiate the wide circle of humauity. To you. Reverend Sir, the professed expositor of this Sacred Yolume, I need not expatiate on its noble simpli- city and touching pathos, its unrivaled beauty and match- less sublimity, its lofty morality, practical precepts, and ultimate bearing on man's character and destiny. Com- pared with its luminous and simple ethics, how dark and complicate appear the most lucid dogmas of the ablest hu- man casuist. As a science nothing can be more abstruse — as a rule of practice nothing more clear and concise. It bears the impress of Divinity — man did not make, he cannot destroy — and when a God condescends to teach, should not all nature di'aw near, with humble reverence, and listen ? From his " golden rule," we learn " to raise up the bowed down," to "bind up the broken in heart and bruised in spirit," to sustain the weak, defend the LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 167 defenseless, keclaim the erring, and ''^prevent the foot that is ready to slide.''^ But what avails it to under- stand the injunction unless we reduce it to practice? "If ye know these things," says our blessed Saviour, "happy are ye if ye do them." The voice of all nature proclaims to man — " This, this is not thy rest ; ''^passing aivay " is written on all that life or earth contains ; yet how many choose to merge the nobler in the baser instincts of their nature, and turn their backs upon their Maker and the Most- High God, their Redeemer! Alas! alas! that man, " the worm, the god," should so prefer the reptile to the Divinity of his nature, forgetting alike his high origin and immortal destiny ! But it is even so : and here, then, is ample room for us to approve ourselves sons and daughters of God as well as of Temperance ; for here is a field wide as the area of humanity — labor mo- mentous as the interests of eternity. Let the infidel scofi*, and the orthodox opposer range himself in open hostility to all benevolent association ; let the lukewarm friend virtually throw Ms influence into the adverse scale ; but v:e must not falter ! We have put our hands to the work ; " and our earnest raust not slacken into play ! " We have joined our- selves to the battle ; and he that would turn back from the fury of the onset, "^5 as when a standard-bearer fainteth ! " For us — for you particularly, young man — there is no looking hack ! The lip that predicts your failure, the voice that would lure you from your post, would be first and foremost to sneer at your weakness and deride your desertion. The very eye that now smiles in seeming contempt or indifl'erence on your organization, might, perhaps, mourn in secrecy and 168 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. tears over its dissolution ! Go on, then — in the name of all that is sacred to man, all that is dear to woman, GO on! "Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavor; let the great meaning ennoble it ever! " Take, then, this priceless legacy to a ruined world — this chart, drawn by the finger of Omnipotence, to guide man, by Calvary's Cross, to the throne of the Most High. Bind it to your bosoms, till the spirit of its pre- cepts has passed into your hearts and lives again in your lives ! Take, too, this fair banner; turn your eye to its silken sheen: let Fidelity be your crest; Love and Pqrity your " sword and shield ; " Faith your talisman ; Hope your watchword ; ''''upward and omaard^^ jouv career. Faint not, falter not, till man recognizes man as his brother, and stands up once more in the image of his Maker — •"regenerated, redeemed, disenthralled!" " Men of thought, be up and stirring, I^'ight and day; Sow the seed — withdraw the curtain — Clear the way I Men of action, aid and cheer them As ye may. " Once the welcome light has broken, "Who shall say What the unimagined glories Of the day ? "What the evil that shall perish In its ray ? Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way ! " Fling your proud colors to the breeze ! — and now, in the name of the God of Battles, go forth, " conquering and to conquer! " "IS'ot for the brightness of a mortal wreath" — not for the idle bravnras, the empty applause LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES, 169 of a transitory crowd — O no! they would be insult and mockery in an hour like this — but for the sublime as- surance that " He which converteth a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death." " They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma- ment ; and they who turn many to righteousness, as the stars, forever and ever ! " L. MIDNIGHT MUSINGS. My fate is dark — my spirit high ; No voice of love thrills on my ear ; No smile of hope relumes my eye : My soul is sad — my heart is sere. Friend after friend, I've seen them die, Ovfelt them change : dream after dream, I've watched their flight, all wild and high — Their fall, in cold oblivion's stream. And Fancy folds her weary wings. And Genius checks his eagle flight ; A haunting gleam of shapeless things Is all of Thought's once gorgeous light. What is my love ? A worthless boon Back on the giver coldly thrust. What is my life ? A hollow moan. My requiem ? "Dust to dust ! " What have we left, my soul, to seek? The smile of love, the voice of praise, When beauty wanes, is cold and mute As are thy lute's forgotten lays. 170 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. What have we left I O nought on earth: The minstrel-eye, whose radiance flung A glory o'er the inner life, " Eye hath not seen," nor poet sung : The minstrel-voice, whose echo stirred Within my heart a dream of song; Earth hath not seen, time hath not heard A strain so wild, so sweet, so long : The spirit-wing, whose dazzling flight Spanned earth and heaven, and skies and seas, The spirit-crown, whose magic light Flung glory on the passing breeze: The spirit's might, that high o'er all In regal splendor bore its sway ; The spirit's love, that knew no pall — O God! that these should pass away! The rest, the rest ! not theirs to cry The craven note, we fail! we fail? A broken plume, a shrouded eye, A trampled leaf — these tell the tale. "Soiled with the dust of men," that wing, That angel wing in darkness lies : A naked thorn, a nameless grief. Is all of Genius' cherished prize. Alas ! thou wing, thou weary wing, Thou crown of glory and of pride, Earth may not heed, poor fainting thing, The life-drop ebbing from thy side. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 171 Earth may not know from what a height That bird of song was stricken clown ; Earth may not know the gems thou'st lost Bright Genius, from thy starry crown. Alas, for thee, thou weary wing ! The coil is round thee all too fast ; Too close to earth thy pinions cling ; A trance-like death hath o'er thee past ! O wing, O angel wing, arise, And plume thee for a prouder flight ! In vain, in vain — 'the filmy eyes Are closing in eternal night. "Woe for thee, wing, O wayworn wing, Gone is thy splendor and thy pride; God help thee now, forsaken thing, Not thus, not thus thou shouldst have died ! God of all life ! to thee we bring The ashes from a funeral pyre ! ****** "God of all life! to thee I string The chords of my neglected lyre! " The rushing of that spirit-wing, How sweeps it now heaven's arch along, Its clarion note all high and clear — " Salvation" is my loftiest song! Life, joy, and hope, and all in all, My Savior, God, in thee I find ; Back to the earth I cast its thrall — Ye may not stay the chainless mind. ^72 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. Hinder me not, frail child of day, My course is high, my pinion fleet — Hinder me not ! Away, away, I'll lay my song at Jesus' feet ! " Arh, Dec. 31, 1849. FRAGMENT. " Love ! thy altar is on high, Though burns its flame within the heart." SUTERMEISTEB. It is ! it is ! The voiceless grave Gives back the yearning soul no sound or. tone : Earth's harps have no deep melody that thrills Through the lone chambers of the haunted heart, The song that heralds bliss immortal ! Thy home, O Love ! must he in heaven ! L. "FAIL!'' FAIL! -IT DARE NOT THINK TO FAIL Rejply to the exclamation^ ^''Ifs a wonder your eye doesn't fail^ with such had health and little careP'^ " Fail ! " fail ! It dare not think to fail- Minerva stalking by its side. And Pleasure sighing o'er the vale For fairer hours to her denied. '-'- Fail ! " fail — ambition at the heart, Burning its liquid orb to coal ; While Health and ease still stand apart, "With wistful eye on far-off goal ! LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 173 " Fail ! " fail — when golden Hope hath poured Her molten splendors on its hall, And wary Time hath grasped the hoard To hide it 'neath his fun'ral pall ! ' Fail ! " fail — Jioio could it fail, when Life Transfixed each glance upon a thorn, And sneering Envy marked the strife Fate waged with Pride, the better born ? Why should it fail ? Despair hath froze Its glacier light forever there. And Passion's Etna wildly throws Its lurid light upon the air. I've welded it in passion's heat ; I've cooled it with indifference's frost ; I've laved it oft in feeling's tide: Why should its splendor now be lost ? (,<. Fail ! " fail ! They rest who " faH ; " But it still struggles with the wave ; It dare not reef its elfish sail. It may not rest but in the grave ! Be Soto, March, 1850. 15 174 LKTTEES AND MISCELLANIES. LETTER XV. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY, Killed hy the accidental explosion of a rocket, TO MISS F. F. F. S , La., Aug., 1850. My Respected Friend: Though I know how hard it is to meet the cold hand of a stranger in place of the dear, familiar trace we love, still hope to be excused for assuming an office which nei- ther Mrs. L. nor her daughter are at present able to fill. Both have been ill since their partial recovery from the terrible shock of their recent and sore affliction : the former dangerously so, from an attack of inflammatory rheumatism. She is now convalescent, but too enfee- bled in health and depressed in spirit to assume the correspondence of her deceased daughter, in addition to the numerous and arduous duties which she dis- charged so entirely to the satisfaction of all, but the few who regretted to see her valuable life worn out in an ungenial avocation. You will, therefore, excuse me, if, in relating '' every minuticB'^ of the late sad occurrence, I repeat some things of which you are already apprised, and many which will be painful to hear. You ask " why^ if there was but the one wound, was her dress so much torn ? " I can only say, that, being of a light fabric, it might, very possibly, have been done in the fall ; at all events, I know that it was torn from her body when all was over. But, save the one fatal mark, that fiery messenger most assuredly left no trace, except a small contusion on the right side of her nose, another near the corner of her mouth, and a slight i LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 175 cicatrice on the neck of a little miss of twelve or thir- teen, whose head your departed friend had just bent down on her own lap, telling her '^ not to be afraid ! " And was it not a beautiful and fitting finale to such a life as hers, that her last accents should have been of kindness — her last act one of mercy, that, in all human probability, spared another from sharing her fate ? You have certainly " the last letter," and, so far as we know, "the last line," she ever wrote. I spent most of the day with her on Saturday ; consequently, she must have written in the evening after I left ; and her sister recollects to have seen her seal and direct on Mon- day morning. She then completed a small piece of fancy-work, and spent some little time in arranging a private sitting-room and other matters in reference to the expected arrival of Mr. P ; but declined enter- ing on any more material occupation of her own, in order to devote the week to the assistance of a young friend in her bridal preparations. After this, she held with her beloved pastor a long and highly satisfactory conversation on the subject of experimental religion, and cheered his desponding heart by saying how peculiarly and singularly appropriate to her own feelings were certain portions of a service, over the apparent inutility of which he was mourning. In the evening, and for the first time in several weeks, she went out to make calls, accompanied by some young married ladies, whom, in her own quiet, unobtrusive manner, she incited to faith and good works ; continued more than ordinarily well and cheerful throughout the day, and while at supper, concluded ''to go," as usual, " on ''Nette's account^'^ to the pyrotechnic exhibition, held a few squares distant. She was attended by her 176 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. esteemed friend, Dr. M r, a young gentleman whose amiable character and deep sympathy have since en- deared him more than ever to her afflicted relatives ; and left in what were for her " unusually fine spirits," remarking gayly to her companion, ''Let us old folks go ahead, and put these children (her sister and a married lady still younger,) behind us, where we can take care of them;" and w^hen the tramp of approaching footsteps was heard an hour or two later, her mother thought the whole party were returning " in high glee! " Having been sufiering, for some ten or twelve hours previous, with a severe chill and fever, I was, of course, not present ; but understand that " Miss Celia (for that is the name by which we knew and loved her best,) took, either from choice or necessity, one of the high back seats," at the extreme verge of the inclosure, near the family of Mrs. S , mother of the little girl already mentioned. You are aware that, maddened by the pain of burning pitch, one of the performers unconsciously dashed down a handful of ignited matches on a bundle of rockets. Two or three slight accidents to persons and apparel are said to have occurred during the explosion, yet few knew or noticed that this was not intentional, consequently no general alarm w^as felt ; not a single scream was heard, and no eye followed the course of that ill-fated shaft ; no heart dreained of its deadly effect — not even the child reclining in her lap knew she w^as hurt uTitil she fell. ^^ Somehody go for' xcater^'* exclaimed Mrs. S , who was the first to reach her ; " she has fainted! " Dr. M r started ofi' in a run, but w^as soon recalled. " Come hack^ she is awfully hurt!^^ added Mrs. S , who, in attempting to raise her from where she had fallen " altogether in a heajp^"* LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 177 and wipe off, what in the imperfect light was supposed to be perspiration, discovered the wooden fragment of a rocket, an inch or more in diameter, projecting from her right eye and out at the back of her head. Friends and physicians gathered round, tlie missile was extracted and arrangements made for bearing her home. "Z^er," no, not her, for once the crowd w^ere right in their in- tuition — it could be called nothing else — for long before it was known liow she was injured, or who was the vic- tim, no one was heard to inquire, "i^ slie hurt? " — " Will she dief^^ but voices in every part of the concourse ex- claimed simultsfneously, ^^She is dead!^'' And they were right^ they bore nothing away but the shattered cask from which the priceless gem had been suddenly and fearfully riven, to be set anew in the diadem of our God. Some twenty minutes later I was roused from my first slumber by the appalling annunciation, '•'Miss Celici L. is dead!^^ "Dead?" "Yes, she fell trom one of the high back seats and broke her neck!" "She is hreath- ing yet and raay live some time longer," interposed an older and more considerate person. "Thank God, then her neck is not broken," was my involuntary response ; and oh how earnestly did I pray that she might live — ■ only live ! But the hush of death, that brooded over the dense crowd that lined all the pavement without being able to gain admission, told me at once that there was no hope. And when I listened to Ae heart-rending en- treaties of the almost frantic mother, " only to be allowed to speech once more to her child, and hold her hand in hers^ while life should last," I mentally resolved that no effort of mine should be spared to gratify her, if it could be done with safety to life and reason ; or if that might not 178 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. be, to put away all physical weakness, all personal feel- ing, and stand faithfully there in her place, to interpret between the living and the dead. I knew, indeed, from the hoarse and unnatural voices around, that mine could not be recognized, but hoped, by announcing my name and suggesting certain signals, to obtain some answer to such questions as I should propose. The first glance told me how futile had been the expectation, how fatal to the mother would be the answer to her prayer, and I turned away, sickened to the very soul, that no accent of kindness could evermore reach that ear, that all effort was useless, all sympathy idle. • It had been found necessary to station a sentinel at the door, to secure unimpeded access and egress to her father and the E-ev. Mr. E,., and on entering I found a woman who was occasionally using a bowl and sponge, Mrs. S. and another lady. Dr. M and two or three older physicians, gazing, with folded arms and bloodless lips, in utter helplessness on the scene before them. I knew instinctively that it was useless, yet compelled myself to gaze long and earnestly, and even critically, on every feature, and line, and motion, where reason, and thought, and intellect loere not^ till the eye absolutely refused to obey volition. It was not the low gurgling sound of the life-blood welling from the swollen and dis- torted lip, or the ghastly orifice from which oozed the mangled and discolored brain ; nor yet the appalling sound of those low unearthly moans, that could so have revolted the eye from a form on which it had been wont to dwell long and lovingly. No, it was not any nor all of these, it was the conviction that it was tnere matter^ living, breathing, suffering matter, it is true, yet nothing hut matter that lay there wreathing and writhing in the LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 179 agonies of dissolution. And wild, indeed, must have been the fancy that could trace, in those spasmodic throes of expiring nature, the voluntary and sentient ex- hibition of feeling and consciousness, yet to make assur- ance doubly sure, I remarked to one of the more experi- enced surgeons and physicians, "There 25 no hope?" ''''None whatever! " "Can it be possible that she is in the least degree conscious?" ^^ Utterly impossible! The nerve of sensation was instantly destroyed — she has known nothing — could know nothing since ! " And yet there are not wanting some, (less conspicuous for close personal observation, sound sense, and unwavering veracity, than the vulgar ambition of relating what no one else has heard,) who would fain persuade Mrs. L. that her daughter ^^ was perfectly rational to the last;" and, of course, painfully conscious, that no mother's hand was there to smooth her dying pillow, no sister's voice to soothe her parting spirit. But do not you suf- fer any such absurd vagary to disturb you a moment — why even little Emily S. knows better. "iT^?, Mrs. L." (says she,) '^ that she never spoke^^^ and her mother claims to have used something veiy like the expressions in question. You ask for the funeral next and a description of her grave. The cemetery now in use, is a mile or more from the central portion of town, and sickness, either of ourselves or others, has as yet prevented Mrs. L. and her daughter, as well as myself, from visiting the spot. But Rev. Mr. R., (her dearest and most intimate friend, who, in connection with Dr. M , selected the spot,) tells us — "We have put her away in a lovely grove, there to await the summons of Him who is "the resurrection and the life ! " He delivered, in the parlor of the hotel, 180 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. not a regular sermon, but a most eloquent and appro- priate discourse from EccL, xii, 1st and Ttli inclusive — sung by liimself, her favorite, "I would not live al- way," and was joined by as many of the congregation as were able to assist, in "Life is a span, a fleeting hour," a hymn which either was, or was supposed to be, the one which had impressed her so peculiarly on the preceding Sunday evening. Perhaps you would like to know how we prepared her body for the grave. At the suggestion of Mr. K., and in accordance with the not inappropriate custom which marks the distinction between matron and maid, her coffin was covered with white satin, but put on perfectly plain and neat, just as she would have had it ; her form was arrayed, (by her mother's request,) in a simple Swiss mull, in which I had once before attired her, to gi'ace the wedding festivities of a wealthy and fashionable bride, numbered, still more recently than herself, with "the pale nations of the dead." Her head was slightly in- clined on the pillow, and the winding sheet and muslin shade draped so as to conceal as much as possible the disfigured side of her face, and over all were scattered a few pale flowers, (you know how well she loved them,) typical of youth, innocence, hope, and immortality. A few pieces of Arbor Yit^e were removed before closing down the lid ; they now mark in her book the h^anns sung on the occasion, and will be retained in their place, by a slip of ribbon left from the decorations of her "nar- row house," until the arrival of Mr. P. And now my young friend, for are we not friends in a common sorrow, let it not grieve you that your beloved Cecilia died, comparatively speaking, among strangers ; strangers perhaps as incompetent to appreciate her worth LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 181 as unable to excite a similar appreciation in return. Be- lieve me, it is not so! In this lite the "wheat and the tares" ever grow together, and here the weeds may pre- dominate, and the elements of society be unusually slow to recognize their affinities, but she had begun to feel that they were amalgamating^ and that there were some, even here, whom she would gladly include in her list of friends, no matter where her lot might in future be cast. And for herself, to you who knew her well, I need not say how ready she was, "to spend and be spent" in the service of God and man, so somebody would only take the eclat oflf her hands. But she could not always "do good by stealth," and pass undetected; and the deep and solemn stillness which pervaded all our streets on that melancholy day, when the stern mandate, " dust to diist^ ashes to ashes,^^ was executed in our midst, and the frequent and unmistakable manifestations of sympa- thy which continue to follow and surround the afflicted family, tell how strong was the lien she had made to herself, in a few short months, on the respect and af- fections of an apparently callous and reckless commu- nity. Since my arrival, in January last, I have been domes- ticated with her for weeks in succession, and it has been my happiness to enjoy, notwithstanding the disparity of years, (for she was nearly young enough to have been my daughter,) as much perhaps of her society and friend- ship as was given to any lady of the place ; and never before in my whole life have I witnessed such another example as hers. Xot the first look, or word, or deed, can I now recall, which I could wish to forget, had each individual day been her last. Why were we not fore- warned ? Why did we dread for her the insidious ap- 182 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. proacli of consumption ? We did see that " all her duties were fulfilled," we should have felt — to quote again from her own expression — that her "destiny was accom- plished! " With the bereaved father, mother, brother, sister, and friends, there are many, very many, to sympathize ; but with "the widowed, though unwed," there are fewer it is to be hoped who can feel in unison. Still there is one, at least, among us who knows that "a light and joy from this earth have passed, that shall never no never return to him again," who feels how lone and dreary must be the residue of Ms pilgrimage to that land "where lovely things and sweet pass not away." Mr. L. will write to him in a few days, and Mrs. L. has already set apart for his use every article of her daughter's which he may wish to retain. Some others, including a lock of soft dark hair, will also be forwarded to yourself, unless you can be induced to come on with Mr. P. Aside from the personal regard which would at all times ensure you a cordial reception, the knowl- edge of your warm and long cherished attachment to her daughter, will now make you a thrice welcome guest on the darkened hearth of the mother. At her request I forward you some lines, intended solely for the family pale, but truthfulness being their chief if not only merit, you will please consider them an evidence of deep re- spect and implicit confidence on the part of your un- known but sympathizing Friend, Louise. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 183 TO CECILIA IN HEAVEN. ""Whom the Gods love die young." No stranger hand sliould sweep the lyre, 1^0 wreath but friendship's round thee twine, No colder heart should e'er aspire, To link its thought, or name, with thine. The guileless spirit turned to thee. The passion-tossed, the tempest-tried ; The wand'rer on life's stormy sea. In trust, unbaffled, sought thy side. For thou, while in the world, wert not Of those who loved its changeling form ; And blessed art thou, that thy lot Is cast, beyond its smile and storm. No sorrowing for the loved ones here Hung heavy on thy spirit's flight; No parting pang, no mortal fear. Earth's shadow cast on heavenly light. "We know that thou hast passed to lands. Fairer than all that wooed thy stay; Yet who that treads life's burning sands, Exults for streams, far far away ?" The parent stem for thee must pine, Another mourn life's vision fled ; "Earth had no love for him like thine. And that, and thou, are with the dead." 184 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. A voice of wail goes np to heaven, Earth's sod is wet with many tears ; God stay the stem so sorely riven ! God shield the loved of w^oman's years ! LETTER XVI. TO AN UNFORTUNATE AND MISGUIDED FRIEND, Inserted in the vague hope that it may yet reach one^ hegiciled into a mesalliance of very doubtful legali- ty^ while in, {or near,) the state described by the old Scottish phrase, "-4 bee in the bo7inety , Louisiana, 1850. My Old and Deak Friend : It is long, very long, since you and I have had any direct intercourse, and much easier to sever than reunite the chain of a broken correspondence, where the address is so precarious as ours ; but I know you will gladly over- look some trilling annoyances, to hear once more the accents of kindness and afiection from a friend of your youth. After repeated inquiries I have at length learned where you were at "the last advices," and that you "left under circumstances too painful and humiliating for the writer to disclose or me to learn;" but recollecting one of our later conversations, can readily divine that after your cousin Jane's decease, the house of her husband became a perfect Pandemonium to you, till wTongs, insults, and indignities without name or redress drove you at last to desperation. For "desperation," indeed, LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 185 it is, my dear Aline, for weak, powerless woman to rebel, in the smallest iota, against the conventionalities established for her perpetual subjugation ; and well is it for her, that there is one tribunal still to which she can appeal from the injustice of man's dominion, one bar where the servant is free from his master, and the op- pressor held responsible as well as his victim. You, my dear unfortunate friend, were incapable of reflecting calmly upon this or any other subject, when, in the madness of passion or frenzy of despair, you de- scended from your station in life and wedded your fate to the Prof, of Animal Magnetism, said to have gained ^uch.^'' complete mesmeric control over you^'' in a cham- ber of sickness which you could not with propriety shun. If this were so, you certainly were not a free moral agent, and ought not to be held responsible as such, though the cold, carping, busy world has no time for such nice dis- criminations between the "sinned against" and the sin- Dring. But oh, these " sir owls " that sit in the arcana of science, and slumber and sneer on the confines of a mighty mystery, why, why will they not arouse to inves- tigate and define the laws that govern this subtle agency l K a half-crazy philosophy has caught the inkling of a magnificent truth, and diflused it through a world of chimera, it surely is not the part of wisdom to leave it there in sole possession of visionaries and charlatans. Your companion is, it seems, one of its professed ex- ponents, but as I make no inuendo insinuations and mean no unprovoked and useless outrage on his feelings, or wanton insult to your own, you, at least, must excuse my seeming — remember it is only seeming — ^cruelty in saying, that I too think it just possible, (under existing circumstances,) that you may not be his lawful wife. 186 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. For give, forgive^ I know how deeply I wound, and would to God I conld present these unpalatable truths in a less painful light ; but as sure as there are immortal interests at stake, I almost hope you are not^ though otherwise, I know that not the purity of an angel of light could shield you from the imputation of occupying what all men, with a scarce repressed sneer, would call '' a not very equivo- cal jposition^^ while all women would cry '''• amen^'^ though less perhaps from innate conviction than the selfish, ignoble instinct of self-preservation. I say all women ^ because the few who would dare^ (or care,) to he just^ are seldom in a position to make their remon- strance felt. But when this mental hallucination shall have passed away, and this mystic influence have exhausted its power, as soon or late it most surely w^ill, and old habits of life and modes of thought begin to resume their ac- customed sway, then your proud, sensitive spirit will chafe '4ike a lion in the toils," and this is one reason why I hope you are not bound for life to one, who, in the pride of human intellect, has, I am told, taught you to deride your Maker, and seofi' at the name of your Redeemer. Oh Aline! Aline! can this be so? Alas, I fear it may; for am not I, too, guilty, most guilty of having, in days that are past, fostered your incipient doubts by so freely expressing my own. I was older than your- self and should have reflected oftener than 1 did, that if there were no reality there could be no counterfeit. And yet it was never the occasional aberrations insepar- able from human weakness, nor even the impious and systematic hypocrisy exhibited in "the high places of the sanctuary, that made me once doubt what religion LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 187 was^ half so much as the preposterous and abstruse metaphysics, "crammed into my youthful ears against the stomach of my sense.-' It is much to be regretted, that some zealous modern religionists should labor so hard to supersede the Apostolic definition of that reli- gion which is ''pure and undefiled before God and the Father; " however, you will learn my sentiments on that head from the inclosed soliloquy.* True, you may not think it either learned, poetic, or wise ; but you and I are not wise, Aline, at least 1 am not, and I have no present so do not destroy my future. Life has to me been a weary warfare; after sufiering and toil there must needs be repose, and where else can we moor our shattered, tempest-tossed barks more securely than on the Eock of Ages? ''^Man must have some belief. ^^ says the melancholy but gifted priest of Apis, so 1 say, with the dying mother to her noble but misguided son, "Charles, Charles! give me hack my faith — give me hack my hojpe of heaven ! " You too need higher consolation than earth has to impart; for I know that you have sufiered — that you are wretched ! The delirium, or the torpor of excitement cannot last forever; the reaction, with its "after hour of gloom," must come, and the bitter pang of self- reproach, or distrust^ mingle with the sad, sad tears that fall over the blight of your early promise. May God and you forgive me for having left you to struggle alone against such talents and influence as were combined for the subversion of your faith in all moral excellence! The atrocious and unnatural villain ! I can scarce say, God forgive him; for this is his work — his! He took * Piece entitled, "What is Truth." 188 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. you, a young, sinless child, generous, noble, high-minded and pure; and what has he made you now? Whom did he, "in the livery of heaven," make his own inti- mate friends and associates of one who should have been dear unto him as a daughter, but men infamous for their conjugal infidelities, and open and avowed infidels, who could shamelessly congratulate themselves in her pres- ence, that *^ such talents as his would not long submit to the FLUMMERY of pretending to believe in Chris- tianity ? " Yes he it is — ^none so much as he — who is guilty, guilty before God of your moral degradation ! Forgive me if I did, or do, either of your parents injus- tice even in thought; but I should have advised you to confide in your mother, had I not known one woman, who would have been a mocking fiend instead of a faith- ful friend or judicious counselor on such an occasion, and feared that you might know such another. And besides, I hoped that a happy and honorable marriage would soon extricate you from a position of such pecu- liar delicacy and peril, without hazarding the frail ten- ure of kindred and domestic peace. But I was wrong, all wrong; yet what has the world done for us, that we should cling to it so fondly and wish to consider it the ultimatum of our existence ? . You and I had beauty. Aline, (and you may have it still,) but for want of the golden setting it availed us not. We had also talent — so at least the world was pleased to say — well, that too was useless. It did not sufiice to break the chain that bound us to an evil des- tiny, worse than useless ; for by enabling us "to see all others' faults and feel our own," it eminently unfitted us for plodding with becoming zest through the tread- mill-pace of our every-day life of weary toil, or more LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 189 galling dependence, while the "gickness of hope de- ferred" wasted away the first freshness of our youth in vain yearnings for a freedom and independence that might never be ours. But is not this intense, restless longing for something higher and better than earth has to impart — this daring contumacity which refuses to swallow all sorts of paradoxical creeds, without having the presumption to thinh of understanding them, "an undying evidence that thereis a divinity within us that will not be forever 'cabined, cribbed, confined,' or re- solved again into the material elements like the frail tenement in which it is enshrined ? " Yes, yes, it must be so — I feel that I am immortal, that I have an expansive, never-dying intellect ; and never, never^ be it said of us, " That we were born Taller than we might walk beneath the stars. And with a spirit, tempered like a god's, ' Were sent forth blindfold on a path of light, And turned aside, and perished ;" for oh, "how poor is the rich gift of genius," if it serve only to light us to perdition . You do not know how deeply I grieve over whatever may have been your errors or your wrongs ; Agnes, too, mourns over you as a sister lost — speaks most gratefully of your kindness to her in the hour of sickness and sor- row — tells of your unwearied devotion to the children of your cousin Jane, {she was always good and kind to the last, and much more like a relative than her hus- band, was she not ? ) and I do hope you may yet meet a reward even in this life! If not, "there is a land, I name not here, where we may meet again;" and may "peace, the peace of God that passeth all understand- ing," yet enter into your soul, and keep your heart and mind in perfect peace." 16 190 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. But I have not done; should a time ever come when even you can struggle no longer against the conviction that your present connection is one which it is right and proper to abandon, it is quite possible that the father, who it seems has not interposed for your protection hitherto, may then close his doors too, against his err- ing and unfortunate child, more especially if he have other daughters still under his roof. Excuse me if I speak too plainly, I mean not to wound but to heal, and what I would sa}'- is this: Should that time find me possessed of a home where there was none to overrule my will, that home should be your refuge against " the strife of evil tongues," if you choose to accept it. But alas ! this is a visionary hope, for there is far more prospect of my arriving speedily at " the house appointed for all the living," than to any other of my own. Teaching is so perfectly suicidal to me, that for every year that I serve it takes me at least two to recruit ; of course I am always sick and always poor. Woio I am hopelessly in- valided, and my literary and last resort is all untried as yet; but my kindest wishes and fervent prayers are yours, and the best counsel and most efficient aid in TYiy jpower to hestow^ shall also be at your service when- ever you think proper to claim them. If the world were more truly virtuous it could better afford to be a little less censorious; but should its cold suspicious wisdom judge me harshly and unjustly for this, some gentle one has already prepared a most beautiful and appropriate reply : " Think gently of the erring, Ye know not of the power, With which the dark temptation came In some unguarded hour. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 191 Ye may not know how earnestly They struggled, or how well. Until the hour of weakness came, And sadly thus they fell. " Think gently of the erring, Oh do not thou forget. However darkly stained by sin. He is thy brother yet. Heir of the self-same heritage, Child of the self same God ; He hath but stumbled on the path Thou hast in weakness trod! " Speak gently to the erring. For is it not enough That innocence and peace are gone, "Without thy censure rough? It sure must be a weary lot, That sin-crushed heart to bear; And they who share a happier fate, Their chidings well may spare. "Speak gently to the erring. Thou yet mayst lead them back, "With holy words and tones of love. From misery's thorny track. Forget not thou hast often sinned. And sinful yet must be ; Deal gently with the erring one. As God hath dealt with thee ! " It is not well to outrage wantonly or needlessly a single prescription of the world — it is very far from well to suffer the weak, cowardly fear of its censure to deter one from so obvious a duty as the effort to "save a soul from death," and to those who think and act differently, I would merely say, "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall ! " I expect to leave soon, and my future address is un- 192 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. certain ; but you can inclose, (for you will write, will you not?) to Dr.* * *, of this place, and lie will redirect and forward wherever it may he necessary. Your sincere and sorrowing friend, Louise. LINES SUGGESTED BY AN OLD PRINT; In which a faded leauty catches unexpectedly the re- fiection from a viiiTor^ while looking over jpoetic and other menienioes of hy-gone days. And can it be this faded brow Was once a shrine of beauty rare ? That round this sunken cheek, there waved Such wealth of "silken chestnut hair," That poets vowed "earth had not seen A face, or form, more passing fair ;" And matrons cried, "that hand, I ween, Time may not set his impress there : — " And wits averred ' ' the matchless shrine Scarce worthy of the gem within And the frail mortal deemed "(fm'ne," (God knows it w^as a grievous sin.) Yet manhood's voice indorsed the line. And youth, and age, declared it sooth ; And lovers knelt their life to tine In worship of "the spirit's truth! " The fragile cask is shattered now, The living pearl within grown dim; Poet and lover ceased to vow — In heaven they peal a loftier hymn. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 193 And I can scan my altered brow, Nor mourn its parted, wasted sheen ; Ages of bitter mem'ries roll Me and its primal light between. Kiver, and lake, and Alpine snows Hide all of earth my soul could crave ; And there, in dreams, ray spirit goes — Each spot 'tis hallowed by a grave ! And yet their shadow may not blight All of earth's lonely, farewell strand ; Life is not all a blank, while light From heaven illumes its ebbing sand. September, 1850. LETTER XVII. TO A YOUNG LAWYER IN WASHINGTON. Treatise on Law^ Morals and Politics. Caddo Pa., La., Jan. 1, 1851. My Dear — I suppose I must not say, my little cousin, though I can scarce realize that the urchin whom I left somo fifteen years since is now a man, in stature and intellect. But what have you been doing, I should like to know, more than " elevating the ancient Henry" after the most approved fashion for modern youngsters, that your loving and judicious sister should invoke the contents of my ink-bottle for your unsuspecting head ? Nothing worse, I hope, than evincing a stronger predilection for political 194 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. life than she thinks expedient for you to indulge under existing circumstances ; but if I am to be privy counsel, and lecturer-general, it is proper I should be advised of the precise nature of your peccadilloes, you know. And, seriously, dear Clarence, there may be some- thing more than woman's caprice under your sister's apprehensions ; for, indeed, I scarce know, myself, whe- ther to regret or rejoice at your success, out of the im- mediate line of your profession. That profession, it is fair to presume, was one of your own voluntary choice ; it is, at least, an honorable one, despite the "quips and quirks, and paper bullets of the brain," launched against it from time immemorial: thanks to its mere fungi, or parasitic excrescences, whose highest ambition is to "live of the law," by torturing the body till they wrest it from the soul. May you never forget that the end of the law is the administration of justice ; and ever remember that no man can ti'uly elevate himself without enno- bling, instead of debasing by the leprosy of his own meanness, any profession that he calls his own ! Law, however, is said to be a jealous mistress, and, if so, can hardly be expected to tolerate a rival who will inevitably engross much of your attention, and scarce find your most untiring devotion at all commensurate with her own mighty exactions. I speak of politics, in the legitimate and nobler sense, not of the mushroom, long-tongued spurise, indigenous to bar-rooms, debating- clubs, to\\Ti-meetings, and other institutions for culti- vating the gift of the gab, which ought, like sewing societies, to be indicted for public nuisances ; though even this vapid, shameless brazen-face has often — much oftener, no doubt, than the real Simon Pure — proved fatal to the prospects of many a " rising young man," LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 195 whose hopes once pointed to a far different goal. But it cannot be this impudent ''Ne'er-do-weel" that has ensnared your "youthful fancy: " no, I hope and expect better things of you ; and know, too, something of the obstacles that repel, of the contretemps which beset each avenue to legal distinction, while the youthful aspirant is struggling against fearful odds for a place side by side with the master-spirits of his order — something what it is to run the gauntlet, in a city like yours, among those less incumbered, perhaps, than yourself, with the independent spirit, morbid sensibility, and in- adequate fortunes of an old but impoverished race. But it is the first step that costs ; and you, it is said, have achieved, much earlier than usual, the reputation of being "a very promising young lawyer;" so now, if you have only the energy and ability to maintain the race, equihus passihus^ the rest will be comparatively easy : if you have not. Heaven help you ; for what and where are your qualifications for a statesman ? And further, your reception and subsequent success at the bar may have been flattering ; but your position can hardly be so assured as yet that you could hope to resume it some time in the indefinite future, without going all over the same or a worse ground — and that you would hardly fancy — should experience demonstrate your own unfitness for a high political career. But the misfortune of it is, so few ever do discover their own unfitness, though it may be palpable as day to others ; for the thick veil of self-delusion obstructs the percep- tion, and the "iron gyves" of habit bind them so fast to an accustomed sphere, that they linger on, on^ in the protracted agonies of hope deferred, till they sink at last — with tempers and feelings soured and imbittered 196 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. by the secret goadings of a restless and insatiate ambi- tion, and the galling consciousness of unappreciated, because misapplied, talent — into the sniveling, sneer- ing, querulous misanthrope, or more despisable hack of " the little great," whom neither " gods nor men endure! " I speak feelingly of the despotism of habit, for has it not bound me, for years, to a calling from which I recoil with an aversion no tongue can describe, hy the simple process of making it all but impossible for those who might otherwise have broken my chain, to think of me, or for me, except in connection with that avocation % And you know, I suppose, why the paralytic of old be- held, when the waters were troubled, others stepping down before him. May I not, then, with reason, depre- cate the possibility of seeing those fatal though impal- pable links slowly but surely encircling your whole moral nature, while you know so little, and I so well, " how hard that chain will press at last ! " And God defend and preserve you, and all I hold dear, from ever degenerating into that fag-end of all contemptibility, a mean, cringing, supple-kneed, time-serving sycophant and demagogue ! Thus far, no such venomous dragon's tooth has ever yet desecrated the family name by his own unmitigated infamy, or infused the gangrene of his viperous baseness into the blood of our race ; and ''Heaven forefend" that any of its future representa- tives should ever have cause to blush for so foul a stain on the honor of their forefathers ! Not that I care, though, very particularly about those any longer before than our own immediate progenitors. The solemn, conceited prigs ! What right had they to fold the mantle of their olden dignity so calmly around them, LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 19T and sit quietly down in the selfish enjoyment of hered- itary independence, and make no provision for the future ? None; so, as for the more remote ancestry, his royal and gracious majesty, the First Charles, might have had my full and free permission to "compliment" every soul of them with the ax ! * This may sound rather harsh ; but why should posterity care for those who cared never for them, or aught else save their own ease, since the very memorable, " never-to-be-forgot- ten" (much to be regretted,) " day," when that stalwart band of hard-headed, half crazy, self-righteous fanatics, poetically styled the "commonwealth of kings," squatted themselves down on Plymouth Rock one bitter cold morning, with the godly intent of praying and shooting Indians just whenever they thought proper % Now, had they been men of shallow, common-place minds, instead of being what tradition says they were, such a course of procedure would not have been so very surprising. But you know — or, more likely, you don't know — that the late Mr. S (himself a man of no mean talents or attainments), used to say of our grand- father even, that he never felt himself " so completely overawed, and so much like a pigmy in the hands of a giant," as when coming in contact with "his intellectual powers ; " yet he, I think, never considered himself, or was considered, the equal of his father and elder brother. But what were he and they, and all the " mute, inglorious Hampdens" the world ever saw, good for, I should like to know? If he never ^^ said a foolish thing," I am sure he never "did a wise one," unless his giving the *Vide Sir Robert Walpole : "He deserves the halter (or rnnmng bis goose's neck into such a noose ; but, in respect to his noble blood, I suppose we must compliment him with the axe." 17 198 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. five-and -twenty legacies left his country in the shape of children and grandchildren — and for which I don't see that that same country is at all the wiser, richer, or happier, or any way specially bound to be grateful — some little chance for good old Milesian blood and mother-wit, comes under that category. You see I don't exactly mean to insinuate that all the intellect has gone out with the black eyes and patri- monial acres; nor have I the slightest intention of un- derrating your abilities. Of mere talent, 1 dare say you have quantum suff.; most of the family have even now; but that is a minor consideration. For you may, as Clara intimates, be " abundantly able to keep your own counsel;" have any reasonable amouat of patri- cian nonchalance and hereditary oh^imdiCy— firmness it is proper to call it, is it not, when developed in the mas- culine form ? — ^your perceptions may be clear and rapid as intuition ; your thoughts concentrated and vigorous almost to a fault; your mind sufficiently comprehensive in its grasp ; and you, to crown the whole, be thor- oughly persuaded of your own transcendent merits, and yet, and yet want many a sine qua non for a statesman. Have you the far-reaching benevolence that feels for humanity as its brother ; the lofty magnanimity that could nerve you, if need were, to sacrifice not only your own, but the interests of your dearest earthly friend, on the altar of your country's weal ? Is your frame tem- pered of iron, and your spirit " to the happy callosity of an oyster ? " If not, depend upon it, you are most unfit for the guerilla warfare of political life. You may " enmail your soul with high endurance," and bear up bravely for awhile, to all external appearance ; but, soon or late, the iron will be found to have entered the soul ! LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 199 Oh, I fear for you, my young cousin ! If you have naught but the fragile constitution and highly nervous temperament of your paternal line — if, in short, the blade be too keen for the scabbard — what boots it that you start gloriously on your career — that your sword flashes brightest in the onset, and men look on in won- der and in fear ? It cannot last^ and, in some inauspi- cious hour, the faithless steel will betray its trust, and leave you to be borne dowm in the conflict by mere ani- mal power, or distanced in the race long ere the goal be won ! But, supposing you have all mental, and moral and physical endowments, in rare and almost unprecedented perfection, you may, you must, still want one essential element of success ; I mean pecuniary independence. How can a man, harassed by the ever recurring ques- tion — -"What shall I eat and what shall I drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed" — bring the full scope of his mind to bear upon the exposition and adjustment of intricate and conflicting claims ? How can he give his undivided energies to the solution of a disquisition, subtile in form and complicated in bearing ? We are, at best, but frail, erring mortals, with human wants, human weakness, and human causes of annoyance indissolubly intertwined with every fiber of our nature, every rami- fication and phase of our existence. And how is it pos- sible for a being so situated always to abide, unflinch- ingly, by his own conviction of what is just and right, when all the world — his political world I mean — cries out that he is '"'' rnistalten^''^ that he is "?rr6>7?^;" and the very bread, perhaps, of those dearer to him than his own life, absolutely depends on his yielding his ^'' prefer- ences^^'' at the imperious edict of an overbearing mob- 200 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. ocracy, ever ready to apply the thumb-screws of official torture to the soul ? It is easy for the casuist to lay down his inflexible rules, and say it must be thus and so ; very easy for the looker-on to hurl invective and denunciation at him who swerves, in the smallest iota, from Jiis criterion of what is proper and right ; but, de- pend upon it, dear Clarence, there are emergencies which try men's souls far more than the unequal con- test with physical power. Do you recollect Goldsmith's half-earnest, half-jesting epitaph on the living Burke, whom he declared '' equal to all things, yet for all things unfit ; " and is there not deep and melancholy significance in the fact that the assertion of his having ''narrowed his mind, and to party given up w^hat was meant for mankind," follow^s, almost as a natural and inevitable sequence, from the prior declaration that he was '' too poor for a patriot," though "too proud for a wit?" Think of all this; think, calmly and dispassionately, before you venture on giving the "unspiritual god" such vantage ground as may ultimate in the subversion of your moral in- tegrity. I cannot fear that a son of your father's train- ing should want moral feeling sufficiently high-toned and acute, and I would not doubt th^ stability of your moral principles ! But yet, with all the wealth of your young afiections, all the pride of your early manhood and conscious power, you are but the veriest novice, after all, in the tortuous, Machiavelian policy of secta- rian, sectional and political intrigue and diplomacy. And let me remind you, once again, my "high-reach- ing" cousin, there are, there must be, many occasions in a civic career which require something more than the pride of opinion, the abstract conviction of right, or the LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 201 quiet, stubborn, innate hauteur of all your race, to pre- serve one's honor and conscience unsullied and pure! Thus far, we have been looking through a microscope at the petty affairs of this every-day life : now let us take up the telescope, and look, for a moment, beyond the stars ! Ali^ the things that are seen are terajporal — ■ the things that are unseen are eternal! Here then is a subject, icorthy the mortal heir of an immortal des- tiny ! And if it be so difficult for the young to turn away from the present and bring the far-off future near but for one short hour — so ''''very hard^^ for "a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," what must it he for bim who has gone on from youth to age, linking him- self closer and closer, with each revolving year, to the hopes and schemes, the passions and interests of this transitory life, till the frosts of many winters settle on his brow, and the fading eye, and feeble step, and tot- tering form, proclaim, too clearly to be misunderstood, that "the places which now know him shall soon know him no more forever ? " What must it be, I say, for such a one to unwind all the subtile chord of association that binds him with its thousand links to old habits of life and modes of thought — turn away from earth its cares and vicissitudes, its pleasures and honors, and seek. " 'Mid the green places of the soul, ^ For that pure, life-giving tide That wells with hope, and love, and truth, The fountain of perpetual youth?" The last twenty years have, it is true, furnished two eminent instances of this high moral effort, but they stand on the barren field of political life, almost unpre- cedented and alone in their solitary splendor — rich monu- 202 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES merits of the superabouncling grace of God, and lofty beacons to warn alike the nndistinguished throng and their gifted compeers '4n that stern strife which leads to life's high places," that this is not their rest — that man has another and a loftier destiny. And well was it for the owner of one of those immortal names, ''that were not born to die," that the disappointment so gaHing to his country's pride, so disastrous to its interests, se- cured to him, it may be, in the calm shades of domestic retirement, that "more convenient season" that might never have been found, had he been encumbered with the care of a nation's weal ! And well, indeed, is it, if— 'Standing on what too long he bore, With shoulders bent, and downcast eyes, He has discerned — unseen before — The path to higher destinies." But oh how often, how often, does the recurrence of adverse examples admonish us, more eloquently than a thousand tongues, to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." How is it with you, my inexperienced cousin ? Have you given your " human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth ? " If so, let the tempest of life and the surges of faction howl and madden around you as they will, they cannot unmoor the bark that is anchored se- curely on the " Rock of Ages." If not, let me entreat you to remember, that "he builds too low who builds beneath the skies." For were it indeed possible, that the holy hope of the Christian should eventually flit away like the dream of a dream, it is still something — oh yes, it is much — that the weary in heart and broken in spirit, can yet hear a voice crying unto them, "Come unto me all LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 203 ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Much that the homeless and desolate can still be enabled to feel, that in their "Father's house are many mansions," and look up from *' life's endless en- deavor" to that rest in the skies, in the fullness of un- wavering hope and unfaltering trust! For myself, the dew has long since vanished from the rose, the sparkle from the wave of life ; but not for that would I cast the shadow of its evening cloud over the brightness of your morning prime. Nor would I put you again in leading-strings, or say of any particular line of exertion, ^^This is the way^ walk ye in it.''^ Far from it ; all 1 wish is, or rather, (what is much more to the purpose,) all, 1 presume, that Clara wishes, is, that you should weigh yourself v^ell now^ lest you should hereafter be w^eighed in the balances of two worlds and found ''''wanting!''' But let others think as they will, it surely is not for me. who knows so well the cost and consequences of attempting to chain, and task, and torture the rebel will that chafes and struggles to be free, wasting, in vain efibrt, the strength that might otherwise have launched it gloriously on its own chosen career ; — oh no, it is not for me to thwart an inclination so deep-seated and strong, that it "parts not quite with parting breath." If yours be of that cast — if nothing less will satisfy the measure of your life-long yearning — if you do feel the calm consciousness of power, the full plenitude of the divinity within — if law or aught else has ever been with you, but as "a means to an end," then I say go on, and woe be to the hand that would voluntarily rise up to throw another obstacle in your path, or seek to arrest your onward course ! I would not, if I could, interdict 204 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. a career that had once perhaps been mine had my sex been stern as my fate, that had most surely been his, in whose "burial urn" I laid my youth "where sunshine might not find it." Had he lived his name was not des- tined to have been "written on the roll of common men ;" and I scarce know — either for Clara's sake or your own — whether to hope, or to fear, that his mantle has descended upon you : but should aught I have said appear to you a little "less than kind," ^AmA: that I have said more perhaps than I should, but for the conviction, never entirely to be shaken ofi*, that it was my "un- reined ambition" seconding his own that stimulated him into an early grave. But if with you ''Hife is notliing^ youtW'' — the im- mortal youth of intellect — "^s alV^ — if indeed you do go on, let no secondary rank bound the limit of your aim — the highest, the highest^ for you, my proud cou- sin, or none! Remember, however, that it is not the rank of office, that xdtima tliule of the vulgar mind, to which I allude. Oh no ! there are distinctions far no- bler and more ennobling than these. Can you tell who performed the role of magistracy in Athens, while De- mosthenes wielded the destinies of Greece % I fancy not, and as little do I care. And whenever I hear "the first of living statesmen " lauded for his magnanimity in withdrawing his naTne on a certain occasion, I always long to correct the phraseology, by saying, for suffering it to he used at all in such a connection. It is at all times proper to "tread lightly on the ashes of the illustrious dead ;" it is peculiarly so now, that the late Chief Magistrate has so recently departed alike from the arena of martial and political strife ; and few, it is to be hoped, are so unhappily warped by passion and LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 205 prejudice as to withhold the meed of respect and afiec- tion, so eminently due to his important services, sterling sense, and lofty integrity of purpose. It is also a matter of more than party or sectional congratulation, that his successor has the moral stamina to stand up Wke a man at his post; yet for the mere incumbent of office, as such, I have a most ''' {nJinitessi7naP' regSLrd, and conse- quently never find it in my heart to yield him more than the slightest passing tribute of respect, though I can bow down my whole soul at the shrine of that higher no- bility, nor feel degraded by its homage. Still I really do wish — just for the novelty of the thing — that I actu- ally could feel for one half hour as others appear to feel, all their lives, in reference to office in the abstract. Some noble soul does, to be sure, throw, from time to time, the prestige of his own individual greatness around the mockery of its hollow forms ; but the halo recedes with the setting sun — it will not linger to hallow the spot or gild the lack -luster brows of those "accidents of an accident" that too often succeed. Yet somehow 80 it is, that others "see a form I cannot see, and hear a voice I cannot hear," for to me there is no " excelsior^'' inscribed on the Executive Chair. What is it, and a thousand such, with all the paraphernalia and parade of factitious dignity, to the priceless birthright of genius — the nobility not born of the "most sweet voices" of the mob — what, for instance, are all their titles and honors to the simple, "world-wide renowned name" of Hen- ry Clay? Any "rabble rout" can help to make a President. "An honest man's the noblest work of God!" Had I visited the Capital during his interregnum, it is just possible I might have been as much astonished 206 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. as a certain dry old Tennessee Judge once professed to be on hearing the census of Yirginia, ''after having," (as he said,) "been so long under the impression" — de- rived from a very mediocre F. F. Y. of his acquain- tance — "that there vras nohody there but Benjamin Wadkins Leigh;" for verily "Washington without its presiding genius is a nonentity to me. This reminds me to inquire, have you paid your re- spects as yet? If not, let me request you to do so on the first suitable occasion ; not, indeed, with the mean, pitiful servility of a poor, sneaking, political toady, pant- ing to catch the skirts of some great man, in whose broad wake he hopes to scull his ricketty craft into the snug harbor of power and place, but with the cordial unpre- tending deference which every sensible, well-behaved young gentleman in the land, honestly owes to one who has "rode these many summers on a sea of glory" — a deference alike honorable to the giver and receiver. But you are, I trust, hetter trained than to mistake in- solent familiarity for manly independence, or modesty for meannesss. True modesty is perfectly compatible with a just appreciation of one's-self as well as others; and I question if there is not more plausibility than pro- fundity in the received ijpse dixit^ "Diffidence of our own abilities is a sure indication of wisdom." A man of gigantic intellect may, it is true, feel at times that it is "no such great things after all," because he never knew what it was to have an ordinary one, and it may, and no doubt often does, seem very small to him in comparison with what he is able to conceive; but if so immeasurably superior to those around, it is, to say the least, a little remarkable that a mind of strong powers and acute perceptions, should fail to perceive \ LETTERS 'AND MISCELLANIES. 207 what is obvious to the dullest comprehension. " Can a man hold fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?" Can he bear about this glittering curse of genius, nor feel its circlet of ice — its serpent of fire girdling and crushing his heart and stinging his brain almost to madness ? Impossible ! He may regret, and endeavor to hide, the world — the cold, careless, envious or busy world — overlook, mistake, deny, or strive to stifle and ignore its existence ; but it is there ! it is there! — a glory and a grief, a joy a crown and a thorn, a seraph and taunting, mocking fiend; but never, never more to depart till life (or reason) and it go out together ! So, do not fold your hands, sit down and flatter yourself that inertia or imbecility is modesty. This recalls an observation made a few months since by a lady in De Soto, herself the worthy and highly talented daughter of " an old historic line," namely, '' that this thing called 'modest merit' was a very pretty thing, a most heautiful tMng^ to talk about ; but good for no earthly use whatever, except to keep formidable competition out of the way of more brazen and less gifted aspirants." The remark was made expressly for my benefit ; it is now repeated for yours ; because, I take it for granted, one grand difiSculty with the whole "kith and kin" is, that they lack assurance, or some other interpreter, to translate them out of themselves. Here am I now, can talk — Oh, very brave ! — to a piece of white paper ; and yet — with lip curling, quivering and closed, as if " ne'er to ope again " — be driven back into myself, by the first '* cold, uncomprehending look " or chilling tone, there indignantly to deplore " the hard and hapless situation of a bard " compelled to find not only the wit but sense 208 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. to appreciate it; and spurn and scorn, from my inmost soul, the inveterate stolidity of that "many-headed monster thing" ever ready to worship the rising sun, and " pile Pelioii upon Ossa" to keep it below the hori- zon as long as it possibly can ! Oh, it's all a mistake : these philosophers know nothing at all about the matter; cold is not a " negative property ! " — just let them feel it once settling down on the heart, as I have done hun- dreds of times, and they would soon know better ! But all the spirit-vacillations, mind you, and all the incar- nate Zeros in the universe, never reach my purpose; worlds should not bribe me to relinquish that: I think I should die or go mad within a week, if I kneio it to be hopeless I " True woman^'' I dare say you are thinking, (of course, what else should I be?) "' and variable as the shade by the light, quivering aspen made ; ' " but, to dismiss the single specimen and return to the residue. They are — the men I mean — so indomitably proud or reserved, or conceited or indolent, or something of the sort, that they expect everybody to appreciate them in- tuitively, without their ever taking the pains or making the condescension to insinuate that they are, as Willis' Interrogator expresses it, anybody in particular. Now, this will never do. " The wise world laughs at fables ; dream no more! " It was not by idle reverie that my ideal of a clear-headed statesman and chivalrous gentle- man, soared to his present " pride of place! " The old Romans decreed the oaken leaf as the most fitting award to him who saved the life of the drowning ; and has not he, whose pride has ever been To cast the healing salt into the bitter waters, twice plunged into the maddened vortex of faction ; twice LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 209 stemmed its tide to rescue his country and constitution from destruction ; and twice, aye, thrice, bound his brow with a garland far nobler than the wreath of empire ? Yes, " and the laurel is earned that binds his brow," and I would rather call that man my friend, than be crowned " queen of beauty and of song," by half the residue of his species! We shall never meet face to face in this life, but we shall meet, yes we shall meet, in that land where pecuniary disabilities no longer keep asunder, wide as the poles, those who might otherwise rejoice to know and appreciate each other.* You may chance to be a dissentient, if so, do not annoy me, I entreat, with any odious old saws about gentlemen and their valets, " Distance" and " Enchant- ment;" or waste any valuable time attempting to dis- pel what you, in your presumption, may esteem the veriest illusion. You would fail, I have a presentiment, for '' /cannot spare the luxury of believing that some things beautiful are^\\2X they seem!" And besides, a woman's politics being no manner of consequence, the world should tolerate all manner of harmless illusions in me ; for without them, what should / know of life " but its real misery ?" But mind I don't admit that there can, by any possibility, be an illusion in this instance — no, he surely is that rare phenomenon — a real patriot, an earnest true-hearted statesman, and honest, high-minded man! And yet this is mere tauto- logy ; for the doctrine that one ma}' be a knave in * Well I am not quite a Cassandra yet it seems — any more than poverty and sickness are the most delightful of all masters of ceremonies, though something should be forgiven to them ; now but thediamond is a diamond still, place it in whatever light you will. Mem. of Oct. 30th, Louisville, Kj., 1851. 210 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. public, yet honest in private life, would be shocking impiety, if it were not most ridiculous nonsense. Let us see — it means I suppose, that it is " very right proper," and in fact almost the " bounden duty" of a politician, to bamboozle, humbug, and betray as many thousands as he can; though it would be exceedingly reprehensible, dishonest, and infamous, for him to cheat or defraud a single one. Well, I am getting rather antiquated, it's true, and losing perhaps, the proper signification of the " king's English ;" and may be it doesn't take exactly ten hundred to make up a thousand now as it used to "in my day:" so it's all right I suppose, just upon the principle, that abstracting five or ten dollars, is " stealing^'' whereas making off, with a few hundred thousand, or half a million, is only a splendid defalcation. But isn't that beautiful logic, charming ethics? "And ne'er a word a true one;" for he who is "God-waixl, a very faithful, upright man, but man-ward, a little twistical," has not even the merit of being an accomplished hypocrite, much less an honest man. He who plunders the public, will rob his neighbor and swindle his brother wlien it serves his turn. He wlio mystifies and misleads the crowd, knowingly and willfully, will falsify with his friend, pre- varicate with his wife, deceive his child, and take "a lie in his right hand," into the very presence of his Maker. Never do you, my dear cousin, take any man to your confidence, who advocates this absurd yet mischievous sophism, in any conceivable form ; for however else you may fail, you owe it to yourself, your God, and your name; to keep your honor and conscience intact and without shadow of stain ! " Oil hone a ree^^ was ever such another incarnate LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 211 statute of limitations ? Here is scarce room enough for " the gist of a lady's letter," to wit, a postscript of orthodox dimensions ! Well, it can't be helped, so you are reprieved for this time, and I must reserve two capital subjects — Idleness and Dissipation; moral, social, and literary — for a future essay. In the meantime you are to thank Clara for this, and would do well to make her read it (and see that it is done secundum artem)^ otherwise she might insist on your keeping up the cor- respondence. She has probably advised you ere this of my dernier resort, and should it meet — as very likely it may — with your most cordial disapprobation, don't waste rhetoric or ammunition on me, my jlag is nailed to the mast, but try and persuade " the world and his wife," to adopt the Quaker, or Russian custom, and dispense with all superfluous prefixes to proper names. For really there is no more absolute necessity of having titles to discriminate between Madame the matron, and Mademoiselle the " Lay nun," than Monsieur Benedict the bachelor, and Monsieur'^ Benedict the married man. Indeed I don't see that they are of any use, except as safety-valves for vulgar curiosity and impertinence. And sure enough some people might get overcharged to a dangerous extent, if they couldn't bore every unlucky widow, or deserted wife they met, with a regular cate- chism about her husband and children, and the reason why she didn't marry again ; and then turn round and remind some quiet unoffending spinster (like your cousin * Do, in mercy to all " ears polite," learn (if you have not done so already) to pronounce this word and its plural Messieurs correctly, i. e. Mos-yai and Mes-yai, not monster, nor Moo-soo, nor Mon-soon, nor any- thing of the sort. If aufait to this matter, you will excuse this flip- pancy, if not, here is one lesson gratis. 212 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. "Mel" for instance) that she is old and ugly, and her chance quite hopeless now, by " wondering how it haj)pened that such an extraordinary beauty as she must have heen^ didn't get married when she was young and pretty." Just as if they had any right to make it incumbent on a lady, either to retort rudely, " sin her poor miserable before breakfast" (or after), by the in- vention of all manner of " white lies," or go into a history of her whole lifetimt3 for their edification; or as if no woman had ever anything else to do but '' fall in love" and " get married^'' because men sometimes make themselves ridiculous, and spend their time talk- ing about her beauty, when they had much better be saying their own pra3'^ers. The poor, conceited jacka- napes, if they need nothing else, I'm sure most of them need pray long and well for sense enough to let the dead rest! And they'd be clear enough too, of evoking some shades of the past, if they only knew what awk- ward, insignificant, ill-favored, unmistakable " clods of marl" they looked in comparison. But not they! del what atroGite merveilleuse that any living mortal, "guilty of being suspected" of having had beauty, shouldn't have made it over in hot haste, and with many thanks, to the first enterprising Procrustes willing to charge himself with its destruction in the shortest possible time. It's "c<^ wonder ^'^^ they suffer such culprits to run at large instead of arraigning them for lese majeste against the whole masculine gender; but exeunt omues all ye pestilent pestiferi ! And now, if you don't find your vocabulary suffi- ciently " aired," just go out and declaim, as long as the gag law will let you, to the first drowning man you meet, on the folly and utter inutility of grasping at LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 213 " straws !" Then leave croaking to spectacled wiseacres who fancy they know pretty much all that is to be known, and can't perhaps tell how many bars there are in the grate they have been punching for the last twenty years. How extremely sagacious they look, don't they, standing high and dry upon shore, discoursing to the poor wretch in tlie water, about the fallacy and weak- ness of such injudicious efforts ; but between you and me, don't you think it would be just as humane to throw the poor fellow a rope ? Not however, that I expect anything of the sort in this instance ; but would merely suggest that you make a better investment of oratorical capital, than to bestow it upon me: and finally, that you console yourself with the reflection, that it isn't your name after all — nor that of any one else now extant — that is liable to be staled in the mouths of men by such an association. No, no, I cannot aflbrd that, while my present position is so pre- carious, and there is no alternative but heggary or suc- cess in perspective. So the world and " all the rest of mankind," must hold me excused if I "keep in the line of safe precedents," and manufacture one of my own — mine by right of invention, and quite good enough for steamboat and newspaper use — or failing to get up any- thing sufficiently recherche^ conclude to patronize the Phonetics, who once did me the honor to enroll my obsolete name — obsolete at least till I can resume it without compromising its dignity — in their list of celebrities. They didn't send me the book to be sure, no more they didn't any one else, that ever I could learn ; but there's no occasion to remember that you know, and when honors are scarce, it is necessary for us, " small fry," 18 214 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. to be thankful for a little and make the most of what we can get ; so you can mail the first of the series you owe me for this, to Xew Orleans, and direct as usual until further orders. Your ill-starred, but Affectionate cousin. LETTER XVIII. PERSONALITIES AND MATTERS AND THINGS IN GENERAL. , La., Jan. 2d, 1851. Dear Clara: I have at last sealed and dispatched to your brother just such another pack and parcel of "lengthened sage advices," as a youthful tyro like him might expect from a veteran statesman like myself. You know the meas- ure of his endurance best; but in newspaper parlance, don't you expect to '"'catch afieio^^ for having instigated such a proceeding? Perhaps though he may "be mer- ciful and spare," if you submit with all due deference to the penance of my suggestion; so by way of giving you a little preliminary practice, I have just opened a new ream, and there's no telling how much of it you may have to pay posj;age npon. But verily "republics are ungrateful;" here am I now, and cannot find that there has ever been the slight- est notice taken of my extraordinary efforts to enhance the postal income. If Sir Walter Scott was knighted, as the story goes, for increasing the revenue on paper, why should not an humble individual like myself be LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 215 pensioned for its consumption, more especially when it enures so much to the benefit of the Fifth Department, not to mention the mercantile and manufacturing in- terests ? Tell the counselor that if he really does intend speechifying to "Buncombe" in future, he might as well begin by calling attention to this subject. It will do just as well by way of practice as any other, and be quite as sensible as most "able discussions." Though, for that matter, I could suggest one or two more, just to let the Lieges know that we, their lawful Suzeraines, might, perhaps, farnish the William Yitt point dkippid^ should they ever get enmeshed head and ears in meta- physics, yet fear to ''fall hack onplcmi co^nmon sense,^^ from a ver}^ rational apprehension of having to measure the entire distance from bathos down a la Eochester.* And this, may it please their wisdoms, isn't altogether vain-glorious boasting, for we haven't so entirely taken leave of our senses yet, that they can palm ofl* on our easy faith and "all enduring" good nature, such ultra- agi'arianism as they have grafted into the^ laws of the land under the specious names of patent and copy- right laws, and we never the wiser. The brain is as much a part of the human system as the hand, and its product a property or it is not a property — its possession a right or not a right. K not '^. property ^ then it clearly belongs to the originator, for notMng\\.^% been his prop- erty for ages; but only to think now of our Brother Jonathan, Ae, of all men alive, to w^aste the marketable * The "wicked and wiity" once inquired, in the mines of Cornwall, "What, your Reverence, naay be the distance from the bottom of that shaft to the center of the infernal region?" and Avas told, "It can't be far my lord, just let go that rope and you'll be there directly '" 216 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. commodity of legislation in alienating an impalpable, valueless abstraction. Isn't it a little too ridiculous? If it is a property there must be 2ifee simple soraev^liere^ and if it does not determine j^^r^^ in the producer, then all good citizens should rise en masse against the high- handed tyranny that allows him to usurp its rights and privileges a single hour. It's modest though, to the shameless and unblushing favoritism of some radicals, who impudently insist " that a man should be allowed the use of what he can make for the whole of his own natural life ;" and not half so bad as sheltering with their aegis an unholy alliance of publishers, paper and spectacle makers, if not actually "aiding and abetting" their ne- farious designs and sinister practices, lest some heads and eyes in these thirty-one independent, conglomerate Republics should eventually get strong enough to super- vise their own misdoings. They are every one "art and part," it's my belief, {^^ our publishers" always ex- cepted of course, like every man's doctor and lawyer,) though little do I care personally for all their barbarous machinations and conspiracies. Thanks be, I can see my way pretty well yet, and by moonlight if I choose, through all the hocus pocus of the wicked-looking little atoms, that I take to be neither more nor less than en- chanted souls of missing conspirators, for every one of the hard, contracted, leaden-headed impracticabilities looks as if it had been in a collapsed stage of the cholera, fed on persimmons, lodged in a condenser, and dressed in straight-jackets ever since it was born ; but that doesn't prove that other people never need glasses long before they are able to buy or old enough to wear them, nor that it isn't very sad to see the light all go out of "child- hood's sunny eye," as the first glance at the long, intri- LETTERS A.ND MISCELLANIES. 217 cate columns, and dim, misty leaves of the new book, deciphers nothing half so clearly as a headache in every page. Aside from starving to death, (verj^ magnanimously,) for the benefit, honor and glory of epitaph and monu- ment-makers, authors were undoubtedly sent into the world to illustrate the old Greek fable of Polyphemus, strong and hlind^ and having been caught napping by that dirty loafer, the right-royally rascal, Ulysses, half deserve to enact Issachar to the end of time ; but were the wily rogue disposed, (as it seems he is,) to bore out the eyes of all the flock too, nobody would ever dream of holding the captive giant at all responsible! So I hereby notify all whom it may concern, that when I me-~ morialize, or draft a bill for the better protection of the potentates and all the young princes, there will be one proviso, making it the duty of all health officers, and other local authorities, to seize, wherever they may be found, and burn, without fear or favor, all such perni- cious and contraband wares, as books for adults having more than one-twentieth part in as small type as large Brevier, and another declaring the use, sale or issue of a text-book in anything less than Small Pica, (with notes and questions in Long Primer,) constructive as- sault and battery on the whole rising generation, and punishable by confiscation, fine, and imprisonment. Abolishing from henceforth nine-tenths of Brevier and all smaller types would unquestionably be much simpler and more efficacious ; but there being a certain class of deeds, as well as doers, having a natural affinity for the clair ohscuro — and not too much of the clair either — it would be necessary to reserve them for the accommoda- tion of quacks, politicians, legislators, and others who 218 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. often wish to print what they know isn't fit to be seen. They of course will show their gratitude by putting all bright eyes and sunny faces, as well as authors' brains, in their own pockets, if they can, and there's nothing to hinder, that I see, but "eternal vigilance." Were men ever known, {out of novels, or in more than one,) to yield the "eleven points in law" to one in justice, or was there the least chance of the "plaintifi' in error's" recovering in the new suit of Sarcenet versus Broad- cloth, I should expect, despite Mr. Marcy and his aphor- ism, to come in, while "the victors" were all overjoyed and out of breath, for a goodly share of the "spoils." As it is^ I fear the statute book, poor thing, will never be much the better for my ability to string words to- gether as long as any Solon of them all ; and what is worse that I shall never get the floor to rise selon de regie and expose my condition^ just as if the lion didn't hnoio there was some pestilent gallinipper, or disgusting little insect or other, (too small perhaps for an ordinary- microscope,) buzzing, cavorting, and cutting all manner of antics about his mane ; but there is no help for it that I see, so even that pension prayer will have to be pre- ferred by other hands. I believe though, upon "sober second thought," that I will have it claimed as indemnity. They honestly owe it to me, for having destroyed my prospects with the for- tunes, (not to say lives,) of some of my friends by their wretched legislation. I don't exactly say which it might seem invidious, but you know very well to what I allude, and may well exclaim in reference to this, "would to God the mischief had ended here;" for, incredible as it may seem, some have absolutely taken the matter so LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 219 much to heart that their memories and eyesight have been failing ever since, in a manner most distressing to behold ! Nor is that all, for sundry rich old pkthorics throughout the land have actually been known to fe- tigue themselves by "doing the civil" to some waning star, much to the regret of all humane observers of their very magnanimous though superfluous condescension. But it's no use talking: some people loill martyrize themselves to their own excessive amiability, though, to a feeling mind, nothing can be more truly painful than witnessing this self-imposed torture, unless it be seeing one of these same devotees Jiold on^ with such a death- grip, to every fraction of the " almighty dollar," that the poor, unlucky dimes may be heard shrieking and groan- ing all over the country like so many fiends in torment, and yet delude himself into the belief that he really has a soul, and, perhaps, feel uneasy (for a moment or two nearly every year of his life,) about the future well- being of that nonentity. What a vagary ! K'ot but that some people do have souls, others intellects, and others again neither ; but, my dear sir, don't worry yowself in the least — your divinia (if you have any) is nothing in the world but a gnome ! What's that you say ? " Twinges of conscience ! " O hush, man ! hush ! people will think you have the gout if you talk of twinges, though I dare say it's only the dyspepsia. But " conscience" indeed ! Now, what did ever put it into your head that you had one ? I'm sure nobody ever suspected you; and even his reverence here can tell you that when St. James speaks of visiting the "fatherless and widows in their affliction," he only means such as can return the call in their own car- 220 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. riages ; so do sit down and be quiet, will you, or just go about your business. I have no patience with this tire- some old world sentimentality ! In the meantime, 1 dare say " a summer at the IN'orth would be very refresliing^^ in more ways than one ; and, perhaps, I may come, for I hear that Barnum, that prince of curiosity mongers, ''has been in full chase after a woman ever since that genus was superseded by the tribe ladies^'' and think of setting up my preten- sions when the Lindomania is over. So, success to merit ^ for I neither object to the use nor application of the term, and retain several other antediluvian ideas and prejudices, which would, no doubt, if properly in- vestigated, entitle me to rank high as a real, living, honafide specimen of the obsolete race. But wouldn't I cut a pretty figure in New York upper- tendom ? I think I see myself now, sitting in a corner, with my finger in my mouth, trying in vain to catch the role of conversation, and wondering how long it would take all those lambent rays to travel down our way. Well, we of the South-West are a great people ; that's past all dispute ! For can't we patronize circuses, showmen, traveling theatricals and mountebanks of all descriptions extensively, support "the almighty dance" genteelly, and contribute to any and every thing that appeals to either or the whole of our " siventeen sinses" very liberally ? To be sure we can ; and, what's more, we prefer metallic refrigerators, and are not callous and cold like you of the frozen North, but " open as day to melting charity," whenever the misery becomes suffi- ciently abject and squalid to pain our visual nerves, otherwise we don't exactly see the necessity ; but, as to making an effort to prevent it's coming to that pass, or LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES, 221 risking the loan of a dollar to avert the bitter humilia- tion of present dependence, or galling apprehension of future want: why, the very idea would be preposterous! Who cares to help people who will try to help them- selves ? If too proud to accept charity, let them suffer ! We are not Rasselas' mad astronomer; it isn't our province to regulate the affairs of the universe! But we can take the first honors in lionizing^ if not endued with your patronizing genius; and there's a two-fold advantage in that, for it saves abundance of "street- yarn," good breath, bad shoe-leather and equivocal gratitude, and spares much and very irksome annoy- ance to all wayward eccentrics having no taste for be- comino- m-and levers of sensation. So, each to his own vocation : yoic rather shine in transcendentals ; the present and tangible is our forte. Sympathy being a costly and somewhat volatile article, we don't keep mucli ready bottled for exportation, though we do oc- casionally improvise a little for home consumption. But then we are too economical by far to subscribe to anything more than the nearest seven-by-nine political hebdomadal, and, perhaps, a magazine or lady's book now and then, just for the sake of pictures and fashion plates. As for such lumber as libraries, lohere-s the use? — 'who's got time to read them? So, if the chances of travel or fluctuations of trade happen, at long inter- vals, to waft us a new publication or fragmentary beam from the far-off world of literature, " we bless our stars, and think it lucky ; " and should some six or seven months later bring us another God-send, we seize the straggling waif, as if " man need no more to bless him- self withal ! " But, then, there isn't the slightest occasion for you .to 19 222 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. put on any airs of superior wisdom, if you do labor under such a perfect plethora of intelligence that it would be dangerous to check its flow a single instant, (judging from the dignified and condescending forbear- ance and profound resignation which most new comers assume whenever an " older settler" attempts to slip in a word "edgewise; ") for don't you know we lavish untold sums on our "rising hopes," sending them to colleges, academies, seminaries and institutes by the dozen, till they are elegantly educated — their feet and fingers more particularly ; — and don't we know they are plenty smart and abundantly able to get their " knowledge-boxes" so full by the time they are fifteen or sixteen, that they never need look in a book again for the balance of their natural lives, unless it be one of those delectable little "yallow kivers" so opportunely scattered up and down the country to prevent people's forgetting their A-B-C's. Indeed, it isn't surprising you all should wax jealous and wish to overturn our institution ; for it's enough to make you feel spiteful, just to think how you, on the contrary, have to go on, from year to year, adding "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little" — plodding away till you get old enough for great-grandmothers, that is, five-and-forty, or thereabouts. — Really, you are much to be pitied ! But, O fie ! I am quite ashamed of you : you don't seem to have the least idea how beautifully our high -pressure system operates ; and, of course, you can't be expected to know how la helle Angele will ring in New Orleans ! " Not much, 1 opine, unless she is far more frisky or coquettish than usual, or has considerable wealth (or the reputation of it) to neutralize the effect of her Northern birth and manner. I might as well have LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 223 said defect, for such it is getting more and more to be considered, .thanks to your half-fool, half-crazy Aboli- tionists, who ought to be put in straight-jackets, every soul of them, and kept on bread and water, and precious little of it, till they would condescend to come to their senses and mind their own business. This charity that is always looking abroad, and never beginning at home, is very apt, like other idle, mischief-making gad-abouts, to fall into disrepute in both quarters. And, as for slavery, don't listen a word to anybody that says it isn't demoralizing: it is undoubtedly the very spawn of that old imp. Legion ; for if it doesn't seduce a man into spending money when he ought to make it, and a hundred other enormities, is sure to help him " com- pound for sins he feels inclined to, by damning those he has no mind to ! " However, there's hope of the world yet: I look to see it improve very shortly, now that modern improvement has converted the "beam" in everybody's eye into a telesco^^e, so that we can all turn our attention to redressing grievances at a distance. I'm " <9n/?/ a jpassenger^^ but don't mean to back out of my share, you see. What I mean by the '''-manner^'' is, that there is something too staid, or too little '''' Missish^'' about a genuine I^^orthern lady — too little advancing to attract and retiring to be pursued," to render her very fascinat- ing here. And that isn't the worst : this quiet, uniform dignity and queen-like self-possession rather excite suspi- cion of more mature age than probably belongs to her of right ; and when this surmise has once crossed the brain, it is stereotyped there as unalterably as "the laws of the Medes and Persians," and not the beauty of Venus or the face of a Hebe could ever efface the impression. 224 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. Or, rather, people not accustomed to appreciate any but the beauty of extreme youth, never trouble themselves to look for it where the latter is supposed to be wanting. So, to all available purposes, the real or imsigm&ry jMssee might as well be a fright as a beauty ; and rather more so, according to a quizzical old friend of mine, who used to aver, " that, there being more bad tastes than good in the world, a plain woman would stand a chance to be thought pretty much oftener than if she actually were so ; " from all of which you will infer that, unless the lady in question difiers materially from most high-bred Northern importations, I see no special necessity for any of her old admirers going into spasmodics or making themselves ultra ridiculous about the matter, any way, until the season is over, or so long, at least, as Divinity's abroad and mortality safe in its own insignificance. But why, upon earth, don't Prince Humbug and King Magic put their heads together, and show up, to an ad- miring world, our whole American populace harnessing itself to the triumphal car of some transatlantic noto- riety ? Wouldn't it be delighted to see how the doors of too many of the wisest and best, even, in the high places of the land, fly open to a foreign actress or adven- turiee, and close almost hermetically to indigenous talent, equal^ perhaps^ in degree^ though different in order, and developed in the less conspicuous (and there- fore more truly dignified and appropriate,) departments of woman's sphere ? And haven't we a right to boast all the time, and more too, of a country able to guard the distinction between virtue and vice so jealously, while holding out a general amnesty to the faux pas and '''"escapades''^ of an imported stale in one hand, and in- flicting, with the other, the direst vengeance of outraged LETTERS AKD MISCELLANIES. 225 morality on some fair, frail, fallen sister ? Of conrse we have, so being good as we are great, can now aflorcl to be just as well as generous and never name the advent of an Essler, or any other danseuse in the same age with the present avatar; for what right-minded, high-hearted woman but must rejoice in the fair name and fair fame of this glory-brightened sister- woman ? Who would pluck a single leaf from her laurel or darken its splen- dor with the dream of a shade? Yet who would not gladly see her volunteer Boswells, unpensioned toadies, and merciless panegyrists — half our Dailies and Wer.'k- lies in short — brought back to common sense, and our countrymen to their senses? She, is no doubt estimable as she is gifted ; but were she instead the degraded cast off leman of every royal roue in Europe, who does not know, or at least have reason to fear, that it would make very little difference in her reception ? None the less for that would all the lead and antimony in the country feel bound to put themselves in commotion and lead off in most astonish- ing paragraphs, sufficient one would think, to justify many an ^'anxious mamma" in taking out a commis- sion for lunacy, or resorting to the same sanative process which the Virginia Esculapius found so efficacious in the case of his own volcanic tempered spouse. There, now, we have committed ourselves, and the "lords" will never forgive us if we omit to say what that was. You see, "z^;^" are going to be dignified and editorial a bit, just to show the world what it lost when we mistook our vocation and refused to practice awhile with the ''devils" above before taking charge of the apes below ; but as they are unquestionably much more addicted to getting up those moral pyrotechnics than 226 LETIEKS AND MISCELLANIES. their " better halves," we merely advise the latter to keep perfectly cool on the appearance of the premonitory symptoms ; and just summon a sufficient jposse comi- tatus to seize the madman, shave his head, blister his pate, pour cold water down his back, ^pply mustard to his feet, leeches to his temples, put him in straight- jackets, and confine him to low diet and close quarters for several days after the paroxysm is over ; treating him, in short, precisely like any other maniac of the first water, paying not the slightest attention to his own as- severations of perfect sanity, further than to reply, "Oh no, my dear, that can't be ! My husband is a gentle- man^ I know he wouldn't give way to such childish ebul- litions of insane fury and conduct in tJiis shameful manner if he wasn't perfectly deranged! You will be better by-and-by, love, (if you are only patient,) but I can't let you out yet, indeed I can't ; you are quite deli- rious now, I do assure you, darling ! " There is no telling how many females might have been saved from a lunatic asylum by the judicious appli- cation of some such regimen in early life; but it's as palpable as day that many a wife and mother neglects her husband and son most culpably in this matter, till he comes at last to behave in the family circle, (and everywhere else, for that matter, where he can venture without getting his head broken for his pains,) more like a wild yager or snapping turtle in the hydrophobia, than a rational human being. lN"ow ladies, this is imprudent, very! Yoxi may be will- ing to pet and humor the precious bedlamite, and live in such constant tremor of apprehension that it's like taking your life in your hand every time you have to speak to him; but you can't expect the whole world to "walk LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 227 softly" before liim, and impunit}^ begets want of circum- spection, and some day sweet little Moses Job might forget "the better part of valor," and flare up and show ofi' before somebody besides helpless, unoffending women and children. And then there would be squibs and bowie-knives, and epigrams and sword-canes, and bul- lets, and rejoinders, and depositions, and all sorts of murderous instruments put in requisition; and all be- cause you, in your mistaken kindness, suflTered the small wound, which a skillful hand might have cicatrized, to spread, and inflame, and gangrene the whole moral and intellectual system, the "little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand," to darken and overshadow the whole do- mestic horizon, and pour out its black and bitter waters, "without let or hindrance," on your very hearthstone! Yet this is wrong, all wrong ! Patience and gentleness, and meekness, and forbearance, are all very fine things and very well {71 their place ; but when they serve to engender, strengthen and perpetuate an intolerable despotism, till the mailed hand never wearies in smiting the fallen, then they are out of place ^ and from virtues degenerate into positive weakness if not actual vice. And what man — or what petty tyrant rather — ^ whose irascibility has not become a monomania admitting no lucid interval, but must occasionally feel his cheek tingle at the recollection of how futile have often been the best efforts of those whom, after all, he perhaps best loves, to throw the "mantle of charity" over his great, though despicable infirmity, and hide from the world the iron heel that never ceases to grind the perfume from the crushed rose,* till there is neither blossom nor aroma longer to be found ? * See Deaf aud Dumb Girl's definition of Forgiveness. 228 LETTEES AND MISCELLANIES. And yet we don't go in for a general revolt, concoct treason, instigate rebellion, and preach up insurrection by the wholesale. Not bnt that "womankind" has many and grievous wrongs that ought to be redressed, (or that a few magazines of pitch, turpentine, and salt- peter wouldn't be amply sufficient to set the entire solar system in a blaze,) but simply because we see no special use in throwing the whole spheres into consternation merely to strip off her fetters one day^ when it's morally certain she'd "gather the links of the broken chain and fasten them proudly round her" before eve of the next. So instead of shouting, "more privilege," we rather in- cline to lop off some of the usurped ''^ prerogative^^'' for honestly and soberly we never could see the necessity of her making, or suffering Plato's chickens to make, a bigger fool of herself than nature ever intended, merely because they are delighted with a chance to sneer at her for allowing them that privilege. No, nor why that old "wooden spoon," common law, should indulge a human cone in the perverse, childish freak of alienating her f^xther's property from her father's grandchildren and bestowing it on those of some one, as foreign perhaps to his knowledge or good-will as from his blood and name, and then turn round, all in the name of justice^ and string up high as Haman, send on his travels, or accom- modate with private apartments in states' mansions gratis, any blundering mal-adroit human hi^ped^ g^^ilty of heing caught making love to his neighbor's strong box, or playing at the Merry Sherwood old game of " stand and deliver." It's monstrous uneven-handed justice at any rate, so a grand demonstration on a small scale is about all I have to propose. Emollients are wasted on these chronic cases — the LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 229 Esculapian plan is excellent, but not always practicable, yet "Poison may, as Galen held, by counter poison be expelled." And when the distempered animal gets so exceedingly rabid that no one can feel safe, or breathe freely for a moment in his presence, and you can't tell for certain whether it was a raving hyena or common mad-dog drunk, that bit him, then good wife, sister, or mother, our honest opinion is, that it's your obvious and "bounden duty" to take the responsibility, "hold the mirror up to nature," show your own virus, snap your teeth, foam and froth at the mouth, and lead ofl" in a startling exhibition of most frantic rage. Or, in other words, when you see, (and 3^ou'll not need to wait long,) that the steam is rising very fast and no mistake, make all haste and be the first to explode — it may be that the suddenness and fury of the concussion will shock the frenzied mctlade into his sober senses. " Yes, but scenes are so appalling and disgraceful ! " Exactly so, and that's the very reason why audacity should succeed where servility fails. " Coals of fire " don't burn a salamander, give the reptile a full charge of electricity with a slight touch of galvanism, and then see. Only once gather courage from desperation, cease licking the foot under which you writhe, turn upon power, beard the lion in his den, or rather the tiger in his lair, and, (there being no room to get worse,) the chances are that the fractious, insensate brute may, in process of time, become quite a respectable, well-be- haved — bear. But oh, you'll never do it! and here's all this good breath — no, inh^ for we wouldn't have talked that much at one time for all the wasps, hornets, and self-igniting lucifer matches in creation — toasted upon you for nothing ! Well, it can't be helped ; but 230 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. as long and critical investigation of the lusiis called ones- self, brings some outsiders, with the ver}^ best intentions of thinking just as well of then:iselves as the case will possibly admit, to the mortifying conclusion that they really have not any decided penchant for being kicked and cursed one minute and petted and blarneyed the next; its a great pity the effect of these interesting, racy, little scenic domesticicB couldn't be patented for the ex- clusive use and benefit of those who have. But a truce to common madmen, Lindomaniacs are all the rage just now. Look how " They rave, recite, and madden through the land!" If any half-dozen of their effusions (taken consecu- tively) wouldn't thrown an ordinarily impressible mortal into a brain fever, then inflammatory diseases can't be contagious, that's certain. Indeed it's quite doubtful whether he could digest all the paradoxical and con- flicting statements found in a single one, without feel- ing a slight stricture in the region of his gullibility — unless he happened to wear double "glorification specs" which would take him straight through at a single glance. But are the " sons" noivhere we should like to know, that all these lords of the tripod are thus laying aside composition sticks and cold water, and taking to opera-glasses and champagne with impunity? How- ever, we can't waste any more time upon you, just now. Messieurs les Typos^ so stand aside till your betters are served — divinity before humanity always. And that's the reason why there's no place in the round world half so suitable as " Freedom's area," for getting up tempests in teapots, canonizations, apotheoses, and such like moral phenomena, in the shortest pos- sible time and most unexceptionable style; for every- LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 231 body knows we are the wisest, best, most virtuous, and enlightened nation nnder heaven, we have settled that question long ago to our own entire satisfaction. Poor Artists might, to be sure, prefer an arrangement which w^ould divest them of animal wants a little sooner ; but that sordid reflection never troubled Jenny Lind, who had, it seems, friends able to send her abroad to take music lessons in childhood. Stop, there's a mistake at the very first outset — " she made her own loay in the world P'^ Oh she did, did she? It was quite fortunate for her then, that we did allow Europe to retain the initiative, and confer the preliminary degrees; and all owing to our being an age or two " behind the times," that we never heard before, that this same " nightingale of Sweden" ever did fly from the spires of Stockholm to the cross of I^otre Dame, live upon insects, sip honey-dew, perch out of nights, and carol from the topmost twig of some umbrageous bough to admiring earth-worms below, as a bird of her prerogative had a most undoubted right. '* How absurd, just as if a bird of song didn't have to have its callow days." And besides, she cuts no such ridiculous antics now that she's full-fledged, but behaves (and that's much to her credit) very like an ordinary mortal, and quite as modestly and sensibly as any body could while so sadly bored with all this vulgar parade and sycophancy. "Well then, these facts and the habits of the nineteenth century altogether taken into consideration, it is rather probable that that trip to Paris cost money (not to mention personal protection), or if it didn't we should like to know, and may be stepping over ourselves some of these days. But ex nihil nihil fit^ said the ancient heathen, and hard cash and bank notes are not nothing^ 232 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. or we should have had our hands full long ago. And being something^ as anybody may find to his cost if he attempts to appropriate, except in a legal way,, more than belongs to him, the presumption is that they must have come from somewhere. She did not pour liquid gold from her throat in those days, and if she evolved it from ''^her own self-sustaining powers^^ in any other form, where was Barnum then, that we never heard of this astonishing peasant child, able to place herself under the first musical tuition of the age, never till she became a woman, and had undergone the first metempsychosis ? But perhaps her parents sent her, though we shouldn't exactly infer it from the phrase " alone and unaided^ No indeed (and worse and worse, we shall never get through with- out those specs). '' They were j?cc>r, quite poor, and owe their present competence to her talent and filial afiec- tion!" And suppose they didn't, who is going to admit that a Swedish peasant, or Russian serf could by any possibility of means, be any better ofi" in any respect than our American yeomen^ who often find it difticult, as everybody knows, to educate a child thirty or forty miles from home at an inexpensive country boarding-school ? For what would all the ''''free and enlightened'^^ do, if they couldn't have southern slaves, and " the down trodden vassals of European despotism" for safety-valves commensurate with the largest liberty of their own universal sympathy? Then, if she didn't, and they coiddnH play the divinia pecunia on the occa- sion, who did? Somebody must, for to Paris she went, there's no getting round that fact ; though there was no ^' extraneous assistances^ in all that, of course not ! Madame.^ the vocalist however, sent her back with the injunction ^' not to open her mouth again to sing, LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 233 for three years." Her divinity-ship, be it remembered, was still in abeyance, for she hadn't touched "the shores of freedom" yet ; but if the faithful insist notwithstand- ing, that she lived all that time on nectar and ambrosia, we promise to give in — misbelieving infidel that we are — ^just as soon as they demonstrate, past possibility of cavil, the ability of their own intellectuality and spirituality combined, to support vitality for a single month even. Till then, we shall have strong misgivings that her parents, or somebody else, must have con- tributed, partially or indirectly at least, to her support during that long probation ; and that^ according to Beaumarchais, was something^ still there was " no jpa- ironage'^ there — oh none in the world.* But suppose the vulgar necessity of eating and drink- ing (not to mention the convenience of some little shelter and clothing in a climate as ccld as that of Sweden), had actually compelled her to violate again and again that judicious restriction ; or resort, for the miserable pittance of her daily bread, to some other avocation equally fatal to the full developement of that rare physical organization, on which her artistic ex- cellence so eminently depends ! What then had become of all her rich gift of genius ? Where then had been this glorious child of song? Gone — crushed into the grave by the stern hand of poverty, that lays its fell gripe on the heartstrings, and wrings out the very life of life from the secret soul of existence. Or worse — chained down to menial toil, mid the undistinguished * " You think yourself a great man, M. le Comte, because you are a Grand Seigneur, raorbleu! It has cost me, a simple unit in the great mass, a greater expenditure of skill and judgment to exist merely than has been employed for these hundred years in governing all the Spaius." 234: LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. throng, her heart turned to gall, her very brain on fire with the recollection of what irdglit have heen^ and the untold agony of that life-long-yearning, for the wild, free gush of that matchless minstrelsy, whose tones haunt all her sleeping and waking dreams ; but must never, never thrill upon mortal ear. That is " where," that is ''''what^'' not only might, but Tnust have been, what the unsealed records of eternity no doubt will show has often leen^ when there was no discriminating hand to shelter and protect the common, perhaps unsightly shell, while the unseen chrysolite within was working out its own peculiar idea of glory, and of beauty. She was spared all this; yet she, we are gravely told, '•'' had no jpat7'onage^'^'' nxid the Press and the drawing- room re-echo the tale, till the ear wearies of its flagitious dissonance. " iV6> jpatronageV Do men know what they are talking about, when asserting such nonsense as this % Do they not know, it is a burning insult (not of incense) to the idol their own hands have set up for the " many-headed monster" to bedin with its ostentatious homage of the hour ? Do they not see, that it is virtu- ally telling the crowned victor in life's warfare, " what you have achieved is so very little that we cannot pos- sibly make you out a respectable psean, without adding the ascription of all manner of impossibilities!" But were their folly and impertinence all, they, and their absurd panegyrics and corollaries might pass. Unfortunately they are not — they are instinct with con- ceit — the very incarnation of ingratitude, a mocking insult to the generous and noble few who have ^^ done what they coidd'''' to start the winner toward the goal ! What if their offerings were simple and small, their efforts crude, or weak, and not always successful ? Do LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 235 they deserve for that, to have them tossed back in de- rision, or taunted as nothing worth? The "widow's mite," the kindly word, the cheering tone, the homing love^ the loorhing zeal^ of some humble friend, some sister artist it may be, who had " the discerning of spirits," shall all these pass away and be forgotten " as a tale that is told," lest the "still small voice" say unto us — "go thou and do likewise?" The diamond of genius cuts its trace in the future, the pearl of the soul leaves its record on high ; for soul is loftier than intellect, and this it is, that enables men to contribute, not grudgingly, not ignorantly, but freely, "knowingly and advisedly," to the furtherance of a fortune and a fame destined erelong to o'ershadow their own. And shall not their deeds be remembered, aye and recorded too^ on earth as well as in heaven. These are the men, these the women, but for whom many a benefactor and pride of his race had gone down, an idle dreamer, to the silent dust — sneered at in life, derided in death, insulted in the grave — his very name made "a by-word and jest" for all visionary scheming. All honor and glory to such — they are the Livingstons to Fulton, the Isabellas to Columbus ; renown is their right ^ why is it withheld ? "A nameless man amid a crowd That thronged the daily mart. Let fall a word of hope and love, Unstudied from the heart : — The deed was small, the issue great, A transitory breath. It raised a brother from the dust. And saved a soul from death. Oh deed, oh tone, oh word of love, Oh thought at random cast, 236 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. Ye are but little at tlie first. But mighty at the last !" * And now, Mr. Penny-a-liner, we'll attend to your case. You sport the Irishman's coat of arms, (Ignor- ance and Impudence,) "with an air of great dagnitj;" but when did you ever extend a helping-hand to a young aspirant, unless it was to help him off the track ? We've an eye upon a niche in glory's temple that will suit you exactly, and no doubt but your sapience will become the pillory uncommonly well ; yet stay, you don't deserve to be seen anywhere in the same cycloid with the afore- mentioned good company, so e'en go your ways, for a nice little mannikin as you are. We are not general reviewer, (though that's because our merits haven't got properly abroad yet,) so can afford to practice mod- eration, and there's no use, as somebody observes, "in breaking a butterfly on a wheel." ^N'o, nor of trying to stuff more than half a dozen sheets into one single en- velo]3e. So you can be reading these and praying for sunshine, for if it doesn't come, it's just as clear as "manifest destiny," (in cloudy weather,) that you will be very apt to get the remainder. Mais nous ven'ons. PART SECOND— DATE THE 5TH. Well, my dear, you do see, "it never rains but it pours," and this time it never has left off, though it's the first I ever knew but what did. Answering your next question is very like telling tales out of school ; but as I am a sort of outlaw that doesn't even count in the census for the last ten or fifteen years, I suppose it makes no difference what I say, and I do gene- *See Charles Mackay's "Song of Life." LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 237 rally find people very Mnd^ especially during the first sick- ness I have in any one family. But then they expect you'll have the grace to get well or die^ (as a good Christian should.) and there being, unluckily, more tenacity than elasticity in my constitution, 1, unfortunately, do neither; and when the crisis is past, and there is nothing the matter only you don't get well, they are apt to '' wax weary in well doing." For example : when you have once — after half a dozen difierent efibrts, perhaps — achieved the exploit of dress- ing and getting down stairs, you may crawl up again "on all -fours -' — not "choose any supper," have "no appetite for breakfast," and "care ver}^ little for dinner," for weeks together, before anybody seems to notice that you are not perfectly re-established ; and if — as is very probable under such circumstances — you take a relapse, it is a most infallible signal for "the best servant" to be taken sick, or " out into the field," and the family to discover that they "are not fixed for taking boarders, and don't like to have people about them unless they can do them justice." The house, too, gets, all of a sudden, entirely too small for your accommodation, and, as you haven't grown any larger, the probability is, that it has become smaller — shrunk up, perhaps, in the night, like the old iron dungeon of Este, or crept ofi* in part to the usual receptacle; for, wherever else "^ room^^ may be wanting, you will be sure to find one in the mouth of the speaker on these occasions. Just then it happens to be recollected, too, chat the " very agreeahle hoarder''^ was originally fi*om the Xorth — a fact which demonstrates her, j^er se^ to be " ten times more trouble than ordinary: " of course, you can't won- der they " should prefer (though more for your sake 20 238 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. than their own,) that you should look you out another boarding-house." This agreeable intimation, being an excellent sedative for a highly nervous and very sensitive invalid, is gene- rally administered when compliance is utterly inexpe- dient, if not wholly impracticable ; from whence I infer that it is either meant to elicit an advance upon existing prices, or as a pretty explicit hint that you are no longer to indulge in the hallucination that you have some rights merely because you happen to pay for them. The first being rarely optional with one compelled to live with the whole " heart, mind and soul," out on " committee of ways and means " how to make or save a picayune, submission to the second is the almost inevitable conse- quence ; and thenceforth you are to recollect that you are there upon toleration, like some " poor relation " or unwelcome visitor who has protracted his stay beyond all reasonable bounds, and demean yourself accordingly. Find it perfectly convenient to sit on a trunk, write on a band-box, hold a candle in one hand, pen or needle in the other ; use your scissors for snuffers, feet and fingers for tongs; "never ken it or care" if every fractured, jagged-edged cup, loose-handled knife, broken-tined fork, and brassy, dissipated old spoon on the premises, happen, by some strange fatality, invariably to fall to your share; nor feel the least surprised should your pitcher decamp without saying "by your leave" — your carpet and andirons (if ever you had any,) see fit to emigrate — your looking-glass, and other toilette accesso- ries more purely personal, take to gadding, and feel deeply aggrieved by a hint to return — your ''^ uncannie^'' tumbler, candlestick, inkstand, and other utensils, have the impertinence to make themselves invisible, change LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 239 characters^ and commit all sorts of diablerie before jour very face and eyes, and even your decent, well- behaved, good, honest, Christian-looking wash-bowl spirit itself off to parts unknown, or be transformed, "by wicked cantrip sleight," into a leaky, battered, rusty old basin, much addicted to absenteeism : for neither nor all of these things would be half so miracu- lous as the finding in your room all, or a majority even, of the articles named, in the very height of your palm- iest days. The not being ^^fixecV is a " true bill ; " for the resi- due of the intimation, set that all down as so much moonshine or unalloyed rusticity ; and, rest assured, the very atmosphere of our larger towns and villages is too polished, by far, to allow such excessive verdancy any- thing more than " short shrift" and speedy dissolution. Not but that a fair proportion of the more genteel fami- lies w^ill, for a proper " consid-er-a-tion^'' do themselves the very great indignity to take a few boarders, merely to accommodate the public, for tlie sal'e of comjpany^ or out of special liking for the individual — just, for in- stance, as every superfluous feminine of the North inva- riably pilgrimates South, or West, for the benefit of her health, not " to seek her fortune," or hide her pov- erty and pride by any manner of means. Half of them may, it is true, have little or no other means for keeping up their tables or toilettes, or perhaps both ; but then they'd have you to know — they would, indeed — that it's a very great condescension for every- body in the South-West, themselves in particular, to take boarders at all ; so you must expect to sue very humbly, walk very circumspectly, and pay very roundly for the privilege of sleeping — if sleep one of your humble 240 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. pretensions can — under a roof of such aristocratic " three pile glass" as theirs ! It may leak a little, to be sure, though that's neither here nor there ; but, as to the com- promise of dignity, it strikes me, that, if mine were of that ephemeral, mushroom cast, that vanishes before the first sunshine of utility, I should make shipwreck of the whole concern, and commence de novo. For the rest — is it not a pity, that, when people do actually do you a favor, they will not allow you to feel a little grateful, instead of annihilating their own claims and merging your gratitude in a painful sense obligation, by remind- ing you ever after of their own unexampled kindness and liberality, and your helplessness and dependence? How any sensible person can subscribe to the absurd vagary, that Northern ladies generally make more trou- blesome boarders than Southern ones, I cannot, for the life of me, conceive, unless it is because the former do sometimes "do up" their own muslins and laces, make their own beds, sweep and dust their rooms, and keep their brushes, combs, washstands and dressing-tables {alias mantle-pieces) in order, which the latter seldom or never do when boarding out of their own family connec- tion. Nor should any one of the others, unless ambi- tious of being considered '' one of the family," at the expense of officiating as universal convenience, unpen- sioned seamstress, and standing subject of aggression ever after. With you such a series of encroachments on gratuitous exertion might originate in avarice; here, I am inclined to think, it arises much oftener from a thoughtless unconsciousness or disregard of the peculiar value of time and effort to those who have little of either at their own disposal : but the result is the same, and the safest way is, to ignore everything that is passing LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 241 around you ; know nothing, do nothing, and have it understood that your whole genius lies in saving stitches ; for if you once suffer innate taste, good nature or love of order to betray you into neglecting your own health or personal affairs for the execution of various little, frivolous matters — constituting an aggregate for which a regular employee would expect (though you, of course, would not,) something more substantial than mere com- pliments in return — there is no more otium cum dig- nitate for you, though there may be such a thing as a "fugitive from labor" in the mind's eye of others. And should you subsequently venture to aggravate defection, by expecting the same attention that others, who never raise a finger in like manner, receive for the same spe- cific equivalent, the proceeding will, to a moral cer- tainty, be ridiculed as a " putting on of airs," if not resented as a downright imposition. Yet, one might, reasonably enough, suppose that either of the afore-mentioned idiosyncracies — enuring, as it ultimately must, to the benefit of the mistress by the relief of her servants — ought to atone for a little extravagance in the use of cold water, especially when the consumer, as is often the case, helps herself. But you who were " to the manner born," and have not, in all probability, mended your ways or rectified your opinions by a residence in the domains of her majesty, Queen Victoria, have no conception how eccentric, not to say improper, it is to persist in the whimsey that a pint of water is rather a limited allowance for a proper ablution, and disrelish the idea of having half a dozen pair of eyes watching every evolution of its progress, or your instinctive delicacy so often outraged by being burst in upon, that you get at last to feel quite present- 242 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. able if only caught in one remove from a "birth -day suit." Some foreign travelers do, to be sure, complain of being not a little annoyed and restricted in these matters ; but then, poor, ignorant, benighted creatures, they can't be expected to know any better; though everybody in ''this enlightened land" ought to know that there isn't the slightest occasion for us who live in these bilious climes, to be half as particular in prevent- ing the reabsorption of poisonous exhalations as are the infatuated children of Aquarius who reside in colder regions. Ptitting away their scissors, thimbles, bonnets, shawls, etc., is another exceptionality of the aforesaids ; conse- quently, they are seldom or never accessory to getting tip one of those "general can*aras," in which the whole posse of " house-hands," assisted by a strong deputation from the kitchen, amuse themselves by the hour, in running over each other at every turn and corner, stir- ring up trunks, upsetting band-boxes, diving into " old clothes-nests," whirling drawers topsy-turvy, turning the whole house upside down and inside out, ransacking every hole and corner, and all to ''get wj?" a mislaid glove or missing pocket-handkerchief 1 To see the scene in all its glory, you should have my lord and master striding up and down between the house and carnage every five or ten minutes, looking " black as forty thunderbolts ; " or, if he chance to be " one of your patient, all-enduring men," drawing himself up into the smallest possible compass, and keeping "out of harm's way" with most exemplaiy presence of mind, yet every now and then furtively eyeing the progress of the hurricane, with such " a laughing devil in his sneer," that the poor, half-crazed delinquent feels, for the mo i LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 243 ment, as if "hanging, drawing and quartering" would be a hundred thousand times too good for him ! You may chance to know that these grand houleverse- ments are not peculiar to Southern households, and 1 wouldn't, for the world, insinuate that they are matters of every-day occurrence even there, only thsit I believe / have seen something of the sort, and should infer, from the general effect, that t7ie absence of the Jiahit ivhiGh forms the primum mohile ought, in common justice, to be considered a fair set-off against the enor- mity of requiring to have some small space where you can " commune with your own heart in your chamber, and be still" — some quiet retreat to which you can sometimes retire from the senseless clamor of idle tongues and the weary nothings of commonplace, and think your own thoughts, free from the galling surveil- lance of those everlasting human eyes, forever watching every flitting shade of expression, and taking away from your very soul all consciousness of security, all thought of secrecy — some little sanctuary, in shoi't, from which you can occasionally venture to exclude all the world, and feel alone with yourself and your God ! If there is any other peculiarity in the exactions of a Northern boarder, I have been trying in vain, for the last fifteen years, to discover what it is, and presume the extra trouble must lie in the Southern lady's own utter inability to appreciate the feeling which makes privacy and free ablution necessaries of life to one born and educated farther North. The following anec- dote will, better than anything else, illustrate the great disparity of idea and habit between the two on this point. Some years since, when it took much longer to de- 244 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. scend '-''La Belle Riviere'''' than at present, (especially if filled with ice), I met a very pleasant party from the shores of the Chesapeake, and an equally agreeable lady, who was making her first egress from the refined and literary emporium of the Bay State. The first day all went on charmingly ; but on the second, Madame^ the Yengese, began to draw ofi* perceptibly, and on each succeeding one to wax colder and colder. Believ- ing that " murder will out," I said nothing ; though having emerged from my own room just in time to wit- ness her shocked and surprised looks, on finding the whole of the other party " out in the puhlic cahin^ OAuong strangers^'' going through, very deliberately, and with the utmost nonchalamce^ all the minutiae of a rather elaborate traveling toilette, of which " washing formed one of the later and least considerable opera- tions," I was not very much puzzled to divine the cause. Indeed, it was quite amusing to contrast the nervous apprehension with which she watched the folding-doors, lest any eye profane should chance to glance on beau- ties too entirely unadorned to suit her taste, with their manifest indifi*erence to the passing and repassing of chambermaids, and their sufiering the impatient steward to poke his head in every few minutes, and inquire " if the ladies were all ready," ^1/52^ as unconcernedly as if it were only a cloud passing over the face of the moon ! About the third day, I think it was, mortal woman could stand it no longer ; so she kindly drew me aside, to shield my youth and inexperience from further con- tamination, by imparting her ''^ deliherate conviction that we had unfortunately fallen in company with a band of traveling courtesans ! " I believe she did, at last, admit that "there mighty LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 245 possibly, be pJiysical purity existing under such cir- cumstances ; but she was sure, quite sure^ there could be no real purity of thought^ where the natural and in- stinctive delicacy of woman was so grossly, wantonly, habitually, and even unconsciously outraged!" Per- haps she would have thought differently, had she known what an extensive list of words and phrases Southern ladies have interdicted for indelicacy, though I never could see wherein they were so much worse behaved than other English ; and no doubt commit many an egregious and indecent blunder, from pure inability to recollect which of two synonymous expressions, is the tabooed term. But " honor to whom honor," and according to the best of my belief, observation, and information thusfar^ no southern horn female — and mind I don't say lady, for ladies are not addicted to such habits anywhere that I know of — ever outrages decorum as too many northern mothers often do, while nursing their infants in the presence of whoever may chance to look on, with- out ever seeming to suspect, what unspeakable felicity it would afford the spectator, to dash a whole bucketful of water upon them, by way of making them turn aside, or cover themselves up, for once at least, if not always convenient to leave the room on such an occasion. But no — there they sit, half naked, with the utmost com- posure, and never dream that they, and their children reared under such auspices, are not perfect models of re- finement; and abundantly well qualified by a little book-learning to set up for censors of the manners, morals and customs of the South. Yet if there is one thing more intensely disgusting than another, it is, to see a great, greasy, swarthy-looking hag, or little 21 246 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. shriveled, dried up mummy of a thing, strip herself to the waist — or suffer some great calf of a yearling, whom any reasonable mortal would take for her grandchild, to do it for her — and leave her whole chest exposed to occupy the liands as well as mouth, of ''^mother's precious angel darling^'' while her own are busy pat- ting and toying with its nakedness, just as if she thought herself, and the dirty, ugly, " regular tartar and brim- stone'' little wretch, perfect model artists, and every- body else as fond as herself of such exhibitions. Pshaw! It's worse, if possible, than seeing a great chuckle-head, amber-distillery, blear-eyed, blubber-lip- ped, unwieldy, porpoise of a man, or a bouncing, wheez- ing, if not skinny, rawboned, old witch of a woman, with a map of all the lines and angles of geometry in her face, " hilling and cooing!'^ It's a wonder to me, that nuisances of both classes don't get shot down, or disap- pear by the dozens, in communities that encourage scavengers and tolerate whole hordes of rising young surgeons, who havn't possessed themselves, as yet, of a " dear deceased" in their own right. Possibly the for- mer may scoop up a nauseous excrescence now and then ; but the latter always fail, it is presumed, in nerving themselves up to touching anything so intole- rably loathsome even with the scalpel and dissecting- knife. Be that as it may, and other things as they will, these remarks are none of the most delicate in the world — though all the more graphic for that, be it remembered — but that isn't half so distressing as the reflection that both parties are evidently past all hope of reclamation. They of the north are entirely too wise to be instructed by anybody, though the very negroes here (Heaven LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 247 help the poor darky that ever falls into their hands) might teach them more modesty ; and the reverse of that reason, makes the case equally hopeless on the other side. Here at the South, men (who must needs have all the sense in the world inasmuch as we women have none,) are vastly too knowing to take a hint from their better-halves in the construction of their domicils. So the latter have to go on from week to w^eek and year to year, cramming all the " five corners of every room" full of beds, in which to stow away the whole household (the female portion of it I mean) whenever the conjugal hive swarms ; that is, whenever the hopeful progeny gets too large — no, too numerous — for the whole to pack in with "Pa and Ma" any longer; and then, to mend the matter, cover all the intermediate space with pallets, every night, for negro women and children, boys and girls (some of the former large enough to count for men in the field), so that the little misses have to grow up from infancy to maturity, accustomed to dress, un- dress and expose themselves just as freely in their pre- sence, as if they were so many cats and dogs. Some far-ofl* Physiologist does, to be sure, occasion- ally lift up his voice against the " insalubrity^^ of in- haling, during the hours of sleep, the fetid atmosphere generated by such promiscuous crowds ;" but if you want to hear the immorality of the thing denounced, you must go with some ^^ dirty indecent novelist'''' to a Parisian cellar or London garret, v)e are altogether too modest and virtuous to think of anything indecorous. And who shall dare to inquire, if it is reasonable to suppose that the inferior, whose animal passions may be strong in proportion as his intellects are weak, is always equally heedless ? And if not, whether parents 248 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. and all others who perpetuate this custom, are not, in- directly at least, accessory to, and responsible for, many of those appalling occurrences, which usually terminate in the roasting beforehand, of some brutal wretch, for a nameless outrage on perhaps the wife, sister, or daughter of his own master ? That such events occur so rarely, under existing circumstances, is, to me, an unanswer- able argument in favor of the wide and irremediable disparity of race; that this barrier is sometimes over- leaped, is I believe, owing more than men will like to admit, to the fact that husbands, fathers and brothers, have never once dreamed of placing that among the jpossible contingencies^ that might result from their own mismanagement. Southerners are not overmuch given, at best, to wast- ing an}^ superfluous amount of time investigating the nature of cause and effect ; and cannot of course be ex- pected to do it now, when their whole souls would revolt from the conclusion, to which I honestly believe it would inevitably lead. Would they do so, 1 fancy we should soon see very different domestic and dormitorial ar- rangements ; and a less universal habit of " putting on full steam," to make a little more cotton, to buy another negro to make a little more cotton, and so on ad injini- tum ; just for instance, as your humble servant com- presses her lines more and more, on every page she attempts to trace. I dare say you are asleep, so — To Morpheus, my dear cousin. Louise. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 249 DEMAND FOR A SONG' B]) one who assumed^ in sporty to he Jenny Lind; and Eeply. A SONG for my lute that shall float on its chords, A measure all glowing with gladness and glee; A tone gushing out from the heart's sweetest wards, This, this is my tribute, oh minstrel, from thee. No fear for the future, no accent of pain, No care for the present must sadden its tone; Youth, beauty and hope must e'en breathe in its strain, Like birds of bright plumage that upward have flown. For my life is still young in its freshness and truth. And I deem that the future will aye be the same; Then weave me a song like the smile of my youth. To float on my lute, down the current of fame. Oh NO — ^for I'm old^ though the register tells Fewer lusters by far than are traced on my brow ; And a voice from the past, ever silently swells The dirge of the hopes that are withered and low. Then vjoke not its tone^ for I shrink from the tread Of those echoless steps that are thronging the stair; The altered, the absent, the distant the dead — • They are coming — all coming — and gathering there! 250 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. And the sigh of each leaf in the blossom of life, As the petal was reft and flung to the breeze ; (Like the song of the swan, or the dolphin's last dyes Appealing in anguish to winds and to seas) ; It is moaning for aye in the wierd spirit's wail, As mem'ry summons each ghost from the crowd Of shadowless forms, that are strewing the gale With the damp and the mildew that clings to the shroud. And my heart, life and lute all smell of its mold, 'No ray of bright promise now cheers me along, And my brow is not all that is careworn and old, For no muse but deep sorrow presides o'er my song. Leona. Miss., Feb., 1851. LETTER XIX. SALMAGUNDI OF GOSSIP AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5: n. Miss., April, 1851. Dear Dora: — You w^ill be surprised, though I trust not disagreeably so, at receiving, for the first time in your life, a line from your long wandering cousin. I claim no special ovation for the gratuity, for when a culprit is sure to be detected, do what he will, he may as well "confess and be hanged" at once. And it is just possible, that but for circulating the inclosed, I might not have found time to write quite so soonj still LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 251 I have always intended doing so, ever since I knew that you too were far away from the home of your youth, and that one after another of your elder sisters had gone down, like nearly all I love, to the silent grave. Ignorance of your address, and the uncertainty of my own have hitherto deterred me; but thanks to uncle J- 's last, the former difficulty is now obviated — though you may feel no special gratitude therefor — and Clara tells me, you are a wife and mother. A happy one, I hope and trust; though I should not always have inferred it, quite as matter of course, from the fact that you had assumed the name, and with it, I hope, as much as may be, of t\\Q feelings of a mother, to several children not literally yours. There is, I apprehend, something instinctively revolt- ing, if not almost humiliating, in the very name of second wife or step -mother^ and the office itself can be no sinecure, particularly here at the South where people are somewhat sensible, and consequently aware, how inadequate is a whole lifetime of self-abnegation and subservience to repair, to their children, the irreparable wrong of having exposed them to the sins and sorrows of this life, and the fearful uncertainties of the next; and it certainly is very hard atoning for injuries one has not committed, yet on the vjJiole^ playing la helle mere (how much softer and prettier is this than our coarse English phrase), to whatever number of "young hopefuls" may have the audacity to call any one man " Father^'' can scarce be worse than enacting step- mother de facto to all the dirty, ugly little wretches in community! And with the comfortable assurance too, as in my case, that by the time one set of the " varmints" has been caught and caged long enough to 252 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. be demi-civilized, they will have to be dispersed, and their quondam to pay as dearly for the respite as would Esop's Fox had his benevolent friend, the swallow, per- sisted in his humane intentions. The stepping may not be perfectly felicitous, especially if it happens, as I suppose it does once in a thousand years or so, to be stejpwife as well as mother; but I do begin to think there is something a little ridiculous in the tenacity with which certain old friends of ours adhere to their primi- tive opinion, that it constitutes the crowning agony of all female martyrdom; my own private opinion ("publicly expressed") being that it consists either in "governess- ing," or being tied to some miserly, vulgar old fool, or contemptible sot. Lady Teazle's reply to Sir Peter's taunt respecting her former position, namely: "that she recollected it distinctly, and a very disagreeable one it was," etc., is very apropos — ^to the general question I mean, not to your particular case, there I trust it may be wholly ir- relevant; for you, I hope, never found shooting young ideas half so intolerably irksome as myself. It is not the mere physical labor and confinement that render it so oppressive, though you in Old Virginia have no idea what a constitution of iron it requires even for that, here in the South-west ; nor what uncommon effort and ability it demands to maintain the least ascendency over the minds of pupils, where one half the parents are much like the aggrieved father, who had "been sending to school and paying out his money ybr three whole years^ to have his son learn Latin, and nou\ he couldn't even do a sum in Simple Literest!" They, of course, are quite as apt to find fault when their children do well as when they do ill, a majority of the balance LETTERS AND ^HSCELL ANTES. 253 don't care, or if they do, have all got in snch a tremen- dous hurry, of late, that if it wasn't for the opportune invention of snags and steamboat explosions, death, poor fellow, might die of starvation, for all them, for he never could overtake them. And even the best dis- posed and more sensible, who don't exactly expect to outrun him, seem to think they are doing the cause of education good service if they only find time to listen pretty regularly to ex jparte reports of each day's pro- ceedings, instead of dropping in every now and then, impromptu, as they should, to evince interest, gratify curiosity, or make suggestions; but unfortunately they are much oftener training up idle and contemptible, if not captious and mischief-making gossips and busy- bodies. Probably they never reflect, when discussing all the J9?^05 and cons in each item of the daily budget in the very ^presence of the carrier^ that they are virtually inviting him to sit in judgment, with them, on the personal and professional merits and demerits of his teacher; and that it is not in human nature for a judge to retain, very long, any profound re- spect for one daily arraigned at his bar: and conse- quently that they are doing their best, to destroy all that prestige of moral and intellectual superiority, on which the success of teaching so eminently depends. Yet this is not all, for there is still the irresistible conviction that, struggle as you will, all freedom of thought, all independence of action, the very inborn rights of woman are gone, and your sex remembered only for the impunity it secures to insult and aggression; the knowledge that you are bound to succumb, body and soul, life and limb, to the caprices of an ill-sorted, ill-informed, conflicting and ever vacillating community; 254 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. that you are sold, past redemption, to a slavery, hopeless and helpless as the bondage of Siberian mines — that you have no rigJit to think your own thoughts, or with- hold the sacrifice of your own health or life, that you must forego all to which you cling, fritter away the fresh- ness and sheen from each gem of beauty, and worth ; temper " the thoughts that breathe, the words that burn," to the dull, cold ear of stupidity; speak when you would be silent, act when you would think; tame down all lofty thought, all soaring fancy, all noble aspi- ration; crush out the soul's deep thirst, its life-long yearning for advance^ for improvement^ and bind it down, with a chain of adamant, to the same "dull drudged lesson," the endless iteration and reiteration of the same stale, puerile commonplace ; and all for naught— ;/<9r haug.ht^ for what is gold to compensate for such torture as this? And it is this, oh yes it is this; that sends so many highly-gifted and accomplished wo- men, with better health and stronger nerves than mine, from the school-room to the mad -house. Yet the world, in their wisdom, never dream that all is not well ; they see no danger in forcing the o'ertasked brain to atone for the absence of all physical power, while the worn-out nerve is quivering with agony at the rustle of every leaf — nothing more remarkable than per- sonal, or sectional eccentricity, in the stammering tongue, the imperfect or forgotten word, the half-formed, or re- constructed phrase, the wandering thought and indisposi- tion, or inability to concentrate the reasoning faculties — the waning powers of self-control and consequent ir- repressible and undignified exhibition of every passing emotion ; the frequent and startling alternation from the deepest depression to the wildest and most unnatural LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 255 levity; oh no, they see no premonitory symptoms in all this ; but when the fearful verdict " insanity^^ has once gone forth, O then they can " reraeraber ^' to have seen " long ago " — in every independent act, every warm and generous feeling, every brilliant coruscation of wit and high poetic thought, that soared above the medium of their own cent-per-cent., matter-of-fact perceptions — "^^^^- mistakable indications'^'^ of alienated intellect! And even men, who should he physiologists, will not hesi- tate to assign as cause some trivial incident, which the veriest tyro ought to blush not to know, must have been the efiect ! You may think I look altogether on the dark side ; but if the picture ever had any bright one, I'm sure it must have been worn out before my day, for I never could find it, or, if I ever did, my experience for the last two years has entirely efiaced the impression. The first of these was spent a little North of Ked river, in Arkansas; the second a little South of it, in Louisiana, In the former place I did achieve a whole five-months' session in the course of eight or nine ; in the latter, 1 repeated the experiment, but failed most sig- nally, after dragging, as I had often done before, my enfeebled frame, and tottering limbs and quivering nerves, to the scene of their daily torture, by literally crawling up stairs, or over stiles, like an infant, for weeks in succession. And very glad was I, eventually, to put long miles and broad rivers between me and the scene of so much mental and physical sufiering, at the expense of a watch — the second disposed of for similar reasons within the last five years — intending, hereafter, to be as circumspect as was the steamboat captain, who, on being asked "if he ran up Red river," replied, 256 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. " No; that he intended to keep within the pale of civil- ization : " not but that I found some of the most agree- able people I ever did meet West of the Mississippi, (in Louisiana, more particularly ;) but then they are too much like " angels' visits, few and far between." Now^ I flatter myself, I know precisely the feelings of an escaped galley-slave, balancing the horrors of impending starvation with the mortal agony of a com- pulsory return to his chain and his oar. And you see, by the inclosed,* that the proverbial mischance of lite- rary efibrt is henceforth the only " reed " on which I lean, to preserve me from perishing of want in a land whose applause falls in showers of gold on every species of talent that ministers to the corporeal senses ! God only knows how I have toiled and suffered, how sternly and unflinchingly I have crucified all my native tastes and early habits, to avoid such a contingency as this ; how, once and again, I have almost secured the means of obviating its occurrence, then been compelled to watch, in bitterness of spirit, as gold (the true sybilline leaf, that increases in value as it diminishes in propor- tion,) slowly, but surely, glided from my grasp, leaving me, on each recurring occasion, more helpless, homeless, destitute and desolate than ever. Forgive me, should your mind chance to revert sadly, in future, to the position of one hitherto far removed, in all probability, by time and distance, from your thoughts and sympathies ; for I would not willingly cast the shadow of my own evil doom over the brightness of your fairer destiny. I have, as you are probably aware, resided for most * Notice and Prospectus of this work. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 257 of the last fifteen years in Tennessee — fifteen centuries more like it seems. I wonder what people inean when they say "time seems so sJiort ; bnt it, to me, has lost much of its former charms ; for the dear old Virginia lady, who was about the only mother I ever knew, had (with many of her beloved children,) gone away to her home in heaven before I left ; so I concluded to arrange preliminaries in this state, partly because it was less expensive of access than one more remote, but more because I knew the Masonic fraternity (on whom I have a lien in right of my father,) to be unusually popular and extensive in Mississippi. Now don't faint, or turn pale in the least : I only design them — in case they are sensible — the honor of accepting their patron- age and favorable auspices ; but I'd like to see the first living mortal, stranger or relative, that would dare say ^'' Pensionnaire^^ to me ; though, if you chance to know any seventh-heaven clairvoyant, who can work his will unrestricted by time and space, I'll thank you to bespeak his good offices to the extent of making me insensible to the wants and weaknesses of poor, frail humanity, for some time to come. Cause why — a gold watch not being exactly a gold mine you know, its proceeds can- not be expected to last forever ; and — it being one of the indefeasible properties of all great bodies to move slow — some of the worshipful members in the Empire State, who, according to the best of my recollection, were formerly nowise remarkable for developments of any kind, have of late become such inconceivably great men, that it wouldn't comport with their dignity at all to examine a record and make out a certificate within less than six or eight months after they had promised to do so half as many different times I 258 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. But what a blessed thing it is to be confiding — and pertinacious and tenacious, too, as any Senior Wrangler or the musk of a Yankee's self-conceit — for otherwise I might suspect that all the marvelous fine things re- ported, ever since I could remember, about the jprompt and efficient attention always given, in case of need, to the representative of a deceased brother, must have hap- pened during Munchausen's travels in Gulliver's Island, or away back in the dark ages, before the world had outgrown its baby-clothes and got beyond leading- strings. The urchin has cut his eye-teeth now though, and got quite shrewd enough, too, to fool himself, if not his Maker, into a belief of his own entire willingness to discharge all obligation, to the spirit and letter, while taking special good care to ignore its existence in every case possible. If, however, I find, upon better enlight- enment — that is to say, when the mountain has come to Mahomet — that this compliment is private property, on which the grand circle, as a whole, have no rightful lien, I do hereby promise to make it over in fee simple to the original legatees instanter ! * . *Well, it is so assigned and secured — to the exclusion, at least, of the Mississippi segment — this day and date of the year of grace, fifty- one. And I do hope and trust I have found the exception at last, for I'm sure I never yet did love "a tree or flower^'but 'twas the first to fade away;" and, if decency didn't forbid, should expect the " ancient" and universal, immutable and inscrutable, to convert an " open Sesame" into a bar-sinister the moment it was seen in my hands. But, " nous verrons," as Father Ritchie says. — Vicksburg, Oct. 6. And, sure enough, they have, (I humbly ask pardon of all the other disfranchised therefor;) and then try to palaver, and "make be- lieve" it's a mere matter of latitude, or some other vagary! I know better, if they don't : it's all owing to me, and nothing and nobody else ; and it's astonishing how savans will keep groping in moonshine and electricity for solutions right under their nose, and palpable as LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 259 Aside from that accorded by the husband of an old friend, the most efficient aid given to my enterprise, thus far, has resulted from a casual rencontre with a young friend from De Soto, Louisiana ; and there being no pretty sister, daughter, or niece in the case, his cour- tesy can be ascribed to nothing less than "the inborn chivalry" of a gentleman "to the manor born." So I say, God bless the Yirginians, Kentuckians, and Caro- linians, wherever they sojourn: they seem to have a noble and manly self-reliance on their own ability to recognize and appreciate rank and worth w^ierever it may be found, without extraneous aid. Perhaps it is from the electric thrill of some responsive chord within; for, sure I am, they exhibit far less than some others of that spirit which, by suspecting all, '^coiivicts at least one^'' if we may rely upon the testimony of that uncom- promising moralist. Dr. Samuel Johnson: an ijpse dixit^ by-the-by, which I w^ould most respectfully recommend to the consideration of those who seem never to have their own stupidity ! / was, undoubtedly, Columbus in 1492 ; ihaVs why the magnet turned from the Pole ; and Sir John Franklin miglit have come home long ago, (half roasted to a cinder,) if " Government " had only set me up in the ice trade, instead of fitting out the Advance and Rescue, with that pestilent surgeon, who couldn't be easy till he'd got a pre-emption to disqualify and exclude all authors from Terra Incog., as well as log — " bad luck to him." Not the first one of us now, can ever send a pair of nice young "lovyers" there to cool off their passion durijag the honeymoon, but he'll have somebody wrapping u^ their ears in old newspapers! And if I were to draw up a glowing description of the Palace, Park, Gardens, and Royal Demesnes of King Eidolon, in the last found Nebulae, Uncle Sam w^ould be certain to stick a Kane in it, and have it surveyed, and mapped, and geologized, and cantoned off into thriving young Republics, (modeled exactly on the pattern of Brother Jonathan's.) long before I could find a publisher discerning enough to appreciate the work. " Everything con TRA-ries me," — what shall I do? — Lexington, 1852. 260 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. properly digested St. Paul's sententious lecture on good morals and good manners, namely, "Let no man think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but each esteem another better than himself." Speaking of Dr. Johnson, reminds me that a reputed relative of his was the last teacher of my acquaintance sent to the lunatic asylum; but do not understand me to insinuate that I think the possession of any com- mendable quality restricted to the natives of any par- ticular section. Such an idea, beside being manifestly absurd, would be extremely unjust to many of my best and dearest friends ; all I mean is, that whenever I find pretty nearly my heaii ideal of a perfect lady or gentle- man, I am also very apt to find, soon or late, that the individual was, in a great majority of instances, origi- nally from one or the other of the States above-men- tioned. Now, don't betake yourself forthwith to the presence of your loving caro — to whom, nevertheless, present my cousinly compliments — that is, if you think proper ; for I dare say he is very much like the residue of lords paramount, sufiiciently addicted to taking airs of various kinds upon himself any way, and might fancy I had cooked up this nice little dish of "blarney" for his special delectation, (or more probable disgust,) or in- tended it as an ironical hit at the palpable _^ tem.^ euphonious or not. I don't insist, though, that you shall write yourself down among the half-enlightened who object ; for it strikes me that Brother Jonathan must have been committing petit larceny on a grand scale, for a long time, to very little purpose, if, after all the foreign literature he has stolen, the whole "free and enlightened" haven't found out how very common it is for princes, and other high nobility, to drop their names and titles, and travel all ovei the world incog, for years and years if they like ! And if all the old women in corduroys and dimities, who ever did predict that a slice of green cheese from the mountains in the moon would throw old mother Earth into convulsions, were to fatigue themselves by a desperate attempt to look wise and admonitory on the occasion, it doesn't follow, of course, that I should set about getting up another edition of Esop's long-eared biped, who undertook to ride, drive and carry the other donkey to market, and lost him for his pains, as any one would well deserve to do who could be diverted from his own course (even if it were not the very best,) 268 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. by every self-installed Mentor with " the grand talents" for enacting patron on the easy terms of dispensing that cheap commodity called advice. My incognito, if it does nothing else, will, at least, make an admirable divining rod to detect innate vulgarity under all the elaborate gloss of artificial refinement ; for who that would not "near the ear" to a key-hole, or tamper with a seal, could ever muster impudence and meanness enough to turn round and say ^''What is itf^^ when told that a name was temporarily suppressed ? And further, tJie jpatronizing one's equals or hetters being — according to Chateaubriand, Rochefocault, or somebody else — the Sauce-Robert to all human sym- pathy, I don't wish to see all major-minor and upper- tendom perfectly overwhelmed with obligation, as they might be, if not content with submitting to be viseed^ examined, cross-examined, pitied and advised in pro- pria persona I should undertake, heedlessly or with malice aforethought, to drag my father's name and the dignity of all spinsterhood (that of the Madams can't be compromised, for the experiment's been tried), through the obloquy of such an utterly obnoxious and altogether detestable ordeal ; consequently I don't choose to specu- late so extensively in the doubtful stock of republican gratitude. And that's very humane of me I'm sure, for excess of felicity is said to be dangerous, and might prove fatal to some self-constituted Parish Beadle of community, hap- pening to indulge a little too freely in the bliss of asking a lady^ seen doing what no honest decent woman ever would except "upon compulsion," " ?y she has no home, husband, children, father, mother, brother, sister," and so on ad infinitum^ " to provide for her ?" It's LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 269 such a civil ^ gentlemanly way of saying — "I should like of all things to commit you to the stocks as a com- mon vagrant, or send you to the Treadmill as a sus- pected swindler, instead of advising you to go on^ or hacW^* — such a special treat, to see by the quivering lip, how easily you can plant your talons in the heart- strings, how securely you can go on whetting your ugly, crooked beak on a naked nerve, without so much as giving the soul a single drop of chloroform to begin with, that it's "a wonder," all keen-sighted fiscal pur- veyors don't pounce upon such a dear delight of life, as subject matter of revenue. Ill-natured wights might say, it was because they chose to tax other people's necessaries, and enjoy their own luxuries gratis ; but I wouldn't be so sarcastic for the world. As for the new prefix, it's far more common and therefore less distingue than my own, and clearly "honored by my use," so if / choose, I don't see that any one else has a right to protest; in a country where every second or third man you meet, hnoivs he was breveted major, colonel, or general on a steamboat-plank, or at some stage or railroad office. Moreover, I have divers of times, once rather recently, seen very pathetic jeremiads over feelings shocked and expectations disap- pointed, all because many English and most American Passees will look old (the graceless, disobliging crea- tures) "notwithstanding their girlish title," yet never have " the sense to follow the example" of a worthy * Where those very elegible points of topography, "On" and "Back," are, is past ray power to discover; though I have an idea that On, must be somewhere in the next new Planet, and Back, at the bottom of the old Cretan Labyrinth ; and yet, they may, perhaps, be in a mirage somewhere in Symmes' region. 23 270 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. lady, known to her own cotemporaries and our younger days as " Mrs. Hannah Moore :" though, to be sure, we of the more enlightened — who ought of course to per- form more extraordinary feats than anybody else — -have of late rejuvenated her back again, despite some eighty odd years, into pretty little Miss. The last writer, I believe, proposes to brevet all spinsters of a certain age, nolens volens^ on the ground that they might perhaps " pass for very agreeable and even good-looking, middle- aged, or elderly ladies," if the "incongruous Miss^^ wasn't forever " conjuring up," in startling contrast, " some bright vision of youth and beauty." Well, if they will, I suppose they will, if we are all ever so barbarously inclined, so one may as well submit grace- fully to what is inevitable. But quid pro quo and if I can't be allowed the " concatenation accordingly," that same submission is out of the question. Only think now, of putting a dissyllable before a whole handful of consonants, all clumped together any how, and nearly as ugly as Guelph — no wonder we've got so little ear for music left; and why all our mothers and grand- mothers didn't prefer being Miss-ed to the end of time (like Yankee madams in lower scoredom), rather than tolerate such a perfectly unbearable, ear-grating juxta- position of sounds, I'm sure I can't divine. Let my Chesterfieldian friends, who loill insist on considering me one of St. Paul's "widows indeed," look to it; for I'm not certain but it's " actionable^^ as assault and battery on the auricular nerve ! Now that's what I call "defining my position" a merveille^ and wouldn't it make the Sovereignty's Pos- ture-makers, attitudinizing expositors and " human two-legged political dictionaries," "with inward envy LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 271 groan, to find themselves so very much exceeded, in their own way," by an unofficial amateur ? I only wish it were half as easy telling what I ever was sent into this world for at all — not certainly to gratify any gro- veling, earth-ward propensity of mine, for I never re- member the day I didn't regret being here ; and most assuredly not to refute the anti -republican idea of heredi- tary transmission, or confirm the flattering theory of modern degeneracy, for an oak, I take it, is not an osier, if it does happen to be uprooted and its foliage scattered to the four winds of heaven. So if half the illuminati, rank and file, were to insist that they saw "no cause," or didn't appreciate the motive; one of OUT amiably vacillating race, could of course do no less, thany^^^ sorry, very sorry, they should all be so "right royally fat in the head," and say^ with one honest, obsti- nate and impassible enough to have been cousin german to the blood, " I have found you a reason, I am not obliged to find you an understanding also." Don't be the least alarmed at all these mysterious- looking hieroglyphics — I am not writing Polkas, Ballets, and sky-kicking flourishes " at all at all ;" only a regular "skrimmage" between my familiar and your good genius, come to the rescue in the shape of a huge candle-fly: so "God prosper the right," and here's much love to yourself, a kiss for the wee coz., and a gentle hint, that, if not too much trouble, a sketch of the family portraits from " papa" down, would much oblige your isolated, but Afiectionate Cousin, Louise Elemjay. 272 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. THE HOME FEVER, Kecollection of the West Indies, by A. J. Pickering. A pearl of (hejlrst water, that should not be tossed back into the sea of obli- vion, because the owner left, perhaps, nothing else of its kind, and the finder has nothing to equal its value. We sate in a green verandah's shade, Where the verd-ant " Tje-tye" twined Its tendrils around us, and made A harp for the cool sea-wind. That came with its low wild sound at night, Like a sigh that is breathing of past delight. And that wind, with its low sweet breath had come, From the Island groves away ; And the waves, like wand'rers returning home, To the banks rolled wea-ri-ly : And the conch's far home-call, the parrots cry, All told that the Sabbath of night was nigh. We sate alone in that trellised bower, And gazed o'er the darkening deep, And the holy calm of that twilight hour Came over our hearts like sleep ; And we thought of the banks and "bonny braes," That had gladdened our childhood's careless days. And he, the friend by my side that sate. Was a boy whose path had gone Along the flowers and fields of joy, that fate, Like a mother, had smiled upon ; But alas for the time when our hope hath wings, And mem'ry to grief like a syren sings ! LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 273 His home had been on the stormy shore, Of Albyn's mountain land ; His ear was tuned to the breaker's roar, And he loved the bleak sea-strand ; And the torrent's din, and the howling breeze, Had all his soul's wild sympathies. They had told him tales of the sunny lands, That rose over Indian seas. Where the rivers wandered o'er golden sands. And strange fruit bent the trees ; They had wiled him away from his childhood's hearth, With its tones of love and its voice of mirth. Now that fruit and the river gems were near. And he strayed 'neath a tropic sun ; But the voice of promise, that thrilled in his ear At that early time, w^as gone ! And the hopes he had chased mid the dreams of night, Had melted away like the fire-fly's light. Oh I have watched him gazing long. Where the home-bound vessels lay; Cheating sad thoughts w^ith some old song. And striving to drive his tears away. And well I knew that that weary breast. Like the dove of the Deluge, pined for rest. There was "a worm i' the bud" wdiose fold Defied the leech's art, Consumption's hectic plague-spot told The tale of a broken heart. 274 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. The boy knew he was dying — that is sleep, To hearts that linger but to watch and weep ! He died, but mem'ry's thrilling power, With its ghost-like train had come. To the dark heart's ruin, at that last hour. And he murmured, "home, home^ home!' And his spirit passed with that happy dream, Like a bird in the track of a bright sunbeam. Oh talk of life to the trampled flower, Of light to the falling star, Of glory to him who in victory's hour Lies cold on the field of war ; But ye mock the exile's heart when ye tell Of aught but the home where it pines to dwell. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 275 ADDENDA BETWEEN SUSPENSION AND RESUMPTION OF WORK. EVELYN, Written on hearing^ seven months after date^ of her Decease^ Aug, ISth, 1851. The last, the last, the last! Alone^ And ''darkness visible" around; Night's voices strange and eerj grown, And life a vague and mocking sound. Half death, half life, how vain the gaze For anchors cast in time's wild stream ; It cannot pierce the gath'ring haze That shrouds earth's long and fevered dream. It sees no smile of dajs gone bj. Gleaming above life's sullen Avave ; What once was hope is now a sigh — Wingless and blind she needs a grave ! ****** I know full well why ills betide, And disappointment mars my schemes — I've lost the angel from my side, The spirit-counsel from my dreams. 1 never deemed that soothing tone Again would bless my waking ear, But ever at th' Eternal throne, I knew it pleaded for me here ! S76 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. That fervent prayer, averting ill, That earnest love, invoking care, For husband, child and sister, still The lone, lone heart, but ill could spare. I hear a husband's lonely wail, I hear an orphan's bitter moan ; And wander down life's dreary vale, Alone, alone ^ oh God hoio lone ! "We may not soothe each other's grief, We may not wipe each other's tear ; Our Father God, bring thou relief, And bind the hearts left broken here ! Louisville, Ky., March 2ith, 1852. "A L'OUTRANCE." Indorsed^ (after second perusal^ three raonths froin date^ on notice of susj)ension and rather cool ad- vice to forego resumption. I HAVE faith in thee yet, my destiny's star, High hope and a trust that abides evermore; The crag may be steep and the eyrie afar — • The eagle shall yet to its pinnacle soar ! His plume may be reft and his heart may be cold, For the chain that still chafes hath galled him full long ; But his spirit is brave, and never of old Were his pinion and glance more daring and strong. LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. 277 Oh child of the sun, half- buried in clay ! Oh vision of light that upward would soar! Oh proud bird of Jove, one spring and aw^ay — Thy home it is high, evermore^ evermore! Dark, dark lies the shadow on future and past. Yet music still sleeps in the harp's latest string ; ^olian tones may be wrung from the blast — On, on^ tameless bird of the poor broken wing ! Disaster may crush, never conquer the brave ! The day is not lost wdiile the cry is advance! And proudly the triumph rings back from the grave, •'No VICTOR IN LIFE, I havc warred ^ a V oiitrance P'' April 21th. PASS ON. A Dirge for ihe Mighty. Banner, tramp, peal and booming knell, Night's sable pomp round setting sun ; A nation's pride and sorrow tell, Yet genius lives — ^life is hegun ! Pass on. Pass on — ^earth has no more to give. Youth's sun has set. Time's brow is wan ; The honors, meeds for wdiich men live, Thou'st won them, worn them, pass thou on. Pass on. 278 LETTERS AND MISCELLANIES. Title and mace of little worth, Thy country gives to meaner mind; To thee, such power as few on earth Had wielded nobly for their kind. Pass on. ISTever such hearts as clung to thee, Shrined in such love a master name ; Never such page as thine shall be. May time efface — thou art for fame. Pass on. Faction its breath hath idly spent, Thy stately tread hath onward passed ; " All's well ! " Thou hast thy monument — • The stars, thy fitting pall at last ! Pass on. All time is thine — thy name a spell — ■ An aegis to a world is given ! Life gave thee toil, death rest — ''tis well — Earth can no more — God gives thee heaven. Pass on. Lexington, Ky., July lOth, 1852. THE END. MOORE & ANDERSON'S PUBLICATIONS P U L T E'S HOMCEOPATHIC DOMESTIC PHYSICIAN ILLUSTKATED WITH ANATOMICAL PLATES. 3>r i n 1 1] ij; I) n 6 a n b . " A very lucid and useful hand-book. Its popular language, and exclu- sion of difficult terminology are decided recommendations. Its success is good evidence of the value of the work." — N. Y. Times. " This appears to be a very successful publication. It has now reached its third edition, which is a revised and enlarged one; and we learn from the title page that eight thousand copies have been published. Various addi- tions have been made to the Homoeopathic directions, and the anatomical part of the work has been illustrated with engravings. The work has re- ceived the approbation of several of our most eminent practitioners." — Evening Post. " A nicely printed volume, and it appears to be a finished one of its kind. It embraces all possible directions for the treatment of diseases, with elab- orate descriptions of symptoms, and an abridged Materia Medica." — Boston Post. " It is very comprehensive and very explicit." — N. Y. Evangelist. " Though not at present exclusively confined to the medical profession, we have been consulted, during the past year, in some fifty or sixty cases, some of which, according to the opinion of the faT-sighted and sagacious, were very bad and about to die, and would die if trusted to Homoeopathy, and some were hopeless, which are now a wonder unto many in the change which the homoeopathic treatment alone effected. Now what of all this ? Why, just this, we have used Dr. Pulte's book for our Directory ; we have tested it as a safe counselor ; — and we say to our friends who have wished we would get up a book for them, just get Pulte's Domestic Physician and the remedies, and set up for yourselves," — Cattaraugus Chronicle. "I have recommended it to my patients as being — for conciseness, pre- cision, and practical utility — unsurpassed either in my native or adopted country." — Dr. Granger of St. Louis. " The plan and execution of Pulte's Homoeopathic Domestic Physician, render it in my opinion the best work of its kind extant for popular use. " ROBERT ROSMAN", M. D., "Brooklyn." "I have found, upon careful perusal, ' The Domestic Physician,' by Dr. Pulte, to be concise and comprehensive in its description of diseases, and accurate in tlie application of remedies; but its cliicf advantage over othei works of the same design, appears to me, to be the facility with which it is understood by the lay practitioner. I consider it a valuable and useful book of reference In domestic practice. The professional ability and extensive practical experience of the author, are alone sufficient recommendation for fts value. , A. COOKE HULL, M. D., 76 State St., Brooklyn. MOORE, ANDERSON, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. THREE GREAT TEMPTATIONS! Second Tliou.sasid in One Month!!! THE THREE GREAT TEMPTATIONS OF YOUNG MEN— With several Lectures addressed to Business and Professional Men: By Samuel W. Fisher. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 336. ^1. CONTENTS. The Sirens, The Slayer of the Strong, The Wine-cup, The Play-house, The Card-table, The VTeb of Vice, The Christian Lawyer, The Path of Infidelity, The Mosaic Law of Usury, Commercial Morality. "A WORK of unusual attraction. We know not where to have s^ien these subjects so im- piessively, yet so properly and guardedly examined. Far above common-place specimens. They expose dangers of terrible imminence, and urge persuasions of incomparable impor- tance, in a way that offends not the taste, yet reaches the heart and engages the thoughts." iV. Y. Evangelist. "Able and often eloquent. * * * a. work which may well be put into the hands of youth just entering upon life." — JV. T. Observer. " We shall put the book by upon one of the choice shelves of our private library." — Bo»- ton Congregationalist. " The author's style is not less clear and forcible than ornate and eloquent." — Ddroit Herald. "Characterized by earnestness, eloquence, and adaptation to the end had in view." — N. T. Recorder. "Paints in vigorous language the horrible conseqviences of y\ce..^''—zBoston Post. " We would that every young man in the land could be persuaded to read it carefully." — Louisville Recorder. " Dr. Fisher has spoken honestly and boldly. * * * Characterized by great energy of thought, a free and copious style, and by a spirit of high Christian philanthropy." — Puritan Recorder. " Has proceeded boldly where most public teachers are too timid to venture, and hia manly plainness is also marked by pi-udence and true delicacy." — Presbyterian of the. West. " Written in a style most inviting to youth and worthy of a very wide circulation." — Cincinnati Cli. Herald. " Will do much good to that great class of young men who, reared in the country, are daily transferred to the cities and make up their effective population." — Worcester {Mass.) Palladium. "Mr. Fisher speaks pointedly and plainly. Let young men listen and learn." — Phikidd- pMa Presbyterian. "Worthy of an attentive perusal." — Pliiladdpliia Observer, "The man, who .sits down to the perusal of this volume, must rise up wiser and better, if there be any virtue in good counsel beautifully and touchingly given,"— J/arZwon Chur'r. "The style is bold, manly, and vigorous, and in some portions very beautiful. * * * In the name of the young men of our cities, wo thank Dr. Fisher for preparing and sending forth so timely a volume." — Presbyterian Herald. •• The teachings of the excellent preacher will be regarded as unfashionable, and so they are, but their value is no less certain, and their practical workings cannot but be vastly beneficial to the tone of society."— iV. Y. Dady Times. MOORE & ANDERSONS PUBLICATIONS. HUOH OTI1.I.ER'S NE^V BOOK. SCENES AND LEGENDS OF THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND. By Hugli Miller, author of " Footprints of the Creator." 1 vol. 12 mo. Pp.436. Price $1. " A delightful book by one of the most delightful of living authors." — JV. Y. Cour. and Enq. "In this book Hugh Miller appears as the simple dramatist, reproducing home stories and legends in their native costume, and in full life. The vol- ume is rich in entertainment for all lovers of the genuine Scotch character." N. Y. Independent. "Fascinating portraits of quaint original characters and charming tales of the old faded superstitions of Scotland, make up the ' Scenes and Legends.' Purity of diction and thoughtful earnestness, with a vein of easy, half-con- cealed humor pervading it, are the characteristics of the author's style. Ad- ded to these, in the present volume, are frequent touches of the most elegantly ■wrought fancy ; passages of sorrowful tenderness that change the opening smile into a tear, and exalted sentiment that brings reflection to the heart." Citizen. "This is a book which will be read by those who have read the other works of this distinguished author. 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ANDERSON'S PUBLICATIONS. A CONCISE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, to the accession of Queen Victoria, by Clark, edited by Prof. Moffat. New edi- tion with a series of Questions : "We know of no history of England of the same size, so calculated to give the reader a clear view of the complicated events of that country as the one before us." — N. Y. Christian Intelligencer. "As a compend to be always at hand, it is superior to any we have seen." — Christian Herald. " It will be found a useful summary of English History, combining the attractiveness of a narrative with the advantages of brevity and chronologi- cal definiteness." — N. Y. Courier ^ Enquirer. "An excellent outline of English History. It would make a capital text- book for our schools and colleges. It shows what the people, as well as the Kings of England, were doing." — Enquirer. "Just what it purports to be — a concise, clear, and methodical outline of English history, well adapted for school purposes and for young readers. 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"We com- mend it to all who wish for such a manual." — Ohio Jour, of Education. " This is a very comprehensive manual of English History. * * As a class-book in our schools it will be invaluable." — Hartford, Conn., Daily Times. "I HAVE never used a text-book with more satisfaction. * * * After using it nearly a year, I most confidently recommend it to the favorable attention of the public. Edward Cooper, President of Asbury Female College, New Albany, Indiana, formerly Editor N. Y. District School Journal. MOORE &, ANDERSONS PUBLICATIONS. SERVICE AFLOAT AND ASHORE: By Lieut. Raphael Semmes, U. S. N. "Unlike most similar works, this has no one hero, unless the natural Eartiality manifested for General Worth, may be considered as giving im a more marked elevation. It is neither adorned nor disfi^ureil with vul;gar anecdotes, to gratify a morbid love of tlie marvelous. The author writes right on : like a man who seeks to tell the truth. He crit- icises freely, whatever, high or low, his Sailor's eye deems worthy of comment. The intelligent reader will be pleased with the frankness and independence of the writer." — Newark Daily Advertiser. " He was early engaged in the blockade of the Mexican ports, and narrowly escaped death while in command of the Somers ; afterward, through fortuitous circumstances, he became a participant in, and observer of, nearlv all the stirring incidents in General Scott's; triumph- ant march to the Capital. * * * Lieut. Semmes possesses the fac- ulty of describing comprehensively, intricate occurrences, and seizes upon the prominent points of a field of battle, and presents them in such ^manner that we are, as it were eye witnesses of the scene. We have rarely read a Avork, put forward with so little pretension, so intrinsi- cally valuable." — Mobile Daily Advertiser. " This is an elegant volume in every respect. * * * The work is written with great spirit, taste and ability. We have seen no work which has given us such vivid impressions of Mexican scenery and char- acter, or the events of General Scott's campaign. * * * He has thrown around the country, the people, and the expedition, a flood of illumina- tion from the historians of the Spanish march and conquests over the same regions. * * * The whole book inspires and sustains an inter- est of which the reader can form no opinion, unless he goes through, •which he will not fail to do, if he begins." — Southern Press. " Calm, deliberate, and intelligent, as he is, he cannot entirely con- ceal his personal preferences. He has, notwithstanding, furnished the very best book which that war has called forth, and, with remarkable in- telligence and skill, has interwoven the events of the war Avith saga- cious observations on the country and people." — Phil. Presbyterian. " A beautiful and very interesting volume, which, from the glances we have had time to give it, appears to be written with much ability, and to afford the reader a great deal of valuable information in regard to the war, the country, and the people." — Bait. American. " A most interesting addition to the literature of a war, odious in its origin, as it was triumphant in its progress, and happy in its conse- quences." — Puritan Recorder. " It is written with a spirit and life that commend it to perusal." — N. Y. Observer. " An accomplished writer as well as gallant officer." — Philadelphia Observer. " It is difiicult, after having commenced f'"S perusal, to lay it aside before finishing it." — Norfolk Daily Nezcs. MOORE & ANDERSON'S PUBLICATIONS. STRA^VBERRY A]\l> «RAPE CUI/IURE. MOORE & ANDERSON have ju.st published a small volume of one hundred and fort3^-tvvo pages, 12 mo., entitled The Cul- ture OF THE Grape and Wine Making, by Robert Buchanan, Member of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society, with an Ap- pendix, containing- Directions for the Cultivation of the Strawberry, by N. Longworth. Put up for sending by mail, in flexible cloth ; price 50 cents ; cloth, usual style, 62^ cents. This volume should be in the hands of every cultivator of these delicious fruits. For it embodies, in a compact and available form, the experience of accomplished and practical Horticulturists on subjects which have come di- rectly under their own observation for a long series of years. Of a former edition of "Buchanan on the Grape," published by the author, mainly for the convenience of himself and his friends, we subjoin a few NOTICES OF THE PRESS. Mr. Downing, in his Horticulturist says : " It deals more with facts, ac- tual experience, and observation, and less with speculation, supposition and belief, than anything on this topic that lias yet appeared in the United States. In other words, a man may take it, and plant a vineyard, and raise grapes with success. "Furnishes, in a small space, a very great amount of instructive informa- tion relative to the culture of the Grape. — Farmer's and Planter's Encyclo- pcsdia. ""Will be found to convey the most opportune and valuable instruction, to all interested in the subject." — Neill's Fruit and Floiver Garden. MOORE & ANDERSON, Publishers, 28 West Fourth Street, Cincinnati. BORROWS ROVING ADVENTURES; By Geo. Borrow, Author of "The Gipsies in Spain," " The Bible in Spain," etc. With fine portrait. Large type. Complete in one beautiful oc- tavo volume. Pp. 550. "He colors like Rembrandt, and draws like Spagnoletti." — Edinburgh Review. "The pictures are so new that those best acquainted with England will find it hard to recognize the land they may have traveled over." — National Intelligencer. " We could hardly sleep at night for thinking of it." — Blachoood, MOORE & ANDERSON'S PUBLICATIONS. " Will prove more generally useful, than any other work yet published on Geology." THE COURSE OF CREATION: By John Anderson, D. D., of New- burgh, Scotland. With a Glossary of Scientific Terms. 1 vol. l2mo. Illustrated, $1.25. ' ' It treats chiefly of the series of rocks between the Alps and the Grampians. It is thoronghly scientific, but popular in its style, and exceedingly entertaining." — Zimi's Herald. " The author's style is clear and engaging, and his graphic descriptions seem to con. vey the reader at once into the fields of geological research to observe for himself." — Ohio Observer. "Another valuable contribution to the cause of truth and sound science. Its value is very much enhanced by the Glossary of Scientific Terms appended to it by the pub- lishers; for scarcely any one of the sciences has a larger number of terms with which ordinary readers are unacquainted than Geology." — Presbyterian of the West. " We commend the volume to all who would be instructed in the wonderful works of God. Chapters sucn as that on the "Economic History of Coal," and those on "Or- ganic Life" and "Physical and Moral Progression," have a special value for the stu- dent of divine Providence." — JV. Y. Independent. "Dr. Anderson is evidently well skilled in geology, and writes with a freedom and vivacity rivaled by no writer on the subject — except Hugh Miller." — Methodist Qiiarterlu Review. " This book is intended for general readers, — and such readers will be entertained by it, — but it is none tiie less thorough, and enters boldly into geological inquiry." — Boston Jldvertiser. " One of the most interesting and valuable works on Geology that we have ever met with. The author is a thoroughly scientific man; — but his scientific accuracy does not prevent the work from being understood by unscientific readers, it is a very readable book." — Louisville Journal. "By reading this book a person can obtain a general knowledge of the whole subject." — Western Star. * * * " Highly honorable to the writer and honorable to the publishers." — Boston Congregationalist. "This valuable volume was printed, is well as published, in Cincinnati; and it speaks as well for the literary society of that city, as for the enterprise of the publish- ers, and the taste and skill of the typographer." — Boston Post. " It is one of the significant signs of the times that we should be receiving a work like this, from a city that had scarcely an existence fifty years ago, got up in a style of elegance, that ranks it beside the finest issues of tiie publishing houses of Boston and New York. This fact, however, is but the smallest element of interest that attaches to the volume. It is one of those noble contributions lo natural science, in its relation to revealed religion, which in the writings of Hugh Miller, King, Brewster, and others have conferred new luster on the lionored name of Scotland. * • * The coticUiding chapter is a sublime questioning of Geology, as to the testimony she gives to a Creator, somewhat after the manner of the Scholia, to Newton's Principia, and is one of the noblest portions of the work." — Richmond, Fa., Watchman and Observer. "The science of Geology is attracting more and more attention. * * * That whicn was once a gigantic chaos, has become developed into a system beautifully sym- metrical, and infinitely grand." — Mercantile Courier, THE UNION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE C H U R C H , in the Conversion of the World. By Thomas W. Jenkyn, D. D. Second thousand. 12mo,. .cloth,. . . . ,85 REPUBLICAN CHRISTIANITY; or, True Liberty, as exhibited in the Life, Pre- cepts, and Early Disciples of the Great Redeemer. By Rev. E. L. Magoon, Author of " Proverbs for the People," &c. Second edition. 12mo, cloth, .... 1,25 PROVERBS FOR THE PEOPLE; or, Illustrations of Practical Godliness, drawn from the Book of Wisdom. By Rev. Euas L. Magoon. Second thousand. 12mo, cloth, ,90 COLEMAN'S PRIMITIVE CHURCH. The ApostoUcal and Primitive Church, Popular in its Government and Simple in its Worship. By L. Coleman, Author of " Christian Antiquities ; " with an Introductory Essay, by Dr. A. Neander. Third thousand. I2mo, cloth, . . . .1,25 LIFE OF PHILIP M ELAN CTHON, comprising an Account of the most important transactions of the Reformation. By Francis A. Cox, D. D., LL. D., of London. 12mo, cloth.. ... ,75 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By Thomas aKempjs. Introductory Essay, by T. Chalmers, D. D. New and improved edition. Edited by H. Malcom, D. D. ISmo, cloth,.... ,38 Fine edition, 16mo, cloth, ,50 THE SAINT'S VERLASTING REST. By Richard Baxter. 16mo,. cloth,... ,50 BUCK'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ; aTreatise in which the Nature, Evidences, and Advantages are considered. By Rev. C. Buck, London. 12mo cloth, 50 CHRISTIANITY DEMONSTRATED : in four distinct and independent serie."? of Proofs ; with an Explanation of the Types and Prophecies concernmg the Messiah. By Rev. Harvey Newcomb. 12mo, cloth,.... ,75 MEMOIR OF HARLAN PAGE; or, the Power of Prayer and Personal Effort for the Souls of Individuals. By William A. Hallock. ISmo, cloth,.... ,38 MEMOIR OF ROGER WILLI A MS, Founder of the State of Rhode Island. By W^iLLiAM Gammell, A. M. with a Portrait. 12mo, cloth,.... ,75 THE CHURCH MEMBER'S M A N U A L of Ecclesiastical Principles, Doctrines, and Discipline. By Rev. W. Crowell ; Introduction by H. J. Ripley, D. D. Second edition, revised. 12mo, cloth, ,90 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST. By Ernest Sartorics, D. D., General Superintendent and Consistorial Director at Konigsberg, Prussia. Translated from the German. By Rev. Oakman S. Stearns, A. M. 18mo, cloth,.... ,42 THE INCARNATION. By Rollin II. Neale, D. D., Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Boston. 32mo, gilt,. ... ,31>i THE CHURCH-MEMBER'S GUIDE. By Rev. John A. James. Edited by J. 0. Choules, D. D. New edition. With an Introductory Essay, by the Rev. Hubbard WiNSLOw, cloth, . ... ,38 THE CHURCH IN EARNEST. By Rev. John A. James. Seventh thousand. 18mo, cloth, ,50 PASCAL'S THOUGHTS. Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, translated from the French. A new edition ; with a sketch of his life. 12mo cloth, 1,00 THE LIFE OF GODFREY WM. VON LEIBNITZ. By John M. Mackie. On the basis of the German work of Dr. G. E. Guhrauer. 18mo, cloth, ,75 MY PROGRESS IN ERROR AND RECOVERY TO TRUTH ; or, a Tour through Universalism, Unitarianism, and Skepticism. 2d thousand. 16mo, cloth,.. ,63 W'Si^me mm Mm'm@mm. THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE; a collection of Discourses on Christian Missions, by American Authors. Edited by Baron Stow, D. D. Second thousand, 12mo, cloth,.... ,85 THE KAREN APOSTLE ; or. Memoir of Ko-Thah-Byu, the first Karen Convert. With Notices concerning his Nation. By Rev. Francis Mason, Missionary. Edited by Prof. H. J. Ripley. ISmo, cloth, ,25 MEMOIR OF ANN H. JUDSON, late Missionary to Burmah. By Rev. J. D. Knowles. a new edition. Fifty-fifth thousand. 18mo, cloth, .... ,58 Fine edition, plates, 16mo, cloth, gilt,.... ,85 MEMOIR OF GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, late Missionary to Burmah,-con. tainiDg much intelligence relative to the Burman Mission. By Rev. A. King. With an Introductory Essay. By W. R. Williams, D. D. New edition. 12mo,... cloth,.... ,75 MEMOIR OF HENRIETTA SHUCK ; first Female Missionary to China. With a Likeness. By Rev. J. B. Jeter. Fifth thousand. ISmo, cloth,. . . . ,50 MEMOIR OF REV. WILLIAM G. CROCKER, late Missionarj- in West Africa, among the Bassas. Including a History of the Mission. By R. B. Medbery. With a Likeness. ]8mo, cloth ,63 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONS, in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, from their earliest commencement to the present time. Prepared under the direction of the American Baptist Missionary Union. By William Gammell, Prof, in Brown University. With seven Maps. Sixth thousand. 12mo, cloth, .... ,75 0^ Letters from the Missionaries now in the field, and who are the best qualified to judge •f its accuracy, have been received, giving their unequivocal testimony to the fideUty of the work. THE GREAT COMMISSION ; or, the Christian Church constituted and charged to convey the Gospel to the world. A Prize Essay. By John Harris, D. D. With an Introductory Essay, by William R. Williams, D. D. Seventh thousand. 12mo, cloth, .... 1 ,00 THE GREAT TEACHER; or. Characteristics of our Lord's Ministry. By John Harris, D D. With an Introductory Essay, by H. Humphrey, D. D. Twelfth thousand. 12mo, cloth, .... ,85 MISCELLANIES ; consisting principally of Sermons and Essays. By J. Harris, D. D. With an Introductory Essay and Notes, by Joseph Belcher, D. D. 16mo,. cloth,. . . .,75 MAMMON ; or, Covetousness the Sin of the Christian Church. By J. Harris, D. D. 18mo, cloth,.... ,45 Z E B U LO N ; or, the Moral Claims of Seamen stated and enforced. By J. Harris, D. D. 18mo, cloth, ,25 THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH. Contributions to Theological Science. By John Aarris, D. D. New and Revised edition. One volume, 12mo, cloth,. . . .1,00 MAN PRIMEVAL; or the Constitution and Primitive Condition of the Human Being. A Contribution to Theological Science. By John Harris, D. D. With a finely engraved Portrait of the Author. Third edition. i2mo, cloth 1,25 " His copious and beautiful illustrations of the successive laws of the Divine Manifestation, have yielded us inexpressible delight." — London Eclective Review. THE FAMILY ; its Constitution, Pi* jbation, and History; being the third volume of " Contttbutions to Theological Science." By John Harris, D. D [In preparation RIPLEY'S NOTES ON THE GOSPELS; designed ibr Teachers in Sabbath Schoo' and Bible Classes, and as an Aid tc Ji'-anily Instr>'-t:ju. By Henry J. Ripley, Prof, in Newton Theol. Inst. With a Map jt Canaan. Two volumes in one, . . .half mor 1,25 NOTES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES; with a beautiful Map, iUus- trating the Travels of the Apostle Paul, with a track of his Voyage from Cesarea to Rome. By Henry J. Ripley. One volume. 12mo, half mor ,75 MALCOM'S BIBLE DICTIONARY of the most important Names, Objects, and Terms found in the Holy Scriptures ; intended principally for Sabbath School Teachers and Bible Classes. By H. Malcom, D. D. One hundred and third thousand. 18mo. half mor ,50 SABBATH SCHOOL CLASS BOOK ; comprising copious Exercises on the Sacred Scriptures. By E. Lincoln, jl2>^ LINCOLN'S SCRIPTURE QUESTIONS ; with Answers annexed, giving, in the language of Scripture, interesting portions of the History, Doctrines, and Duties exhibited in the Bible, ,08>^ THE SABBATH SCHOOL HARMONY; containing appropriate Hymns and Music for Sabbath Schools, Juvenile Singing Schools, and Family Devotion. By N. D. Gould, ,12>^ HOW TO BE A LADY; a Book for Girls,-containing useful Hints on the Formation of Character. By Rev. H. Newcomb. Tenth thousand, cloth, gilt,. . . . ,50 HOW TO BE A MAN ; a Book for Boys, containing useful Hints on the Formation of Character. By Rev. H. Newcomb. Tenth thousand, cloth, gilt, Jt ANECDOTES FOR BOYS : Entertaining Anecdotes and Narratives, illustrative c Principles and Character. By Rev. Harvey Newcomb. Sixth thousand 18mo, cloth, gilt, ,41 ANECDOTES FOR GIRLS : Entertaining Anecdotes and Narratives, illustrative o\ Principles and Character. By Rev. Harvey Newcomb. Sixth thousand ISmo, cloth gilt, ,42 ANECDOTES for the Family and Social Circle. ISmo, cloth, ... ,63 LEARNING TO ACT — FEEL — THINK. ISmo, cloth, gilt, each,.... ,38 THE GUIDING STAR; or, The Bible God's Message. Designed to illustrate th« second and third questions of the Westminster Catechism. By Louisa Payson Hop<> KINS. ISmO, ,r An exceedingly interesting and instructive work for youth, on the evidences of Christianity. NATIONAL SERIES OF AMERICAN HISTORIES. By Rev. Joseph Banvard. Volume one of the Series, — PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS, or, Incidents of Adventure in the History dl the First Settlers, with Illustrations. ISmo, cloth, in press. Other volumes of the series are in course of preparation. This series of Histories will embrace the most interesting and important events which have occurred in the United States since the fir*5 settlement of the country; exhibiting, also, the trials and adventures of the early colonists both f( the North and the South, their peculiarities of character and manners, their intercourse and con- flicts with the natives, the gradual development of their institutions, sketches of their prominenl men in both the Church and the State, Incidents in the Revolution, with various other subjects of interest of more recent date. It is intended to be a NATIONAL SERIES OF AMERICAN HISTORY, adapted to the popular mind, and especially to the youth of our country, illustrated with numerous fine engravings; each volume to be complete in itself; yet when all are i ubUshed, to form a regular consecutive series, consisting of twelve or more volumes, 18mo., of about 300 pages each. MOORE & ANDERSON Publish the following Miscellaneous Works : — Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland. — By Hugh Miller, author of " Footprints of the Creator," etc. 1 vol. 12 rao. — $1.00. The Course of Creation. — By Dr. Juo. Anderson. Illustrated. A popular work on Geology. 1 vol. 12 mo. — $1.2»5. Service Afloat and Ashore. — By Lieut. Senimes, tJ. S. X. Illus- trated. 1 vol. 8 vo.— $1.75. A Concise History of England, to the accession of Queen Victoria. By Clark. Edited by Prof. Moffat. 1 vol. 12 mo.— $1.00. The Cavaliers of the Cross. — By W. W. Fosdick, Esq. 1 vol. 12 mo. $1.00. Roving Adventures, or Lavengro, the Scholar, the Gipsy, the Priest. By G^o. Borrow, author of " Gipsies of Spain," etc. 1 elegant volume, 8 vo.— $1.50. JUSTREADY. The Homoeopathic Domestic Physician, enlarged with special Hydro- pathic directions and illustrated with anatomical plates. By J. H. Pulte, M. D. The Culture of the Grape, and "Wine-making, By Robert Buchanan, Member of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society. With an Appendix, containing directions for the Cultivation of the Strawberry. By N. Longworth. Mr. Downing, in noticing the former edition of Mr, Buchanan's work, says, " It deals more with facts, actual experience, and observation, and less with speculation, supposition, and belief, than anything on this topic that has yet appeared in the United States. In other words, a man may take it and plant a vineyard and raise grapes with success; he may even make good wine, but no book can wholly teach this latter art," etc., etc. IN PR EPA RATION. The American Orator and Manual of Eloquence. A new Speaker. By J. C. Zachos. 1 vol. 12 mo. Merry Old England. By Miss Corner. An Illustrated Juvenile. A New Work, by Rev. Samuel W. Fisher, Esthetics (The Elements). By Prof. J. C. Moffat. May, 1852. mwmm \ THE PSALMIST: a New Collection of Hymns for the use of the Baptist Churches By £abon Stow and S. F. Smith. Pulpit edition J2mo, (large type,) Turkey morocco, gilt edges,. . . .3,00 " " 12mo, " " plain morocco,.... 1, 50 « « 12mo, « <* sheep,.... 1,25 Pew, " 18mo, sheep,.... ,75 « " 18mo, morocco, 1,00 " " 18mo, morocco, gilt, . . . .1,25 " " ISmo, Turkey morocco, gilt,.... 2,62 >i Pocket, " 32mo, sheep, ,56)^ " " 32mo, morocco, plain,. ... ,75 « « 32mo, morocco, gilt, ,83>^ " " 32mo, embossed morocco, gilt edges, 1,00 " « 32mo, , tucks, gilt, 1,25 *' " 32mo, Turkey morocco, . . . .1,50 THE PSALMIST, WITH A SUPPLEMENT. By R. Fuller, and J. B. Jetee.— Same price ; style and size as above. THE SOCIAL PSALMIST ; a new Selection of Hymns.for Conference Meetings and Family Devotion. By Baron Stow and S. F. Smith. ISmo, sheep,.... ,25 WINCHELL'S WATTS, vrith a Supplement. 12mo sheep,.... ,50 32mo, sheep, ,67 WATTS AND RIPPON. 32mo, sheep,.... ,56^ ISmo, sheep, .... ,88 THE CHRISTIAN MELODIST ; a new Collection of Hymns for Social Religious Worship. By Rev. Joseph Banvard. With a choice selection of Music, adapted to the Hymns. IBmo, sheep, )37>^ THE SACRED MINSTREL; a Collection of Church Music, consisting of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, Anthems, Sentences, Chants, &c., selected from the most popular produc- tions of nearly one hundred diiierent authors, in this and other countries. By N. D. Gould, ,75 COMPANION FOR THE PSALMIST ; containing original Music, arranged for Hymns in " The Psalmist," of peculiar chtiracter and metre. By N. D. Gould,. . . . ,12 >^ wmmmm mm m^wwE^m^ JEWETT ON BAPTISM. The Mode and Subjects of Baptism. By M. P. J A. M., late IMinister of the Presbyterian Church. Twelfth thousand cloth,. ... ,2-5 JUDSON ON BAPTISM. A Discourse on Christian Baptism ; with many quotations from Pedobaptist Authors. By Adoniram Judson, D. D. Fifth edition, revised and enlarged, cloth, .... ,25 ESSAY ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM, By Baptist W. Noel. 16mo,... cloth,.... ,60 BIBLE B A PTI SM . A beautiful Steel Engraving, nine by twelve inches in size, repre- senting in the centre a Church and a Baptismal scene, &c., and in the margin are ar- ranged all the texts of Scripture found in tlie New Testament alluding to the subject ot Baptism. An elegant ornamental picture for the parlor, ,25 4 9 *■ ,^^ % V A'^ A .#^ ". ^<^ A O -^ O fl X '^ \0 ,0q o\^ ^' ^o^ "^ * 8 \ \ * »vi - Deacidified usirij p>. C^k s "■ Neutralizing Age • A ' '^ ^ Treatment Date: JIIBbbkkeeper PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES, LP. 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive %f- Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxide , Treatment Date: p ^^■. PRESERVATION TECHN( 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 1 (724)779-2111 '°^ ♦ N ' ^s:-* .^^ ' .-O^'c" N C 5 --c. '^^. ./:^ *\- '■^ ' ^ X ^ .V^ <^ ,-0^ .^' ■V. .^x ,0 s^ * M ^ X S ^* .^' -?%. V ^. ..^^\^>^>'^.