EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BELMONT PARKER 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 <$be fttoer^ibe j&repa Cambridge 
 
 1915 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WILLIAM BELMONT PARKER 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published February 1915 
 
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 TO MY FATHER 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 IT is more than ten years since, in a burst of 
 enthusiasm and admiration, I undertook to 
 prepare a "Life" of Sill. Enthusiasm and 
 admiration have continued unabated, but cir 
 cumstances interposed to delay the work; not, 
 I am now inclined to think, to its detriment. 
 Had I gone forward unimpeded, working out 
 the plan I then had in mind, the result would 
 have been different, partaking of the nature of 
 essay and criticism. But midway of my task I 
 fell under the influence of that great master of 
 the art of biography, Sir Leslie Stephen, whose 
 dicta upon the subject changed the course I 
 was taking. "Nobody," said he, "ever wrote 
 a dull autobiography"; and he added, "The 
 biographer can never quite equal the autobi- 
 ographer, but with a sufficient supply of letters 
 he may approach very closely to the same 
 result." About the same time a saying of Sill s, 
 which I had probably read half a dozen times 
 without seeing its application to the matter in 
 hand, came home to me and reinforced the 
 remarks of Sir Leslie, "Let a man write 
 about himself. It s the only fellow he knows 
 anything about." These have been my sailing 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 orders. Though Sill s letters are not so abund 
 ant as a biographer working on this principle 
 might wish, they are not wanting except for 
 brief periods, and so far as available they have 
 been most generously placed at my disposal by 
 Sill s family and friends. 
 
 My obligations, therefore, are many and 
 serious. My most grateful thanks are due to 
 Mrs. Sill, not only for materials, but also for 
 wise counsel and cooperation. To Sill s class 
 mates at Yale, Mr. Henry Holt and Franklin 
 
 B. Dexter, as also to Miss Millicent W. Shinn, 
 of California, I acknowledge a debt of grati 
 tude. Among many others to whom I am 
 beholden for letters, recollections, and aid are 
 Miss Heloise E. Hersey, Mr. Howells, and Pro 
 fessor Royce, and, to add those who are no 
 longer living, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daniel 
 
 C. Gilman, and Ralph O. Williams, Yale, 61. 
 
 W. B. P. 
 
 January 15, 1915. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. ANCESTRY AND YOUTH .... 1 
 
 II. His LIFE AT COLLEGE .... 12 
 
 III. THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN . . 36 
 
 IV. CALIFORNIA 51 
 
 V. SETTLING DOWN 86 
 
 VI. TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA . . .131 
 
 VII. MAN OF LETTERS 190 
 
 VIII. THE CRAFTSMAN 220 
 
 IX. AVE ATQUE VALE 295 
 
 INDEX 305 
 
EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 
 
 LIKE most American men of letters the 
 author of "Opportunity" and "The Fool s 
 Prayer" was a native of New England. He 
 was born on April 29, 1841, in Windsor, af 
 fectionately called "Ancient Windsor," Con 
 necticut, where his parents, his grandparents, 
 and forbears, reaching back to the foundation 
 of the colony, had lived before him, one of his 
 ancestors being the first minister of the church 
 there from 1630 to 1670. His ancestry in 
 cluded some of the best stocks of New Eng 
 land Walcotts, Grants, Edwardses, Ells 
 worths, Rowlands, Allyns; and one who was 
 curious in such matters might trace his descent 
 to Sir Thomas Ware, Knight, of Yorkshire, 
 member of Parliament in 1613, and auditor- 
 general of Ireland, or, even farther back, to 
 Sir Nicholas Pyncheon, of Wales, Sheriff of 
 London in 1532. 
 
 There is an allusion to this Welsh strain in 
 his ancestry, which had a sort of fascination 
 
2 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 for Sill, in a fragment of imaginative prose on 
 "Can Tunes be Inherited?" 
 
 "I have Welsh blood in my family, far back 
 on my mother s side. By some freak of hered 
 ity the music of my Welsh ancestors has come 
 down through six, eight, or ten generations, as 
 a dormant germ, and come to life again a 
 dim, somnolent, imperfect life, to be sure in 
 a corner of my brain. I could almost fancy 
 (though this I do not soberly believe, for it is 
 explicable in other ways) that_iherfi__has-conie 
 down with it. a. visual pirtnrp of wild torchlight 
 marchings and countermarchings in savage 
 Welsh glens. So plainly do I see in my brain 
 . . . visions that befit this strange, barbaric 
 music. 
 
 " I see mountain gorges at night. . . . Wind 
 ing along the pass comes a procession of my 
 Keltic ancestors: it is a burial or some sav 
 age midnight gathering against the Saxon in 
 vader. Red torches flare in the midst of their 
 smoke; some indistinct dark mass is borne 
 among the leaders: and now and then there 
 are metallic gleams along the vanishing line. 
 They are small, dark men, half clothed in 
 skins of beasts, and their wild eyes shine under 
 streaming locks of black hair. A mountain 
 stream beside them flashes its white bursts of 
 foam out of the darkness under the crags, and 
 continually there rises and mingles with its 
 
ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 3 
 
 roar that fierce yet woeful music, half shouted 
 and half sung." 
 
 Coming down to later times : An ancestor to 
 whom Sill was often compared was the Rever 
 end David Sherman Rowland, who was born in 
 Fairfield in 1719, graduated from Yale in 1743, 
 and became at once pastor over the church in 
 Northwest Simsbury, now Granby, Connecti 
 cut. TTft_wfl.g_p. man ftf high-^pmt. and marked 
 independence of character. When, in 1747, he 
 went to be pastor of the church at Plainfield, 
 Connecticut, he found some opposition to his 
 installation, and thereupon, calling together 
 two or three ministers, installed himself. In 
 1762, he became pastor of the Presbyterian or 
 Congregational church in Providence, where he 
 ranked among the leading clergymen of the 
 day, and had a notable part in the struggle 
 then beginning for independence. So conspicu 
 ous was he on the side of the colonists, and so 
 obnoxious to the British, that when the town 
 of Providence was invested, he was obliged 
 to make his escape with his family in a sloop, 
 getting away under cover of night through the 
 midst of the enemy s fleet. Later he settled 
 at Windsor, Connecticut, and became pastor of 
 the church, which was the oldest Evangelical 
 church in America, and with the exception of 
 the Southwark church, London, the oldest 
 orthodox Congregational church in the world. 
 
4 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 His son, the Reverend Henry Augustus Row 
 land, Sill s grandfather, became a colleague 
 with his father in the Windsor church in 1790, 
 and served as pastor until the year of his death 
 in 1835. 
 
 On his father s side, Sill was descended from 
 a race of physicians and surgeons. During the 
 Revolutionary War, his ancestor, Dr. Elisha 
 Noyes Sill, served with General Walcott s 
 brigade at Saratoga, and later in Captain 
 Spalding s troop, and was surgeon to the Con 
 necticut troops during Burgoyne s invasion. 
 Sill s father, Dr. Theodore Sill, and his father 
 before him, were physicians in Windsor, where 
 his mother s father and grandfather were min 
 isters. These two strains, minister and doctor, 
 mingled in Sill s character rather curiously, and 
 give some explanation to the conflicting ten 
 dencies of his life. His father was one of the 
 most beloved physicians of his time, and his 
 visits were so welcome that it was said that 
 some of the children of the town were suspected 
 of playing sick so as to have Dr. Sill to tend 
 them. It was from his mother, Elizabeth New- 
 berry Rowland, that Sill inherited his brown 
 hair and dark gray eyes: for he was decidedly 
 a Rowland in appearance. She is described as 
 a handsome woman with a certain stateliness 
 of manner, and much natural distinction, and 
 is still remembered as an intellectual, quiet 
 
ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 5 
 
 woman, fond of the few good books of the day, 
 with a special love for poetry and a tendency 
 to melancholy. 
 
 A classmate writes that Sill told him that 
 this came to her son as an aversion from 
 strangers and especially from crowds, but that 
 Sill, recognizing it, overcame it in his later 
 years. 
 
 His father s house was the wide, low-built 
 white house, shaded by a tall tree, that looks 
 obliquely across the green toward the old 
 church where ancestors both on the maternal 
 and the paternal side had ministered. Here 
 Sill s childhood was spent, until the death of 
 his mother, when he was eleven, loosed the ties 
 which bound his father to Windsor, and led to 
 their removal to the West. There in little more 
 than a year his father died also, leaving the boy 
 of thirteen alone with no nearer relatives than 
 uncles, aunts, and cousins. Shadowed though 
 his youth was by family sorrows, which must 
 have added to his naturally serious bent,- 
 first the loss of his only brother, drowned while 
 skating on the Connecticut River when Sill was 
 six years old, the death of his mother, five 
 years later, followed so soon by the death of his 
 father, the boy does not seem ever to have 
 been morose or melancholy. In fact the only 
 anecdotes, if they deserve to be called such, 
 which are recalled of his early years, both point 
 
6 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 to an abundance of spirit which, along with an 
 underlying seriousness, marked him all his life. 
 
 One of these refers to his flying a kite on the 
 day when he had just got a new straw hat. The 
 wind being high and the kite needing more bal 
 last, he took off the new hat, poked a hole 
 through the rim, tied it to the tail of the kite, 
 and up it went, somewhat to the horror of his 
 careful aunt. The other scrap, which appears 
 to belong to the year he spent at Honesdale, 
 Pennsylvania, relates the capitulation of a 
 teacher, indicated as probably Pennsylvania 
 Dutch by the dialect, who, having resisted as 
 long as he could the boy s infectious spirit, 
 broke out, "Veil, Sill, I dink den you vas dying, 
 you be making foolishness." This irrepressible 
 playfulness of mood he seems never to have 
 lost : it was one of the qualities which he had in 
 common with Matthew Arnold whom he re 
 sembled in many points, and calls to mind Her 
 bert Paul s remark about Arnold, that he had 
 a constant flow of high spirits which he never 
 took the least effort to restrain. 
 
 Equally slight are the glimpses of his boy 
 hood given by Sill himself. A hint of his com 
 fortable bringing-up, and a stronger intimation 
 of his highly sensitive nervous organization, 
 are given in a sentence or two from an unsigned 
 essay in the "Atlantic Monthly." "The one 
 daily torture of my own otherwise kindly 
 
ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 7 
 
 handled childhood was the going to bed in the 
 dark. I hated the dark, and have always hated 
 it. Why could not some softly shaded light 
 have been left for me to go to sleep by, and 
 then withdrawn, instead of crashing down on 
 my wide-awake eyes that horrible club of 
 blackness?" 
 
 Of veritable boyhood and daylight are these 
 passing glimpses : - 
 
 "As I go on in life, I find that two or three of 
 the child s great spectacles still keep for me 
 their freshness. One of these is the elephant 
 leading the circus procession through the vil 
 lage street. I never could see it enough, that 
 huge, unearthly shape, moving solemnly along; 
 flapping its wings of ears not for common and 
 mundane fly-guards, but in some mysterious 
 gesture or ceremonial ; bending its architectural 
 legs in the wrong place; waving its trunk in 
 incantation; seeing none of the trivial street 
 matters to right or left, but absorbed in Orien 
 tal dreams. I used to think it strange that 
 people who were rich enough should not have 
 one always pacing about their own backyards. 
 
 "Another of these spectacles of childhood 
 that keeps its charm for me is the locomotive at 
 full speed. . . . But the sight in which I still 
 take the most childlike delight is the spring 
 bonfire. . . . The offending sticks and straws of 
 last year s garden life are gathered together 
 
8 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 into dry and light-tossed piles. Now the eager 
 child is permitted, if he is good, the untold 
 felicity of setting off the bonfire. 
 
 "I am thinking of the early spring mornings 
 in boyhood, when we used to go to the Little 
 River to take up the gill-net for shad. A mist 
 hung on the smoothly running water; there was 
 an Oriental fragrancy of spearmint from the 
 moist bank; the rattle of the oar in the rowlock 
 sounded preternaturally loud, echoing under 
 the covered bridge at that perfectly silent hour. 
 Then we boys begin to lift the strained top line 
 of the net, pulling the skiff along by means of it, 
 in a moment of delicious excitement. What is 
 that dim spot of glimmering gold, far down in 
 the dark waters? It grows, as we eagerly haul 
 on the line, and the little waves plashed out by 
 the boat make it waver and break, till it seems 
 some huge and splendid prize like the mysteri 
 ous casket in the net of the Arabian fisherman." 
 
 These are village glimpses and of a New 
 England village, such as Windsor was when Sill 
 was growing up there sixty years ago. The 
 staid, frugal, dignified village with its two or 
 three hundred inhabitants was an almost ideal 
 place for children to grow up in. The Sills 
 house was one of the pleasantest in the village. 
 
 Sill s childhood here is not difficult to recon 
 struct in fancy, but the years which lie between 
 the death of his mother, when he was eleven, 
 
ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 9 
 
 and his admission to Yale at sixteen, are 
 blurred. Part of his time was spent at his 
 uncle s in Cuyahoga Falls, near Cleveland, 
 Ohio, where he met his two girl cousins and 
 formed an attachment for one of them, his cou 
 sin Elizabeth Sill, which ultimately led to his 
 marriage. After nearly two years in Ohio, Sill 
 went to spend another year with an uncle at 
 Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and following that 
 spent a year at Phillips Exeter Academy com 
 pleting his preparation for college. It is rather 
 singular that one who was to take so active an 
 interest in literary pursuits in college should 
 have given no sign of such interest during his 
 years of preparation. The one recollection 
 which has been evoked of him at Exeter is that 
 he was called "Little Sill." 
 
 Yet it is to this period that certain fugitive 
 jottings of reminiscence belong which appear in 
 his "Prose" and show a certain feeling for 
 books and their contents. So he opens the 
 little essay on "The Most Pathetic Figure in 
 Story": "When I was a boy, the fate of Evan- 
 geline the Acadian always seemed to me the 
 most piteous of all that I had ever known. Not 
 so much at the end, the woefulness of that 
 finding of her lover too late did not impress me 
 so much till those words had taken on their 
 deeper meaning from the experience of life; but 
 the perpetual disappointment, the hope, not 
 
10 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 crushed and ended, but continually revived, 
 only to be the hope deferred that maketh 
 the heart sick, this seemed to me the pity 
 of it." 
 
 The second fragment belongs to the same 
 sensitive and responsive boyhood, possibly to 
 the year spent at Exeter: "It was in a Virgil 
 class, and I was a poor little palpitating new 
 scholar. While I was anxiously construing the 
 opening lines of the Dido-in-the-storm episode, 
 the beetle-browed master turned slyly to a 
 privileged older pupil with some sotto voce 
 schoolmaster s joke. As I glanced up, having 
 partly heard the words without catching the 
 point, he was just turning back to me, with a 
 most genial and winning smile sweetening his 
 usually acid features. Innocently, and no 
 doubt with some timidly responsive look on 
 my face, I said, What? But on the instant of 
 speaking I divined that, alas ! the grin was not 
 meant for me. . . . He bade me in a stern voice 
 to go on. It was much as if he had cried, 
 What right have you to be smiling at me, you 
 miserable little sinner ? 
 
 The third scrap of reminiscence may possibly 
 belong to his early college days say the 
 Freshman year, when we are prone to writing 
 things down in Commonplace Books and the 
 like: 
 
 " I began, when a boy, to keep an index 
 
EDWARD R. SILL. 1853 
 
ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 11 
 
 rerum. It never got farther than a beautifully 
 arranged table of contents, and a few scattering 
 entries made while the volume had the nutri 
 tious fragrance of the bindery still upon it. 
 Among these entries, on a page headed Simili 
 tudes, are two similes, in very yellow ink. Now 
 the interesting point is that I have totally for 
 gotten whether they were original or selected. 
 I hope they were my own ; but they sound more 
 as if they might have come from Longfellow s 
 * Hyperion, or from some Conversation of 
 Landor s. It may be that every schoolboy 
 (except myself) will recognize and locate them. 
 . . . Here they are: This earthly life is like an 
 album at an inn: we turn over its pages curi 
 ously or wearily, and write a scrap of wisdom or 
 of folly, and away. He who has loved and 
 served an art is like the child that was nursed 
 by Persephone: he is not subject to the woes of 
 other men, for he has lain in the lap and on the 
 bosom of a goddess. >: 
 
n\ 
 
 HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 
 
 SILL entered Yale in his seventeenth year, a 
 moderately tall, slender youth decidedly hand 
 some, with brown hair, gray eyes, and the stamp 
 of personality which marked him off at once 
 from the crowd. "We have n t got much of a 
 class," wrote one of his classmates (Governor 
 Baldwin) in his diary, "but Sill is somewhat of 
 a genius, to be sure." Before the middle of the 
 Freshmen year this was the accepted view of 
 him. At the first trials of literary ability the 
 class song competition Sill was seen to be 
 easily first, and he soon took a special place 
 among his classmates, which he kept. He was 
 no athlete, and far from being the jovial good 
 fellow, but he took his part in the sports and 
 amusements of the college, played a creditable 
 game of baseball, and held his own in the little 
 world of the campus. The accounts given of 
 him by his contemporaries indicate that he led 
 a free, open life, never unduly hampered by 
 college rules and regulations, reading a good 
 deal in a desultory fashion, and, like Lowell at 
 Harvard, getting rusticated for neglect of col 
 lege exercises. It is entered upon the records 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 13 
 
 that at the end of the Freshman year the 
 Faculty voted that "E. R. Sill ( 61) for neg 
 lecting his studies shall be removed from col 
 lege." He was away over a year. Twenty- 
 five years later, when writing to Thomas Bailey 
 Aldrich, then editor of the "Atlantic," he re 
 marked : " Let me confess, since I am addressing 
 you personally, that while I preach college, and 
 believe in it, I was myself a reckless student. 
 In fact, I was on the retired list for a consid 
 erable part of the course because I wouldn t 
 pursue the curriculum, and would pursue liter 
 ature." An instance of his somewhat cavalier 
 attitude toward class routine is recalled by a 
 classmate. It was the custom of the professor 
 of Greek to call upon members of the class to 
 rise and read aloud passages of the text, giv 
 ing beat, stress, and caesura. To this exercise, 
 called "scanning," Sill had a strong distaste, 
 and among the reasons for his rustication was 
 his response, a response given with an air of 
 extreme nonchalance, when called upon to scan, 
 "Please, sir, I don t scan." 
 
 Some notes by another classmate give a very 
 good background for the figure of Sill as an 
 undergraduate. At the time Sill entered Yale 
 in the fall of 1857 he says: 
 
 "It was in many respects an unreal place. 
 Despite President Woolsey s abiding interest 
 and influence in some national questions, and 
 
14 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 he was about the only man in the faculty who 
 manifested any, the institution stood apart 
 from both the acting and the thinking world. 
 The teaching it afforded was, with slight ex 
 ceptions, mere rote teaching. 
 
 "Partly because of poverty, the college did 
 not contain a professor of history, much less of 
 American history that subject was not even 
 touched; a professor of any political or eco 
 nomic science; or a professor of any modern 
 language. Our first lesson in respect for law 
 was the formal presentation to each of us, of 
 The Laws of Yale College, and the exaction 
 of a written promise to obey them. They 
 dated from an earlier generation, had not been 
 brought up to date, any more than anything 
 else in the institution had, and contained some 
 laws that nobody thought of enforcing among 
 them, laws against smoking and going sailing. 
 Our respect for them as a whole, and their effect 
 on our young minds regarding laws in general, 
 are obvious. 
 
 "As to literature, we had recitations only 
 from an elaborately and dogmatically anno 
 tated edition of Demosthenes On the Crown, 
 in the original; and from Whateley s Rhetoric 
 - a fantastic book which lent itself wonder 
 fully to undergraduate fun-making. The liter 
 atures of Greece and Rome were used solely 
 as material for vocabulary and grammatical 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 15 
 
 drills. 5 There was not a man in the faculty who 
 had ever done anything in pure literature; or, 
 so far as I can recall, anybody but Hadley and 
 Dana and Whitney, the last two of whom we 
 scarcely ever saw, who ever did any work in 
 anything else that long survived them. We 
 wrote compositions three or four times, which 
 were read to the class (or rather to each writer s 
 one of its four divisions) and never criticized, 
 and we had a few disputes by groups se 
 lected in turn, before the division, which 
 were summed up and commented upon, with 
 considerable literary instinct whenever Hadley 
 presided. The topics set for these exercises 
 were occasionally criticism of some author, but 
 were equally apt to be some question outside 
 of practical life, and often outside of practical 
 consideration for instance, one, I remember, 
 was: Is Language of Divine or Human Ori 
 gin? That question is a fair illustration of 
 what was, on the whole, the dominating spirit 
 of the college theological speculation. The 
 Puritan influence still controlled. The officers, 
 as has been intimated, were nearly all Puritan 
 clergymen, holding, in the midst of the nine 
 teenth century, the views they had inherited 
 from the seventeenth, and avoiding and dread 
 ing the stir of thought which was beginning to 
 tear down their whole system. The names of 
 Carlyle, Darwin and Mill were never mentioned 
 
16 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 in the classroom, and the only notions given us 
 of the doctrine of evolution, which had begun 
 to take form, were in a lecture on Laplace s law 
 of planetary evolution, and in a few then cele 
 brated lectures by Dana, read to us, in his dis 
 ability, by another. In them he tried to dem 
 onstrate that the evolution of the earth, and 
 the life upon it, was in accord with the account 
 given in Genesis. 
 
 "Most of the men who regulated the 
 thought of the institution were clergymen. 
 Its trustees practically all were, the six senior 
 senators of the State being mere figureheads, 
 and the representation of the alumni not yet 
 having been instituted. 
 
 "On one side, the atmosphere of the place 
 was all discipline. We were taught to over 
 come obstacles by obstacles being deliberately 
 massed before us, as if learning in its most 
 attractive forms did not present more than 
 enough. In addition to the bare chronology of 
 classic history, we were asked to commit to 
 memory a murderous pamphlet of chemical 
 formulas. The test of merit, rewarded with the 
 honors, was the capacity to recite well. A rote 
 repetition of the contents of the textbook 
 answered the purpose as well as intelligent 
 appreciation. Originality in any form was not 
 stimulated, though one composition (never 
 criticized) did count as much as several reci- 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 17 
 
 tations. When President Woolsey offered to 
 cushion the bare seats in the chapel at his own 
 expense, the proposition was turned down as 
 tending to make the students effeminate. 
 
 "To this hated chapel, we were driven twice 
 a day and four times on Sunday, one of the 
 daily herdings being before daylight in win 
 ter. Some compensation for these monastic 
 rigors lies in the fact that during one of them, 
 Sill got the idea for * Morning, and it sym 
 bolized his feeling regarding the lights our 
 teachers read by. 
 
 "In short, everything was done to make 
 learning and religion loathsome, and done with 
 considerable success. Yet, as a body, the college 
 officers were men of admirable sincerity and 
 purity of life, But with, so far as I know, one 
 exception, as to capacity to see beyond their 
 narrow range of dogma, they may as well have 
 been monks of the Thebaid, or priests of a 
 lamasery in Thibet. That exceptional man 
 perhaps the most eminent scholar America has 
 produced we were hardly brought in contact 
 with; and I did not suspect his largeness of 
 view until we became intimate, years after my 
 graduation. With pathetic self-repression, he 
 stayed at Yale while out of sympathy with his 
 colleagues and the whole intellectual spirit of 
 the place. There may have been others who 
 thought beyond their inherited dogmas, but if 
 
18 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 there were, they kept their thoughts to them 
 selves, as he did. Yet all those men gave us a 
 rare example of single-hearted, self-sacrificing, 
 and unswerving devotion to duty, as they saw 
 it. But they had not the gift to see much of it, 
 and so their example lacked inspiration. It is 
 astounding that so much knowledge (one 
 sided though it was) and so much moral worth 
 could have existed side by side with so much 
 obtuseness. Yet the explanation is not far to 
 seek: a generation earlier, a bright man could 
 have been a Puritan; but in that generation, 
 there had been so much stir of thought that 
 none but a stupid man could grow up a Puritan. 
 Some of the older men were bright, but their 
 ideas were out of date. No younger man could 
 be brought in unless he was a Puritan, and 
 therefore no younger man abreast with the day 
 was among the college officers. The scholarship 
 was a narrow formalism. In the classroom, 
 even Hadley, deep and broad as was his cul 
 ture, confined himself to Homer s grammar, 
 with little or no reference to his poetry; though, 
 as already intimated, in his comments on some 
 of our scant rhetorical efforts, he showed him 
 self a delicate and suggestive critic. 
 
 "Offsetting the atmosphere of discipline 
 was one of mediaeval, almost primitive, super 
 stition, mysticism, and dread. The students 
 were affected by it so that their voluntary asso- 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 19 
 
 ciations, instead of being natural gentlemen s 
 clubs, were secret societies, designated by the 
 usual mystic Greek letters, meeting as far as 
 they could in secret places, with secret rites and 
 strange initiations and mummeries. The chief 
 of them had and still has, as a badge, a gold 
 skull with crossed bones, each member dis 
 playing in his room, over the entrance, the real 
 objects themselves. Merely to allude to this 
 society in the presence of one of its members 
 was to insult him and lead him to withdraw 
 from the company. To become one of its fif 
 teen members in senior year was the controlling 
 ambition of the other three years. The halls of 
 these societies were used but one evening a 
 week. At that time Skull and Bones was the 
 only one having its own building. To guard 
 its secrecy, it was made, as many halls have 
 since been for other societies, without windows. 
 Even a generation later, one of the societies has 
 reared a superb (though rather poorly propor 
 tioned) white marble Greek temple, lit by the 
 sun only through a skylight over its second 
 story. The idea of a rational clubhouse to be 
 enjoyed at all times, as the society buildings 
 are at other institutions, was, and generally 
 still is, too rational to fit the prevalent atmos 
 phere. Health, of course, was not taken into 
 consideration. 
 
 "Athletics in the present sense had not been 
 
20 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 evolved. Each class had three or four boat- 
 clubs, crews from which used to go rowing in 
 gigs on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, 
 and occasionally at other times, and frequently 
 took out guests not seldom ladies, in the 
 stern seats. The Wednesday and Saturday 
 rows were curtailed by the necessity of getting 
 back to prayers/ Sill joined one of these clubs 
 in Freshman year, and pulled a fairly good oar. 
 The club came to grief, owing to a certain un- 
 congeniality between the faculty s system of 
 things and the tastes and convictions of some 
 of the club s members, including the captain, 
 which led to the temporary separation of these 
 members from the institution. 
 
 "This uncongeniality between students and 
 faculty was general and chronic. As there was 
 no congeniality, far less was there any intimacy. 
 The faculty generally consisted (with the ex 
 ception of the instructor of elocution, of whom 
 we saw little) of men who had never been 
 young. The idea of teacher and student spend 
 ing an hour together, outside of the effort on 
 one side to detect ignorance, and, on the other, 
 to conceal it, was seldom thought of before 
 dear Timothy Dwight got back from Europe, 
 after Sill s graduation; the idea of playing a 
 game together would have been ludicrous; the 
 idea of having a smoke together would have 
 been insulting to the older men; and the idea 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 21 
 
 of taking a drink together, criminal. Once 
 when I was called up for some of my many 
 peccadilloes, after I claimed that I was not 
 given to strong drink, the argument against 
 me was clinched with: But you admit that 
 you play billiards and drink wine. The rela 
 tion between students and faculty, on the part 
 of the boyish boys and most of the thinking 
 boys, was at best one of sullen indifference, 
 and at worst one of strategic hostility. A stu 
 dent absent from one of the sixteen religious 
 exercises a week, or one of the sixteen literary 
 ones, or unprepared for one of the latter, was 
 permitted to hand in a written excuse. The 
 attitude of strategic hostility made, to the 
 student mind, everything fair in war, and these 
 excuses were very often lies. Indisposition 
 was the euphemism at the base of most of 
 them, and it generally meant indisposition to 
 attend or to study. I doubt if Sill handed in 
 any of these false excuses, and I am confident 
 that Shearer [Sill s closest friend, of whom 
 more later,] did not, but neither of them 
 lacked respect for anybody else because he 
 did. 
 
 "In telling all this, I feel a little as if I were 
 sinning with the sons of Noah; but it must be 
 told to explain Sill to explain the gropings 
 and vacillations and struggles that his early 
 letters are full of. 
 
22 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 "Into the atmosphere I have tried to de 
 scribe, our poet was thrust when he was a boy 
 of less than seventeen. The class, of course, 
 contained a group of youths who, like their 
 teachers, had never been superfluously young, 
 took things as they were given them, and did 
 their best with them not theirs to ask the 
 reason why. 5 Sill did not see much of this 
 conservative element in the class until he met 
 some of them in Skull and Bones in senior 
 year. There was, equally of course, another 
 group full of young blood, much of it foolish 
 blood, some of whom did ask the reason why, 
 and found precious little reason. Nearly all 
 of them played much, only one or two of them 
 studied much, two or three of them questioned 
 much, several of them read much some in 
 books that the faculty would not have recom 
 mended, and all of them were in a state of 
 more or less intellectual revolt. Some of them 
 believed as long as they lived, and some of 
 them believe to this day, that their revolt 
 was well justified. To this group Sill naturally 
 gravitated. He was perhaps the leader in the 
 spirit of revolt. He was far-seeing. His alter 
 ego, Shearer, was in the same group; but he was 
 wide-seeing as well as far-seeing, and while he 
 shared the spirit of revolt, he was, both by dis 
 position and comprehension, made to temper it. 
 "Sill and Shearer were both poor, and 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 23 
 
 pleasure costs money. They were also proud 
 and scrupulous : so, even if their disposition had 
 been toward excess, it would not have been as 
 easy to them as to some of their friends. Sill 
 did most of the foolish things that were not 
 dishonest which the other boys did, but his 
 native delicacy made the restraint of his pov 
 erty superfluous in keeping him from any gross 
 excess. While his principles were more those of 
 Socrates than of St. Francis, his practice was 
 nearer that of St. Francis than of Socrates. 
 However pagan he may have been, it is incon 
 ceivable that he would have deliberately pur 
 sued his own pleasure to the detriment of 
 another. He would take his share of the flowing 
 bowl, unless his full share would have been too 
 much, in which case there were always others 
 ready to take the excess for him; but he was not 
 intolerant of these friends, if otherwise they 
 merited his regard not half as intolerant as 
 he was, at first, of intellectual inferiority. This 
 absolutely prevented him, at first, from recog 
 nizing the merits of some of the most lovable 
 fellows and finest characters in the class. But 
 he outgrew it, and became a man of very wide 
 sympathies and charitable judgments. 
 
 "Not having grown up in the world where 
 one amuses one s self; going to Puritan Yale 
 where that world was unknown and abhorred, 
 instead of to Harvard where it was known and 
 
24 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 appreciated; realizing its Philistine side, and 
 having no opportunity to enjoy its aesthetic 
 side, Sill hated it and every symbol of it. 
 * Society he would have nothing of. When his 
 beauty and eloquence made all the girls, after 
 they heard him deliver the class poem, wild to 
 have him introduced, he stubbornly refused, 
 even his dearest who wanted to introduce him 
 to their dearest. Yet we know that, outside of 
 social occasions, no man was more attracted 
 by women. 
 
 "Some of the lines from the class poem, not 
 printed in the later selections, illustrate his 
 attitude toward the world at this time : 
 
 " The world! The world! 
 Mockery, knavery, cheat! 
 Down at thy angry feet 
 Let the lying thing be hurled. 
 
 "None of his portraits do him justice. They 
 all strangely fail to give his face the character 
 or enough of the character which would 
 have led any observer to say: ( There is a poet. 
 He had the most wonderful gray eyes I ever 
 saw; his wavy chestnut hair was just what it 
 should have been; he wore no beard until he 
 was thirty or forty, and was better without it. 
 I believe he always wore a mustache, having, if 
 I remember rightly, an enviable amount of it 
 when we were freshmen. His figure was moder 
 ately tall, and slight too slight, but very 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 25 
 
 graceful. We used to make fun of his lank 
 shanks. But one day when I, who was taller 
 and much heavier, put on the boxing gloves 
 with him, I realized to my cost that strength 
 was not an affair of muscle alone. By sheer 
 nerve, he could do things that men with much 
 more muscle could not. I suppose he had to 
 pay for it in subsequent fatigue. 
 
 " Despite his slight figure, he had a beautiful 
 rich bass voice; and he had, of course, as lyric 
 poets must, a genius for music. He could play 
 on any instrument he took a notion to, with 
 very little practice. Yet I don t remember that 
 he sang in the choir. Perhaps he would have 
 been apt to refrain in those rebellious years, 
 because of distaste for the service. 
 
 "Though he was so frail-looking, I don t 
 remember that he ever lacked health, though 
 I find some anxieties expressed in some of 
 Shearer s letters after graduation; but they 
 were mainly, perhaps entirely, lest nervous 
 taxes and uncongenialities should be too much 
 for him. There was no need of his dying young, 
 as we too sadly know. 
 
 "Carlyle was probably the great teacher of 
 most of us. It was too early for Mill and 
 Spencer. Sill s chief influence was Tennyson. 
 We all read Emerson and Macaulay. Browning 
 we do not seem to have got to : we knew his wife 
 better: she was nearer our then level. There is 
 
26 EDWAKD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 little indication of our then having much to do 
 with Shakespeare. Sill does not even include 
 him among the poets in the letter of a year 
 before his death, quoted in the memoir prefac 
 ing the edition of 1902; but in his letter to me 
 of December 24, 1868, from California, he says: 
 * There s one compensation in living in a 
 heathen country i.e., that one s only com 
 panions are Shakespeare and Shelley and Mill 
 and Browning and Spencer and the others. 
 Like our college teachers, we as boys lived most 
 in speculations and dreams. 
 
 "Nearly all the prizes offered by the faculty 
 or the students for any feats but those of mem 
 ory and linguistic or mathematical skill, were 
 divided about equally between Sill and Shearer. 
 Of course they were elected on the Lit. 
 Board, and their contributions were awaited 
 more eagerly, probably, than other contribu 
 tions ever were, by the whole college world: for 
 the recognition of them was not confined to 
 their own class. And of course they were 
 elected (unanimously, I believe) Class Poet 
 and Class Orator, though their scholarship 
 under the rote tests applied by the faculty, did 
 not entitle them to an appearance on either of 
 the stupid occasions (Junior Exhibition and 
 Commencement) which the faculty provided to 
 display the stupid results of their system. 
 
 "Sill s independence, and the environment 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 27 
 
 in which he grew up, were both well illustrated 
 in the great religious revival of 58. This, of 
 course, set in as soon as spring began to stir 
 people s emotions after the great commercial 
 panic in the fall of 57. But instead of being 
 restricted, as such phenomena have been since, 
 mainly to those whose psychic stock-in-trade 
 was merely emotional, it was taken up by peo 
 ple of culture (for those days), and by none 
 more ardently than the faculty of Yale. The 
 whole college was swept off its feet. In our 
 class, Sill, Shearer, and one other were, I be 
 lieve, the only men who did not join the church. 
 I have an impression that they were about the 
 only ones in the academic department. The 
 reaction was frightful. There probably never 
 was at Yale such an orgy of dissipation as dur 
 ing the following autumn certainly there 
 was nothing like it in my time. This, of course, 
 doubled the skepticism of those who were out 
 of sympathy with the prevailing ideas, and left 
 them in a more chaotic state than ever. Spen 
 cer had not yet put within general reach his 
 point of crystallization for faith and hope, 
 and thinking young men were in the dark and 
 anxious atmosphere that pervaded Sill s and 
 Shearer s early letters, and Sill s early poems." 
 
 From the pen of still another classmate, 
 Ralph O. Williams, I take a sketch of Sill at 
 
28 EDWAKD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Yale, interesting not only because it is done by 
 a contemporary, but also because it reveals the 
 unusual and deep regard which Sill inspired in 
 those who knew him, whether early or late in 
 his life: 
 
 "There is lying near me a photographic por 
 trait of Edward Rowland Sill taken in his senior 
 year at Yale College when he was not quite 
 .twenty years old. It is on glass, an old- 
 fashioned ambrotype. I have seen perhaps 
 half a dozen later photographs of Sill, taken at 
 various periods of his life, but all the others 
 made him less than he was. The picture before 
 me reveals his extraordinary eyes, large, 
 oval, deep eyes, whose light seemed to come 
 from the recesses of a reflective mind, a 
 penetrating light which disclosed the thoughts 
 of those whom it rested on. People who had 
 never seen or heard of Sill, looking at this pic 
 ture, have exclaimed, " What wonderful eyes ! " 1 
 In other respects, too, the picture is faithful. 
 Sill was hardly more than a boy then, but 
 much more than a boy in mind and character. 
 His face of regular, handsome features 
 seemed to be the face of one who had never had 
 a mean impulse. It showed independence of 
 judgment, but not aggressiveness. Notwith 
 standing its mobility of expression, it was a 
 
 1 Some of the paper photographs of Sill give his eyes a staring 
 look, a fault probably introduced in retouching the negatives. 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 29 
 
 calm face, quite unconscious of itself, thought 
 ful, spiritual, considerate of others. As to the 
 rest of his personality at that time, he was fully 
 grown in height, straight, slim, not muscular, 
 and in seeming good health, though his 
 health, without being decidedly bad, was not 
 good. His dress was careless, but never slov 
 enly. 
 
 "Sill s course in college could hardly have 
 been different; at least, that must seem so to 
 those who consider his temperament. By dis 
 position he was eager of instruction and learn 
 ing; he liked to think things out; but he was 
 revolted by lessons that were to be recited 
 parrot-like for a daily mark. Naturally he took 
 as little of the lessoning as possible. But I 
 never heard Sill speak unkindly of the wise men 
 of down east who were doing it. He thought 
 they were not in the best way; perhaps some of 
 them, or some of their successors, would find a 
 better way later. 
 
 "In such opportunities as there were for 
 exercising his literary power Sill shone from the 
 beginning to the end of the college course. His 
 poem The Open Polar Sea was printed in the 
 Yale Literary Magazine for April, 1858, while 
 he was in his freshman year. It was published 
 as From the German of Malvaro, because the 
 young freshman feared that the senior editors 
 of the magazine would have a poor opinion of a 
 
SO EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 freshman s output. The poem now entitled 
 Morning, and beginning: 
 
 " I entered once, at break of day, 
 A chapel lichen-stained and gray, 
 
 appeared in the Yale Lit. for June, 1860. At 
 that time Sill was near the close of his junior 
 year and was one of the editors of the magazine. 
 It happened that I saw a proof of the poem at 
 the printer s just as the Lit. was going to 
 press. It differed verbally somewhat from the 
 one printed many years later among his col 
 lected poems, and had as a concluding line, 
 rhyming with the two immediately preceding 
 lines, Was there not meaning in my dreams. 
 On my own responsibility (for there was not a 
 moment s time for consulting the poet), I 
 struck out that last line, because, as I told 
 Sill afterwards, a fingerpost wasn t needed/ 
 Instead of being vexed, he was grateful. The 
 poem is a good example of how a trivial inci 
 dent which to the barren imagination has no 
 significance can be made to glow by a poet s 
 touch. The chapel was the old college chapel, 
 but not the one that is used for religious serv 
 ices now. The time was earlier than the com 
 position. It was of the days when we had to 
 attend prayers at half past five on summer 
 mornings and at half -past six winter mornings. 
 There was no rich stained glass in the chapel, 
 nor an aisle in the architectural sense. There 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 31 
 
 were ghostly shadows, and the congregation 
 dozed, no doubt, excepting those who with 
 bowed heads were conning the lesson for the 
 succeeding recitation. The shutter was shifted 
 by a gust of wind, not by one who rose with a 
 wistful face. A dismal scene, and lowering in 
 its influences; but with what charming color 
 the boy artist overlaid the unwholesome fact. 
 "In writing for college prizes, although 
 he was always successful, Sill put under con 
 straint his best impulses; for he never had any 
 desire to shine at the expense of others, and, 
 besides, he looked on such contests as boyish. 
 But he wanted to measure himself with others 
 so as to get a scale of judgment, boy with boys, 
 man with men later. Prizes for literary com 
 position brought him no elation, only a useful 
 stiffening of self-confidence. And that he 
 needed. But although he had such feelings, I 
 am sure, about college honors, Sill then and 
 always hungered for real distinction. Com 
 monplace successes that tickle the vanity and 
 fill the wants of most men had for him no 
 attractions." 
 
 Sill s life at Yale fell at a time when the in 
 tellectual ferment of the past forty years was 
 being prepared. Though the academic com 
 munity at Yale was for the most part immune, 
 some of the yeast of question and revolt was 
 
32 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 stirring in his mind and in the minds of his 
 friends. The first edition of Darwin s "Origin 
 of Species" came out during his freshman year; 
 Huxley had not come yet, but Carlyle and 
 Tennyson were sowing inquiry broadcast. The 
 unconventionality and austere discontent of 
 Carlyle appealed strongly to Sill. With his eyes 
 already opened to the inequalities of life, the 
 Scot s grim challenge of accepted conditions 
 awoke in him an eager emulation. All his 
 writing in college echoes of Carlyle. "Poor 
 petrifactions of men!" he writes in the first 
 essay he contributed to the "Yale Literary 
 Magazine." "... One shudders even to imag 
 ine you, at the last, when the great veil is being 
 lifted, with your weazened, world-crusted soul, 
 cringing into the dim outskirts of the presence 
 of the Eternal." 
 
 But however much the phrase echoed Car 
 lyle, the thought was Sill s own. So in the essay 
 "Beardless," which also appeared in the "Yale 
 Lit." at this time, there is an appeal for com 
 panionship and comprehension of younger men 
 by their elders which influenced his cwn life 
 consistently and was one of the secrets of his 
 success as a teacher. 
 
 "For it is certain that I at fifty will look back 
 at me of to-day, quite contemptuously and 
 pityingly; wondering how, knowing so little, we 
 get along at all. O foolish future self! thou 
 
EDWARD R. SILL, 1861 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 33 
 
 has forgotten how much nobler-hearted, holier- 
 souled thou was then than now. Thou art 
 larger limbed now, stronger brained, yet thy 
 boyhood had clearer eyes and purer faith, and 
 was altogether, inwardly and outwardly, more 
 as God meant man to be. Marred and soul- 
 shrunken by the meanness and littleness of a 
 man s daily life in the world, no wonder thou 
 hast forgotten the vision of the morning, the 
 dream of a life that should, for once, be crowned 
 with completeness and with noble meaning. 
 We can but pity one another after all, thou 
 conquered by the world, I with the world be 
 fore me, unconquerable, and yet that must be 
 met." 
 
 His other undergraduate essays- "Fail 
 ure," a rather scathing analysis of current 
 views of success, and "Vinum Daimonum," a 
 defence of poetry, are in the customary vein of 
 the young idealist. It goes without saying his 
 poems were even more uncompromising in their 
 morality and sombre in their tone. There is 
 something perennially youthful in the solem 
 nity of the lines called "Midnight," and some 
 thing familiar in the note of sophomoric wis 
 dom and world- weariness : - 
 
 "Under the stars, across whose patient eyes 
 The wind is brushing flecks of filmy cloud, 
 I wait for kindly night to hush and calm 
 The wrangling throng of cares and discontents, 
 The tangled troubles of a feverish brain. 
 
34 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 "I hear the rushing of the wings of Time 
 Sweep by me. Voices of the murmuring Past 
 Chant a low dirge above my kneeling heart." 
 
 The university years over, Sill found himself 
 in his twenty-first year undecided about his 
 future, and quite undetermined about himself. 
 His four years at New Haven had brought him 
 friendships which he kept till he died, and a 
 discovery of talents and possibilities in himself 
 which he had not the slightest notion how to 
 turn to account. His college mates and teach 
 ers thought him a poet almost a genius, 
 with a brilliant future: he knew himself for a 
 youth let us admit of some promise, but of 
 slender resources and no clear course before 
 him. He had plunged into his Sturm und Drang 
 period, but had not yet emerged from it: he 
 had reached the stage of revolt, but had not 
 arrived at a fixed purpose; he had not found the 
 cause or the career to which he could dedicate 
 himself. Sprung from the stock of the Sills and 
 the Rowlands, he could hardly help being an 
 abolitionist, but abolitionism, which had fired 
 many of the more sensitive souls at Harvard, 
 had not blazed up at Yale. There was no such 
 outbreak of patriotism in New Haven as at 
 Cambridge. In Sill s " Commencement Poem," 
 with all its spiritual ardor and aspiration, the 
 only allusion to the war is merely scornful: 
 "What is the grandeur of serving a state, 
 
HIS LIFE AT COLLEGE 35 
 
 whose tail is stinging its head to death like a 
 scorpion!" 
 
 Years were to pass before he found his place 
 and work in the world, and the long period of 
 wavering and uncertainty is chargeable not 
 only to the man but to the environment. We 
 have already glanced at the opposing strains, of 
 minister and doctor, in his inheritance; we have 
 noted the broken and scattered instruction of 
 his boyhood, clouded by loss of brother, 
 mother, and father; we have seen the singularly 
 unsatisfactory atmosphere into which he en 
 tered at the university. We can hardly be sur 
 prised that he should pass out of the academic 
 halls full of opposing ardors and dissonant 
 impulses and aimless purposes. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 
 
 SILL spent part of the summer and autumn 
 following his graduation in the beautiful old 
 town of Windsor, Connecticut, where he was 
 born. A scrap from a letter to a classmate indi 
 cates that he read poetry if he did not write 
 any, and that his undergraduate love for 
 Tennyson still held. 
 
 "Have been noticing what different poets 
 have said about the autumn leaves, as an 
 example of Tennyson s infinite height above 
 them all. You know how he talks: 
 
 " Flying gold of autumn woodland * 
 ; " This maple burn itself away 
 "I laid a fiery finger on the leaves etc., etc. 
 
 "Other poets, brown and sere - - sere and 
 yellow - et cetera, no bettera. 
 
 "Been reading (and enjoying tell it not in 
 Gath) one John Milton s Paradise Lost ! I 
 guess the judgment of generations is a pretty 
 sure thing after all. 
 
 "Great world as ever, is n t it? How about 
 immortality? Much taught, or at all, in Old 
 Testament? Am still wondering about that 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 37 
 
 book. Look at Job now it is amazing one 
 or two thousand years before our era." 
 
 In December he and his intimate friend 
 Shearer set sail for California, round the Horn, 
 a four months voyage during which Sill kept a 
 journal as most young men of literary tenden 
 cies have done on their first voyages. Some 
 extracts may be saved from oblivion to indicate 
 his half-formed tastes and his powers of obser 
 vation, but they are best prefaced by a letter 
 written toward the end of the voyage to a 
 classmate in New England: - 
 
 PACIFIC OCEAN, March 13, 1862. 
 It is strange how quickly and completely all 
 idea of danger evaporated. After the first fort 
 night, I never felt the slightest fear of ship 
 wreck or anything of that sort, any more than I 
 should at home of the roof s falling in. Some 
 times there is a f earf ulness sometimes an 
 awf ulness about the sea in the night, with 
 the darkness, and the roar of the wind, and the 
 black waves flashing out white fangs from their 
 deep jaws, and the swift motion (seeming with 
 the noise of the foam seething by, to fairly hiss 
 through the water), and the ghostly sails tower 
 ing up, the mast-tips sweeping great arcs 
 across the flying rags of cloud, their motion and 
 great disproportionate size and height com 
 pared with the ship s narrow deck giving one 
 
38 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 such an impression of vast instability, and the 
 utter desolateness of the position cut off 
 from all aid of man among the gigantic ener 
 gies of blind force but it does n t inspire 
 what can be called fear such as you have 
 towards a pistol or a falling brick but a 
 supernatural sort of awe half cowing, and 
 half rousing the tragic element in a man to a 
 superhuman defiance. . . . 
 
 I enjoyed life lazy and purposeless as the 
 life was. The only thing to mar the enjoyment 
 of it was a restless idea that my mind was losing 
 time. I thought with an envious feeling of you 
 who have been using your brains ever since we 
 graduated. A man can t keep in mind, some 
 how, that he has an eternity before him and 
 need n t ever begrudge any time which is spent 
 in the way of his duty. 
 
 In your last letter you said you hoped I 
 would write something, on this voyage. Well, 
 so did I but I have n t. I could have, of 
 course, by going at it as a task but I think a 
 person ought never to write poetry unless he 
 wants to unless he feels impelled to tell some 
 thing he has in him. If beautiful scenes should 
 inspire thought or rouse deep feeling, I ought 
 surely to have experienced it. Such starlight 
 nights I never saw before " larger constella 
 tions burning" in the course of one night I 
 saw all the stars of first magnitude (twenty in 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 39 
 
 all) except one, and sparkling through such a 
 clear blue atmosphere as one does n t often see 
 North. The dawn, too, is beautiful. Several 
 times I have got up before it commenced, and, 
 climbing to the highest yard on the mast, have 
 sat there and watched the daybreak. With the 
 short twilight of the latitude the west was all 
 night-sky and the stars bright, while the east 
 was morning, making delicious contrasts of 
 colors. 
 
 The strangest life it is floating on over 
 the desert, so utterly cut off from men and all 
 men s doings. We don t care what the world 
 does with itself. The war never enters our 
 heads, except as a recollection of a thing we 
 were interested in, in the past. The accident of 
 being on the same planet with the rest of man 
 kind is nothing any more than revolving in 
 the same solar system gives you a lively interest 
 in the social problems of Mars. 
 
 The jottings from the journal are accom 
 panied by occasional footnotes of ironical com 
 ment eminently just and calculated to disarm 
 the not too critical biographer. They were also 
 accompanied in the original by marginal 
 sketches in caricature of Sill, Shearer, mer 
 maids, fishes, albatrosses, et a/., which unfortu 
 nately are not now available. 
 
40 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 TUESDAY EVENING, 24th Dec., 1861. 
 Here, it is nine o clock, almost a dead calm; 
 the sea smooth and oily, seeming to be breath 
 ing in its sleep in long, slow swells which roll 
 the ship lazily from stem to stern, and now and 
 then from side to side. The sky overcast and 
 preparing for rain with no promise of a breeze. 1 
 We are prematurely in the Doldrums which 
 have no business to cage us for several degrees 
 yet. There was a marvelous sunset to-night, I 
 can t describe it, words perhaps exist which 
 would set it forth, but it is far out of my skill. 
 The most beautiful west I ever saw. I climbed 
 up the rigging and sat there until the glory had 
 all gone. How sadly the change comes, from 
 all the gorgeous gold and green and violet, the 
 pure olive and lustrous silver, slowly, imper 
 ceptibly, into darkening green and then mere 
 dusky masses of cloud and night. There it was 
 so few moments ago, all light and joy and 
 praises, now, while I sit in the same posture, 
 not a limb changed, it is hopeless, loveless dark 
 "the set gray life, and apathetic end." 
 
 SAT. MORNING, Jan. 11. 
 Lat. 13.44 S. Long. 38.35. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon I spent with my mi 
 croscope examining all manner of queernesses, 
 
 1 It is a noticeable fact that our young man seems to dwell on 
 the weather as persistently as a bashful girl at a party. As if it 
 could be interesting to people months afterwards and hundreds 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 41 
 
 fished up in the bug-net all sorts and varie 
 ties of "things forked and horned and soft," 
 beautiful, curious, comical. Verily man inhabits 
 not only two worlds of matter and spirit 
 but three distinct material ones that re 
 vealed by the telescope, that by the eyes, and 
 that by the microscope, the last not least won 
 derful in its complexity of infinitesimal organs 
 and brilliancy of color. Last night was a beau 
 tiful one 1 (how one needs to use that word here 
 at sea) . The moon nearly full, near the zenith, 
 the air in which it swam of a pure liquid blue 
 dark and lustrous. Venus lower down, a drop 
 of molten silver, and great bands and terraces 
 of cirrus cloud slowly moving across the con 
 stellations, five bars of which, nearly overhead, 
 were in the likeness of a great superhuman 
 hand such as might have belonged to the 
 arm "clothed in white samite, mystic, wonder 
 ful " on the third finger of which, as it floated 
 up towards the moon, slipped the belt of Orion 
 like a diamond ring. 
 
 MONDAY, January 27. 
 Lat. 45.27. Long. 59.20. 
 
 I wish I could get into my log-book some 
 picture of the beautiful faces the sea wears, 
 
 of miles away. Such, however, is the amusing egotism of imma 
 ture travellers. 
 
 1 Our ingenious tourist has the real school-girl knack of ad 
 jectives. The simple young fellow, we suppose, wants to have us 
 see all the sights which pleased him, and as our language really 
 
42 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 changing from "gay, or grave, or sweet, or 
 stern," as the days bring us different winds and 
 climates. To-day it has one of the quiet, smil 
 ing looks one of the many times when it 
 seems more natural to make the sea feminine, 
 to think and speak of it as the white-armed, 
 blue-eyed Naiad, than as regal old hoary- 
 bearded Neptune. It is calm as a lake; oily- 
 smooth in some places, crinkled or lightly rip 
 pled in others. Off where the noonday sun is 
 reflected, the surface has a green brilliancy, the 
 color of a half-ripe orange, and all sparkling 
 and crinkling, as molten silver might with a 
 crust of diamonds. Before breakfast I climbed 
 to the to gallant yard and sat astride of it; it 
 was all beauty wherever eye could rest, or ear 
 listen. We were gliding along imperceptibly 
 unless you saw the bubbles pass astern, two or 
 three knots an hour, the soft cool air right 
 astern, through belts of a few hundred yards 
 breadth of alternately smooth and roughened 
 water. When we were passing through a 
 smooth one all was perfectly hushed near the 
 ship, and it was pleasant to listen to the mur 
 mur of the ripples and little waves washing to 
 and fro in the rougher places farther from us, a 
 low, strange noise like the sough of winds in 
 pine woods. I could shut my eyes up aloft there 
 
 is lacking in synonyms, let us be charitable while he strums away 
 on his one little descriptive string. 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 43 
 
 and imagine myself in the deep woods with the 
 wind far off and near, making that pleasant 
 whispering, minor music, and the water plash 
 ing about the rudder like the noise of a brook 
 heard near at hand. 
 
 I believe I have never spoken of there being 
 always a plashing and swishing and hissing and 
 dashing and rushing noise about the ship in 
 ordinary weather; varying, of course, from 
 pleasant murmurs to loud and fierce tones. It 
 is never perfectly still except in dead calm. 
 Waves little or big are incessantly breaking, 
 rippling and tumbling, near and far, with that 
 same indefinable, vague intermingling of vari 
 ous tones, which one hears lying within sound 
 of the surf on a sea-beach. 
 
 THURSDAY, the 7th Feb. 
 Lat. 26. Long. 103. 9j morning. 
 
 My day began this morning with the dawn, 
 as all days ought to not the withered and 
 tarnished thing which people generally are 
 willing to accept for it, but the real dawn. Got 
 up at eight bells (four o clock), stuck my head 
 out of the window and found it clear, the faint 
 est possible tinge of light on the southeastern 
 horizon already. Traced out the constellations 
 with map at the binnacle light, then climbed to 
 the royal-yard (highest yard on mast) and 
 settled myself across it with my arms around 
 
44 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 the slender mast. Some of the old familiar 
 Northern stars were now visible again, Alpha 
 Lyrse, glittering white as of old, the Eagle and 
 the little Dolphin, Arcturus off over the main 
 mast, and directly overhead the beautiful 
 Scorpion. Besides, were all the brightest of 
 Southern splendors, the Cross and Centaur 
 sinking in the southwest, and Jupiter, hanging 
 large and white upon the dark west like a liquid 
 pearl. By the time all the stars had been recog 
 nized an arch of faint light had risen in the east. 
 Each time I returned to it from the stars it had 
 risen rapidly higher and brighter. Suddenly 
 from behind a low cloud along the horizon 
 appeared the old moon, a mere crescent thread 
 of pearl (for to-morrow it is new moon), more 
 slender than one ever sees it in the long twilight 
 of our latitude. The next time I looked at the 
 east a faintly visible film of soft cirrus, unseen 
 before, was rippled up the clear sky in broad, 
 radiating streaks, wimpled across like thin 
 cream when disturbed. All along the western 
 horizon lay rounded cumuli, some floating up 
 and spread over at the top like white smoke, as 
 from a volcano, risen in a still air, others tower 
 ing like overhanging icebergs, capped with 
 snow, others, in likeness of great countenances 
 like Greek tragic-masks earnest or terri 
 fied faces motionless under some spell of horror. 
 In the east the clouds piled along the horizon 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 45 
 
 seemed pressing forward, standing on tiptoe to 
 peer over each other s shoulders, watching for 
 the expected sun. Already they are tipped and 
 edged with red light, one or two floating alone 
 all luminous from within apparently with scar 
 let. Off in the southwest rise Andes peaks, their 
 tops roseate over the dark bars of stratus drawn 
 across their sides and bases, while the " icebergs " 
 in the west are become smouldering coals with 
 the red heat glowing through their coating of 
 white ash. Now the cloudy threshold of the 
 east is burning gold and at last up the sky 
 flame the broadening rays, firing shaft upon 
 shaft of the clouds around, and burning 
 through the low cloud wall in broken rifts, 
 rises the dazzling sun. The stars have been fast 
 melting away into the brightening blue 
 Alpha Lyrse, only a few minutes before the 
 sun appeared, flickered out, a white, glittering 
 point, then Alpha Centauri was lost, and last of 
 all Jupiter can no longer be found. It was full 
 day, the water blue and sparkling in the 
 light breeze, so I climbed to the " truck " (the 
 round ball on top of the mast), "shinning it" 
 from the yard, hung my hat upon it in triumph, 
 slid back to the yard and standing upon it 
 horrified my chum (who had just come on deck 
 down below me) by waving my hat to him, then 
 descended. In the evening and morning of the 
 same night I had seen all the stars of first 
 
46 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 magnitude, except one, viz: the Southern Fish 
 fourteen were visible at one time, in the 
 
 evening. 
 
 SUNDAY, Feb. 23, 
 Lat. 32. Long. 78. 
 
 8^ o clock, morning. I am almost ready 
 to believe that on the ocean, at least, where 
 man s wickedness has had least influence, Na 
 ture keeps Sabbath: air and water and sky are 
 so bright and peaceful. Last night, for the first 
 time in several weeks, we had a cloudless sky, 
 except low down about the horizon. Right 
 astern were the Cross and its companion glories, 
 scattered down the Milky Way, diamonds and 
 rubies in mosaic on a pearl-dusted ground of 
 dark blue. Overhead was glazing Sirius, white- 
 hot, and south of him the next brightest star 
 in the heavens, Canopus. In the west through 
 the spaces of the sails sparkled Orion and the 
 Bull, while the Pleiades were just going down 
 into the cloudy circle of the horizon. Round the 
 edge of the mainsail shone the Lesser Dog, 
 and the Twins. In the east hung the Sickle, 
 and mid- way between it and red Spica Virginis 
 burned Jupiter, preternaturally splendid, send 
 ing a track across the water like a moonrise. 
 Just under the Cross a black hole opened 
 through the stars out into the fathomless dark 
 ness the larger "Coal Sack" -nearly cir 
 cular, six degrees in diameter. The other side 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 47 
 
 of the South Pole Stars lay the Megellanic 
 Clouds like bits of hazy cirrus a little larger 
 than Orion s Square. 
 
 TUESDAY, Feb. 25. 
 Lat. 28, S. Long. 101. 
 
 I have been struck with the resemblance 
 between our ship and society. We are a per 
 fect little microcosm, one little crystal cut out 
 of the great crystal, perfect in shape and an 
 exact counterpart of the whole from which it 
 was taken. Forward, in the crowded, uncleanly 
 forecastle, separated from all direct association 
 with the occupants of the cabin, aft, are the 
 common sailors (the laboring masses, ignorant 
 and brawny). Next amidships is the galley 
 with its cook and steward, the providers (far 
 mers and merchants). Next, inhabiting the 
 forward end of the house, the three mates, giv 
 ing the orders of the Captain to the men (the 
 professional men, teaching and seeing to the 
 execution of the principles of the few leading 
 minds, among the masses). Then in the cabin 
 two sorts of passengers equally unconnected 
 with the working or guidance of the ship from 
 day to day the rich youngster, travelling to 
 kill time (the gentry in ennui and kid gloves), 
 and the scientific person, microscope or tele 
 scope in hand, regardless of the wind so it 
 doesn t cloud his stars (the Galileo, etc., careless 
 of politics and working for the Future). Last 
 
48 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 of all, with the Wheel for will and the Compass 
 for conscience, and the Chart for Bible, stands 
 the Captain (the great thinker, here and there 
 standing alone, comprehending and directing 
 the whole mechanism of society). 
 
 Afternoon One o clock. 
 
 I have been lounging up in the top this fore 
 noon (a very comfortable, secluded roost) . The 
 ocean fairly persecutes me with its clamorous 
 demands to be expressed in words. I become an 
 "Ancient Mariner," whose "Wedding Guest" 
 is my journal, having no peace till I get what is 
 before me expressed. What a difference there 
 is between the writing of a man who is trying 
 to say handsome things, and that of him who 
 is impelled by an instinctive desire to "get it 
 expressed" as I have called it. Yet the latter 
 gets all the discredit of the former with the mass 
 of readers. Maury and Ruskin are pretty good 
 examples. It is perfectly evident (in Phys. 
 Geog. Sea) that the flowery Lieutenant is only 
 describing Nature because it ornaments his 
 book; instead of trying to paint accurately 
 things as they are, he is stringing pretty words 
 together. Ruskin, on the contrary, is evidently 
 struggling with the scene before him, to im 
 prison the beauty in words not struggling 
 either, for that conveys an idea of some dubi 
 ousness, in the attempt, as to its success say 
 rather is earnestly and swiftly painting it there 
 
THE VOYAGE ROUND THE HORN 49 
 
 for you, unable in his enthusiasm to pause or 
 rest till it is done, and you see it all as he saw 
 it. For instance, on page 129, Maury says of the 
 Southern sky, "Canopus and Sirius, etc., etc. 
 are high up in their course; they look down with 
 great splendor, smiling peacefully as they pre 
 cede the Southern Cross on its western way." 
 Now I consider it impossible that any sane man 
 should have had those two incongruous im 
 pressions upon his mind from the same stars at 
 any one time consequently he must be 
 shamming one of them. Undoubtedly the truth 
 is, he thinks the "smiling" idea (suggested by 
 some rhymer) will sound rather well, and so 
 he says it. 1 I was going to speak, when my 
 critical streak came over me, about the sound 
 of the water as I leaned back in the " top " and 
 listened to it. It seemed compounded of the 
 whispers of pine woods, the washing of small 
 waves against the bow of a rowboat, the hollow 
 murmur of a shell, the babbling of a little hid 
 den brook in the woods, and the wind brushing 
 and bending the trees. With a fresher breeze 
 it is the noise of Big Falls heard from halfway 
 down the hill. Then there is the low fluttering 
 sound which the wind makes against the ear, 
 
 1 Our pretentious young wanderer is really going it rather 
 strong. "That s the bungling way Maury does, you know, now 
 see how nice / can do it!" Let us hope, however, that he is not 
 such a humbug as he seems perhaps the young fellow is really 
 honest in what he says, after all. 
 
50 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 always mingled with rest. Nature tries hard 
 to satisfy us with her music like some In 
 dian woman, bending over the little white cap 
 tive which the warriors have stolen and brought 
 to her, trying to make it understand her simple 
 lullabies. But it is in vain the sounds are 
 all musical, yet there is no human meaning in 
 it. We turn away from the wind and the wave, 
 longing for some old song that has linked the 
 voices of a friendly circle, some tune that has 
 borne a meaning to us separate from the mere 
 notes, as the expression of human fellowship 
 and affection. Yet, if it had been safe, I could 
 have gone to sleep very easily there in the top, 
 with my head resting on my arm, lulled by the 
 waves, looking off through half-shut eyes on 
 blue water, flecked with white foam, under 
 blue sky, islanded with fleecy, pearl-colored 
 cloud, and with the song of the Lotus-eaters 
 singing itself in my head. It is the most delight 
 ful sailing, this, that I can imagine. Sails all 
 set, " wings " and all, just kept full and mo 
 tionless all the time, wind hardly perceptible, 
 no rollers, beautiful sky and water, soft, warm 
 air, and going on, night and day, about six 
 miles an hour, with only enough gentle rocking, 
 slowly, now and then, to seem the embodiment 
 of idleness and calm. 
 
IV 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 THE five years that Sill now spent in Cali 
 fornia were true Wander jahre, for though when 
 the episode closed he was still uncertain of his 
 vocation, the range of choice had narrowed to 
 teaching, or the alternative, preaching. The 
 years were filled with restless activity. For a 
 time he worked in the post-office at Sacramento; 
 some months he spent on a ranch; some months 
 at studying law; for a time he looked about for 
 a school to teach; perhaps the longest interval 
 was given to "clerking" in a bank at Folsom. 
 None of these occupations satisfied his mind or 
 allayed his discontent. The strangeness of the 
 place contributed to his restless feeling: at first 
 he seems to have suffered from something like 
 homesickness, and he evidently disliked Cali 
 fornia, or thought he did, very cordially. The 
 mood passed and the time came when he could 
 sing her praises as fervently as any na.tive, 
 though one may permit one s self the mental 
 reservation that the praise may have been for 
 the outward California and that the Puritan 
 never became spiritually acclimated. 
 
52 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 "Well," he writes, in March, 1862, "as I 
 said, we got in last week were disappointed 
 in California s first appearance. Swore an oath, 
 at the expiration of the first day s travelling 
 around San Francisco, not to make this people 
 our people nor their God our God for their 
 God is money. Yet I have liked it better every 
 day, so far but could not live here long 
 no culture, no thought, no art. My town here 
 (as I call it in distinction from S. s town, San 
 F.) is at present a dismantled wreck, by the 
 floods of the winter people still go about in 
 boats instead of buggies. It s a sort of muddy 
 Venice, with little wooden houses instead of the 
 Palace and the Prison on either hand. 
 
 Six months later he was still "very tired of 
 California and indeed sick at heart of such peo 
 ple and such circumstances as surround me 
 here," which he refers to again the same month 
 as "out here in heathendom." Nor had he 
 softened toward the golden West when the year 
 had rolled round. "I refuse to consider myself 
 anything but a pilgrim and a stranger. I don t 
 like the country any better than when I wrote 
 before, but I presume I shall think it best to 
 stay here till next spring when I shall hope to 
 depart. . . . For to my taste the ups and downs, 
 summer and winter, snow and flowers, rain and 
 then sunshine of the weather East, are much 
 
CALIFORNIA 53 
 
 pleasanter than the monotonous fairness of the 
 skies here." 
 
 "To tell the truth," he writes to a classmate 
 in the spring of 1863, "I have had the Devil s 
 own time out here in some respects. I don t 
 have any feeling of having been treated un 
 justly, or that my fate has been hard at all, for 
 it has n t. I have the common sense, I hope, to 
 perceive that the trouble has been with me, not 
 with circumstances." It is only a youthful 
 growl, after all, and explained in part by a 
 line from another letter, - "Half the weari 
 ness of my life here consists of its terrible iso 
 lation." 
 
 To California s physical charm he could 
 never, of course, be indifferent. It grew upon 
 him. After two years in Sacramento he was 
 writing in this strain: - 
 
 " California (so far as that means the natural 
 and not the human aspect thereof) is inexpres 
 sibly beautiful just now. The trees are all just 
 *qut, in their spring vesture the fields full 
 of flowers nobody has any right to talk about 
 fields carpeted with flowers till he has seen 
 them here (or, I suppose, in the still more trop 
 ical climates). Great gorgeous fellows, you 
 know like all the conservatories you ever 
 saw broken loose and romping over the wild 
 plains here, exulting and irrepressible. And not 
 only these superb sorts, but come to stoop down 
 
54 EDWAKD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 and look closer you find multitudes of the least 
 wee blossoms little stars, scarcely bigger than 
 a pin s head, blue, and pure white, perfect as 
 gems only so for a couple of months or three 
 months then the parching, rainless summer 
 bakes the ground, and browns the dry grass to 
 a monotonous tint that makes one hot and 
 thirsty even to look at it. 
 
 "And as with the vegetation, so with the 
 children born here. . . . Little human blossoms, 
 such as one rarely sees in the cold, Atlantic 
 States. Mites of girls, with complexions like 
 porcelain which you look at the light through 
 and soft, beautiful eyes. And little boys, 
 fair and delicate as girls bright and gentle, 
 but so fragile-looking that it seems as though 
 to speak suddenly to them would shock them 
 out of existence. They come around to my 
 post-office windows, toddling bits of creatures, 
 asking for letters as sedate and grave as old 
 men an d trotting off with them in their little 
 hands, the letter almost as big as the sprite that 
 carries it. Whereat the clerk, Sill, pokes his 
 kead contemptuously through the window, and 
 marvels at the climate which produces such 
 things." 
 
 The California years were Wander -jahre, no 
 less of the mind than of the body, and of the 
 spirit perhaps even more than the mind 
 years of all manner of seeking, questioning, 
 
CALIFORNIA 55 
 
 trying of experiments and searchings of the 
 soul. Every profession and some trades he 
 chose and discarded, only to leave the matter 
 unsettled at the end. His first leadings, cu 
 riously and naturally enough, were toward 
 teaching. While he was still on shipboard he 
 wrote his friend Dexter, "If possible I shall col 
 lect some children who don t know anything 
 and follow your pedagogal footsteps." And 
 shortly after reaching Sacramento, he wrote, 
 "No place here for schoolteachers. Unless one 
 could teach them how to make money fast. 
 Nobody would send their children." Before 
 the summer was over he was dipping into 
 Blackstone: 
 
 July, 1862. 
 
 As for me, I have come to it finally, like 
 all the rest of em I am to study law. And 
 what a lawyer I shall make ! I suppose I am one 
 of the first, though, who ever determined on 
 that profession for the benefit it would be to 
 himself spiritually. Yet that s my crotchet. 
 We are (some people don t seem to be but 
 you and I and a few of us certainly are) planted 
 down in the midst of a great snarl and tangle of 
 interrogation points. We want to find we 
 must find some fixed truth. Either we are 
 wrong and the vast majority of thinkers right, 
 or they are wrong and we right and that, 
 
56 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 too, not on one point, but a thousand points 
 of the vastest scope and importance. As Kings- 
 ley puts it, we are set down before that greatest 
 world-problem " Given self, to find God." 
 So, considering that for such tasks the mind 
 needs every preparation, skill and practice in 
 drawing close distinctions, subtileness in de 
 tecting sophistry, strength and patience to 
 work at a train of thought continuously long 
 enough to follow its consequences clear out, and 
 some systematized memory (if for nothing but 
 holding and duly furnishing your own thoughts 
 when needed) I say, seeing no better or 
 rather, no other way to gain these but by 
 entering the law, thitherwards I have set my 
 face. ... I have sifted it all down to this con 
 clusion that in teaching, or in literature, or 
 even in following up some chosen science (much 
 less some chosen art, as poetry), the mind would 
 not get fitted for that serious work which is 
 before it. In them, it might become cultivated, 
 stored with knowledge, in some sense developed 
 but not disciplined. Now just take that 
 question alone Is Christianity true? What 
 impudence it would be in us to consider that 
 settled in the negative, until we felt that our 
 intellects were as strong, as capable of close, 
 protracted reasoning, as little liable to be misled 
 by sophistry, as all those greatest men who 
 have time after time settled it for themselves 
 
CALIFORNIA 67 
 
 in the affirmative. I for my part can see no 
 way in which I can at the same time earn a 
 living, and get the active powers of my mind 
 thoroughly disciplined, except by studying 
 law. . . . 
 
 The law loosened its hold. In November he 
 writes : 
 
 " September and October I spent for the most 
 part on a ranch, as they call their farms out 
 here. It was a large stock ranch, over west of 
 here some fifty miles in the Coast Range Moun 
 tains. . . . There are about 150 horses and 400 
 or 500 cattle running wild over a tract of some 
 ten miles long and two or three wide en 
 tirely unfenced, the only limit to their grazing 
 being the necessity of going to a little creek for 
 water and the inaccessible steeps and ravines 
 of the surrounding hills. 
 
 "My principal employment was taking care 
 of horses and riding horseback after the wild 
 cattle, from dawn to bedtime. It was fatiguing 
 work at first, but I got so that I rode my fifty 
 miles between breakfast and supper without 
 difficulty." 
 
 And before the end of the month, "I have 
 been trying to teach school out here, but not 
 yet have succeeded in finding a situation." 
 
 By [the next summer he had shut the law- 
 books for good: i 
 
5S EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 SACRAMENTO, CAL., Aug. 6, 1863. 
 Vocation. That is still the great vexa 
 tion with us. What was I born to do? Two 
 little goblins [a jocular allusion to himself and 
 Shearer] running distractedly up and down, 
 wringing their hands, with "What was I made 
 for?" till big Death comes out on them with 
 a great laughing, "Ho! ho! ho! ho! To die!" 
 and sweeps them out of the way. I ll tell you 
 first about myself. ... I am not going to study 
 law. I am getting slowly proficient in short 
 hand, as a trade to rely on, and earning what 
 I can as a post-office clerk. For the present 
 I shall stay in P. O. All I ask is, to be sup 
 ported, with a little leisure for study. The 
 more, the better. And with a hope of laying 
 up such an amount from year to year as shall 
 make the leisure grow longer, and the neces 
 sity for labor (mechanical) less imperious, how 
 ever slowly, as I grow older. My constitution 
 and frame forbid me to suppose that I shall 
 live many years, so I am the less exercised in 
 mind about hopes, plans, or fears, for any dis 
 tant future. . . . 
 
 It is fortunately not necessary to take Sill, 
 ceiat %%, very seriously on the subject of his 
 health; on that topic he was for a short time 
 rather imaginative. The next phase of the 
 "vocation" problem may nevertheless have 
 
CALIFORNIA 59 
 
 been affected by this attack of interest in his 
 health. In February, 1864, he writes: "I am 
 trying to study medicine (you remember sug 
 gesting it to me once) and my only familiar 
 acquaintance made here is a doctor who gives 
 me the use of his books, office, and experience 
 for the few hours which I can save from my 
 day s work. I can lay a few of the foundation 
 stones here to be built upon (next year when 
 I come East) in the lecture and dissecting 
 
 room." 
 
 This phase while it lasted was acute. "Next 
 spring, 1865," he writes again, "I mean to 
 come back with sound health, large pectoral 
 muscles, a little elementary knowledge of medi 
 cine, and about $500 in jolly greenbacks. . . ." 
 But there were other turns of Fortune s wheel. 
 A month later he writes of a change which 
 apparently put an end to the study of medicine. 
 
 Mck, 64. 
 
 Next month I am going to "move" shall 
 quit the post-office, and go up to a little town 
 some twenty miles north of Sacramento 
 Folsom (Foolsom in the barbarous dialect 
 of the natives here I don t know but the 
 name is a fearful augury of my wisdom in going 
 there) . Goes I there into a bank changing 
 my delightful employment of peddling postage 
 stamps (stomps they call em here) for that 
 
60 EDWARD ROWIAND SILL 
 
 of buying gold dust from Mexicans, Digger 
 Indians, and Chinamen, who are all great at 
 the " surface-mining " in that vicinity. 
 
 The year which he now spent at Folsom was 
 attended with somewhat less discomfort and 
 discontent than the preceding period. He had 
 the good fortune to find as chief Mr. C. T. H. 
 Palmer, himself a graduate of Yale and a lover 
 even a practitioner in a modest fashion of 
 literature, with whom Sill established a friend 
 ship that lasted the rest of his life. Fragmen 
 tary notes to classmates give the setting: 
 
 FOLSOM, May 23, 1864. 
 
 I am established here. It is a little, insignifi 
 cant town, but one very pleasant household, in 
 which I am fortunate enough to be. It is one of 
 these little scooped-out holes among the foot 
 hills (the prefaces to the Sierras), with fever 
 and ague rampant, and hotter than any hot 
 road in Litchfield County. I am learning to 
 keep bank books, which I hate, and manage an 
 express agency, which I don t like, and to buy 
 gold dust, assay dust for gold, which isn t 
 quite so bad, and to be decently genial and 
 human, which is excellent for me. 
 
 FOLSOM, CAL., June 15, 1864. 
 The beauty of my position now is that I am 
 among a very few very fine people, i.e., about 
 
CALIFORNIA 61 
 
 three or four. We constituting an oasis in the 
 usual horrid description of desert made up of 
 "Pike s, fools, fools, fools, and other fools." 
 Business, as you know, I do not mightily enjoy. 
 And here I am, confined to the office from 6 J 
 mornings to ditto ditto at night. The evening 
 only, being hallowed and glorified by a piano, 
 a good little library, and the conversation of 
 people who et illi in Arcadia i.e., have been 
 to Yale (the caput familias at least has) or 
 caught its spirit hereditarily. My chief, C. T. 
 H. Palmer, supported himself through Yale 
 (Class 47) (at least the spreeing part of his 
 support, quod maximum) by writing for Mags, 
 etc., and to this day is a Poick. His wife is a 
 granddaughter of Prex. Day s and her brother 
 is a worthy scion of the stock. 
 
 My little town here is an oven, cheerfully 
 planted with " shakes " and other bilious fevers. 
 The Chinese portion of the population form its 
 most industrious and respectable class, and 
 employ themselves in mining and looking gen 
 erally absurd and Mongolian in their persistent 
 Chinese rig (which I adopt so far as shoes are 
 concerned to scuff around in, indoors). The 
 American element loafs around whiskey shops, 
 burns its vitals out with hellish brandy, until 
 fever and shakes settle them quietly into the 
 graveyard. Of course there are a few respect 
 able, good, vulgar people, who keep up a Sun- 
 
62 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 day School, make a sparse gathering of audi 
 ence around the empty church Sundays, and 
 try to build up a new New England out here, 
 as eventually will be succeeded in, all over 
 California. 
 
 There is one thing of my [circumstances 
 here which you will rejoice mecum at I am 
 no longer wholly divorced from music. I play 
 the little hewgag in the church and get bites 
 and sips at other music from the piano. I sup 
 pose you have never known so complete a 
 starvation from music as I have endured the 
 last two years until now. Next to losing all 
 love, it seems to me the greatest privation man 
 is capable of suffering. 
 
 The change of place and of occupation gave a 
 new direction to Sill s thoughts. The year 1864 
 was a time of emotional and spiritual unrest 
 more acute than he had known before. 
 
 "My dear friend," he writes to a classmate, 
 in March of that year, "... your letter pulled 
 upon my very inwards, and I want to sort of ex 
 plain to you why I do not answer it by packing 
 my trunk with my three least ragged shirts and 
 my Tennyson, and getting into a mailbag myself 
 and coming on. I do really believe I catch my 
 self heartily wishing I was installed in that asst. 
 librarianship, and chumming tecum in fair old 
 New Haven. Yet to go on there immediately 
 
CALIFORNIA 63 
 
 would be in some sense a cowardly backing out. 
 It would be facing the world and then running 
 away; in taking up arms against a sea of 
 trouble, and having them beautifully broken 
 over my head. If I were a scholar, if I had been 
 a faithful student in college instead of a hair- 
 brained ass, I should desire no greater fortune 
 than to be, as you are (I rejoice to learn - 
 gratulor tibi consider yourself gripped), con 
 nected with Yale. It has been mainly my sense 
 of incapacity that has prevented my continuing 
 in my first plan of teaching which I intended 
 to have followed till it led me to some such 
 path. 
 
 "As it is, I have taken to clerkships, and 
 shall depend on such husks, to support me till I 
 can learn (if ever) to be in some higher capacity 
 useful. Yet I do not now intend to stay here 
 longer than one more year. It is as you say a 
 gross, deadening place. I abominate it, from 
 first to last. Next spring, 1865, Sex [Shearer] 
 and I mean to come home. What to do there I 
 can form no guess. Not to starve I am sure, 
 and not become pedlars I hope. You say you 
 don t know how high my ambition is in my 
 present circumstances and mood, and beliefs, 
 it sounded like a sort of sarcasm. If Brutus 
 says I was ambitious, I suppose I must admit 
 it. I believe I thought more highly of myself 
 than I ought to think, in college, even in those 
 
64 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 last, self-questioning days. But I believe I 
 have got out from under that egotistical night 
 mare, never, I hope, to be ridden with it again. 
 I only ask of the Fates now, to give me knowl 
 edge and to make me be, in some way, really 
 useful " 
 
 And in June: "No time to write now I m 
 standing at my desk, with the appurtenances of 
 business hanging around me, like the shackles 
 on a demd slave, the pen only caught from be 
 hind its accustomed nook, the ear, for a mere 
 parenthesis of talk with you. I think if I could 
 get away from counters and desks, into the 
 woods somewhere, after my last three years 
 experience, I would be glad to do it I wonder 
 if somewhere in Maine there is not a cabin, de 
 serted of its last hermit, under some big trees, 
 with a cliff hanging over it, and a stream to 
 catch one s daily meat out of if so, it was 
 built for me." 
 
 In August he was still strenuous and still 
 groping but turning now toward theology ; 
 for matters of faith had laid hold of him 
 matters which were to engage his attention for 
 the next three years : 
 
 "I am working very hard just now at 
 what (I never can shake off the feeling the 
 conviction) is unprofitable labor mere busi 
 ness. 
 
 "How much weariness, etc., one can stand, 
 
CALIFORNIA 65 
 
 though, when it is known to be for a limited 
 time. . . . Have n t you often been newly star 
 tled at the sudden realization of how much 
 man owes to Hope? 
 
 "My great comfort is that man can t take 
 his learning or his culture out of this life with 
 him Death pushes back everything from the 
 gate except the naked soul. Hence it don t 
 much matter that one can t study, and know 
 this or that. 
 
 " . . . I ve been reading theology lately. - 
 You spoke of the legion of things which claim 
 our attention verily, verily. But moral 
 philosophy stands first then metaphysics - 
 then down, to medicine, literature, sociology, 
 fca&ology, history, etc. I keep a little foun 
 tain babbling and plashing in my brain, by 
 reading, nearly every day, a word of Tenny 
 son or Browning (Mrs. I mean) or Ruskin or 
 Bible or somebody I would like to take your 
 arm and start on a trip through moral phil 
 osophy, by evenings. . . . 
 
 " I want to learn the organ when I come East. 
 What will it cost me, besides time? It is in me 
 if I do not get too old before it can come out." 
 
 It was during his residence at Folsom in 64 
 and 65 that the love affair which caused some 
 of his friends anxiety waxed and waned. There 
 is no doubt that Sill was sincere and that he be- 
 
66 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 lieved himself to be seriously in love, but it may 
 be doubted whether it was not a "false dawn," 
 lighted by sympathy and intensified by his 
 loneliness. The first allusion to his state of 
 mind occurs in a letter to a classmate in New 
 Haven: 
 
 "My boy, have you, of late, had much 
 thought about the domestic question (domus, a 
 home) ? I know you have, more or less, pon 
 dered it. Have you in your Sittings happened 
 upon any touches or hints of it, so as to bring it 
 up vividly, as a matter of contrast? That 
 have I and the chief end of man seems to lie 
 in there somewhere. The question is, shall a 
 man balk shall he refuse to be coddled, and 
 pull back, and snap at the good angels, and say 
 he won t have anything except bare life unless 
 they ll explain it all to us, in which we have 
 the sour satisfaction of not being fooled and 
 amused. Or shall he enter the game cheerfully 
 - content, if it s blindman s buff, to be blind 
 fold take his share of the burdens and bless 
 ings have wife and love praise God 
 gratefully for sunshine and trustfully for 
 storms and die with thy will be done ! . . . 
 Do you read Spencer and Renan? I sort o 
 shrink from these loud fellows, who claim to 
 tell it all. Yet I presume it s our duty to hear 
 what they say. Have n t yet. I feel a prefer 
 ence in me to look over what little general his- 
 
CALIFORNIA 67 
 
 tory I have (in mind) and blink a little at the 
 old stars and think it over for myself don t 
 you? 
 
 "Sometimes, after some peculiar blessing 
 from the good thought angels, after some soli 
 tary walk at night, I seem to get calmer and 
 better views, and to feel these fellows to be all 
 flippant and inadequate. ..." 
 
 To one person only did Sill write at any 
 length of the love passage, and these letters 
 contain the entire conjugation, amo, amabo, 
 amavi. 
 
 FOLSOM, CAL., March 20, 1865. 
 
 To-morrow comes a steamer mail and I 
 hope a letter from you. But to-morrow also 
 goes a steamer mail and I want to get a letter 
 off, so I can t wait. I ve got a thing to ask ad 
 vice about, so to business fustly. Here is a girl 
 twenty years old, with good brains, and uncon 
 querable will, who is bent on finishing (that is, 
 getting, to our classic understanding) her educa 
 tion. She is teaching school and saving up her 
 little earnings to go to Normal School at San 
 Francisco after her present term s engagement 
 is out. Of course you don t need to be told that 
 any school in San Fran is a humbug a 
 bilk She has got to go East, now, where 
 shall she go? I m slightly inclined to Mount 
 Holyoke. Knowest aught of that institution? 
 
68 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 And what is it about some big female college or 
 other which Dr. Cox has somewhere in New 
 York State? I thought of Holyoke because I 
 know it is not costly, and the girl has only a 
 little six or seven hundred dollars, perhaps 
 
 to devote to it. Give to me your opinion as 
 to where that little could be most advantage 
 ously spent by a girl who does n t want French 
 or piano or painting or elegancies, so much as 
 solid "male" education such as we wanted, 
 and want. Ask anybody you know who is 
 "up" on these matters, and please send me 
 immediately your opinion. Having said thus 
 much, from a business point of view, it will per 
 haps be unnecessary to add that I love said 
 girl and that she loves me, which renders 
 my little question a very important one to me, 
 
 where shall my little girl go to make herself 
 what she wants to be before she will hear of 
 marriage. Now, don t tell me anything about 
 expensive places, for we won t hear a word of 
 it. There is and can be and shall be (for the 
 present) only so much in the purse where 
 will it buy the most of what we want? 
 
 Now, dear H , I have n t time to tell 
 
 you about my having fallen in love you 11 be 
 very glad to hear of it I know and you may 
 not be displeased to learn that you re the only 
 friend east of California who has been told it. 
 I would n t say anything to anybody, cause 
 
CALIFORNIA 69 
 
 I don t want to have em write me nonsense 
 about it. And please say naught to any one of 
 what I have asked you about, and why. Some 
 of these days I 11 sit down and relate my little 
 story, for your and F. s amusement. 
 
 I don t know what I am going to do. Sex 
 and I are hobnobbing over the question of 
 ways and means, but what it weighs, and what 
 it means, we don t know yet. No time now. 
 Hope I ll hear from you to-morrow. Answer 
 this as soon as you can. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 ED. R. SILL. 
 
 I have n t written to any one but you about 
 my conjugation of amo amat, and shan t at 
 present. 
 
 Love to the Beloved ask her if I shall 
 send my dove to her for a friend if she goes 
 East? 
 
 FOLSOM, CAL., June 13, 1865. 
 MY VERY DEAR FRIEND ... In the first 
 place my little girl will very likely never be 
 my wife, for a number of complicated rea 
 sons which I can t tell in a letter. Even if we 
 were certain of marrying sometime, we could 
 not do so for two years at least. We have no 
 money and no sufficient health. And a person 
 of weak physique cannot marry without 
 money, as you can easily see. Wherefore the 
 
70 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 plan which you so eloquently urge of being 
 myself the teacher, and the fellow pupil at 
 the same time, is impossible for us. You 
 have given me a number of new ideas about 
 this troublesome subject, and a great deal to 
 think about. I believe you are right in the 
 main, only it is obvious that the plan, in its 
 minutiae, is only applicable to persons, either of 
 strong constitutions or some means of support 
 besides daily and wearying work. I was dis 
 appointed at your low estimates of the large 
 schools there, but I still think they must be 
 
 better than the schools in this country. s 
 
 mother insists upon her staying in California; I 
 insist that she had better go to New England. 
 How the matter will end I cannot foresee. I am 
 in great trouble and perplexity about her affairs 
 and my own. I think in the course of the fall 
 shall be with the Shears on a ship aiming 
 around the Horn. 
 
 I expect you to keep my confidence in your 
 own (and your wife s, of course,) heart. I tell 
 no one else on that side of the ocean. I am 
 blue and bothered by various perplexing things, 
 and can t write more than this note, for this 
 steamer. 
 
 .... I really think that Shears and I shall 
 be on the ocean by September, and perhaps 
 before. I am tired I want the long rest of 
 the sea. 
 
CALIFORNIA 71 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Aug. 6, 1865. 
 
 I have been running from sickness for the 
 last month and a half. The malaria caught 
 me, at Folsom, and hit hard. Came down here 
 and the sea breezes have put life into me again. 
 This week (this is the first day of it) I shall go 
 back to my work. I don t think I am fond of 
 
 work, H , are you? Oats and dignity is 
 
 much preferable. 
 
 People think that a thinking man s specu 
 lations about religion, etc., interfere with his 
 daily life very little, but how certain conclu 
 sions do take the spine out of one s existence. 
 These Spencer chaps may be very excellent, 
 but to me there is an Apple of Sodom smack 
 about it all. Little pigmies. What kind of 
 babbling is this for worm-meat to emit? " For 
 man" (not even with a capital M) "is not 
 as God " and I more than suspect that the 
 said worms lick their chops over the brain, as 
 over the coarser tidbits of the grave. 
 
 Upon the mood into which he now entered 
 several earlier letters throw a good deal of 
 light, letters which recall undergraduate dis 
 putations but which also reveal the earnest 
 religious disposition which Sill never lost. 
 
 "It is strange," he writes to his friend Dex 
 ter, "how the weaker and lesser thing has 
 power with us, simply through its nearness, 
 
72 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 to overcome the greater and higher i.e., 
 how troubles of earth conquer the faith and 
 hope of the larger world, as the flimsy clouds 
 by being so near us overcome the stars. I won 
 der if the great souls of old times did not some 
 how draw and clasp close to them the unseen 
 realities, so that they gained such victory over 
 present and visible matters. Tennyson says, 
 * Oh, well for him whose will is strong ! I would 
 substitute faith for will. The will is an iron 
 heel to crush down the casual obstacles of the 
 path, but faith is a clinging hand, reaching far 
 upward and holding by the hand of God. I 
 suppose to all of us who have stepped from 
 college into the actual world, all things have 
 become more earnest in the past year. It would 
 be strange if each of us had not thought more 
 seriously of things beyond, as well as of things 
 here in reference to them. Every one seems to 
 have been suffering some peculiar trouble. 
 You say, and I am very glad for you, that you 
 have gained some clearer views. I do not know 
 that I can say that for myself. I have smitten 
 down some errors and vanities, perhaps; it 
 required little skill to do that I had but to 
 walk into my mental underbrush anywhere, 
 and cut and slash right and left. I could pull 
 tares indiscriminately with no danger of up 
 rooting any wheat for there was but little 
 in the field. I wish I had more faith in men, as 
 
CALIFORNIA 73 
 
 well as in God. Out of all the human beings I 
 ever saw, or heard of, if it were not for the very 
 few, scattered here and there one, in history 
 and the present, I should be utterly hopeless of 
 man and his world. I have at times dragged 
 anchor and drifted almost out of sight of my 
 belief in immortality, just from a murky con 
 sideration of the question, What is there in 
 man worth perpetuation? Why should a mean 
 little pleasure-seeker like him be crystallized 
 into immortality? Why should not the abused 
 elements scatter and recombine into higher 
 forms? But then I cry, Get thee behind me, 
 Satan, and grope for the guiding hand." 
 
 SACRAMENTO, Aug. 6, 63. 
 
 I have had some queer things going on in 
 my inner man, since I saw you. I am a hermit 
 here, caring for none, cared for by none. And 
 it has grown upon me to cling to my cave. 
 Personal defects, morbid shrinkings from ridi 
 cule, scorn to be scorned by things I scorn, 
 overpowering sense of dissimilarity, mortified 
 pride as to fulfilling expectations, dread of the 
 dependent helplessness of poverty, and a host 
 of things, some little and mean enough, others 
 larger and unspeakable, make me hold back 
 from returning East. . . . 
 
 I know that Duty is the one end, and 
 our acquired knowledge is a ridiculous mote, 
 
74 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 at the best, yet it is the noble hunger of the 
 soul this after truth. And to me Duty seems 
 to say that one particle added to the world s 
 true knowledge, or a single effort put forth to 
 make men see higher things than food and 
 money-getting, is better than all bread-and- 
 meat philanthropies. . . . 
 
 SACRAMENTO, Aug. 16, 1863. 
 
 ... I m great on analogies, you know (de 
 fect in my mind, maybe imagination de 
 veloped at expense of reason) Well I often 
 think what if we should set our children at 
 some occupation or other told them, for in 
 stance, to stir the pudding or the potato in the 
 kettle lest it burn, while we went upstairs for 
 something and Billy should say to Sammy, 
 "don t let s stir what s the use don t see 
 the reason " and so we should come back and 
 find the dinner burnt up. Oh, how we d trounce 
 em! 
 
 That s an absurd way of putting it, and not 
 as it was in my mind, but I m rattling ahead 
 to-night, not stopping to take care but I so 
 very often think of us as foolish children who 
 get fretful, and scared, and maybe to crying for 
 Pa to strike a light so that we can see him, and 
 so on, when if we only knew a little more, it is 
 all right. You see, I take it for certain that these 
 innate human instincts (as, the conviction of 
 
CALIFORNIA 75 
 
 the duty of obeying conscience, the obligatori- 
 ness of duty, the duty of seeking true knowledge, 
 and attaining our ideal of character, etc.) as 
 the word of God to us. Intuitions must be the 
 commands of God. Nonne? They are the voice 
 of the Father, in the night, when we can neither 
 see his face nor touch his hand, but are silly 
 children if we do not obey without getting 
 frightened at the dark. Trusting to what that 
 same Voice tells each of us that it will be morn 
 ing in a few hours, and light (and not a single 
 man ever lived who has not heard that from the 
 Voice). My belief is that these analogies are 
 not merely accidental things but are meant 
 to teach us. ... 
 
 To his classmate Henry Holt he wrote more 
 fully on this matter than to any one else, and, 
 immature as the letter is, it is also illuminat 
 ing: 
 
 "You ask for a brief summary of my rea 
 sons for believing in immortality. You need 
 not have stipulated for the brevity. The rea 
 sons for are few and short, to me. The reasons 
 against are the ones which would take up room 
 in telling. Perhaps the former have/orce enough 
 to overbalance the weak hosts of the latter 
 I hope so. I do not think immortality can 
 be made to appear very certain to us. Lord, we 
 beseech thee, is about all we can say for our- 
 
76 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 selves. Here is my best reason for such hope as 
 the occasional gleam of sunshine lets me have. 
 
 "Who forged that other influence 
 That heat of inward evidence 
 By which he doubts against the sense? 
 
 That and the belief, yea, the implanted cer 
 tainty which all the devils cannot root out, that 
 God is Perfect 
 
 "Thy power and love my love and trust, 
 Make one place everywhere. 
 
 Cousin thinks he has proved that man must be 
 immortal, if God is just. If I was sure of that, 
 it would forever end all doubt with me. I cannot 
 believe that there is any real evil in the universe, 
 because I cannot make such an idea compatible 
 with God s Perfectness. I believe pain and 
 pleasure are both in the end, in some mysteri 
 ous way, ayaQa, iravra dya0a. If annihilation is a 
 real evil to man, or an injustice from God, that 
 settles it with me as impossible. But The 
 great reason against immortality, to my mind, 
 is the question, Why should man be immortal? 
 What is there in us worth perpetuation? Why 
 should such a thing be kept, and not moulded 
 over as the other temporary existences are? 
 Then again I hear the 
 
 little whisper, silver clear, 
 As from some blissful neighborhood, 
 A motion faintly understood, 
 I see the end and know the good. 
 * A hidden hope, the voice replied." t 
 
CALIFORNIA 77 
 
 "I cannot accept what you say about Chris 
 tianity without a but or two. Your theory is 
 
 tempting, I acknowledge, but, H , there 
 
 are one or two stern, uncompromising turns of 
 either-or logic, which won t let me accept 
 peace on that basis. Either Christ was God, 
 or He was not. And if He was, we must take 
 what He said as actual truth, not to be twisted 
 or turned aside for you or me, if we were nine 
 times the men we are. Through his name, his 
 sacrifice, and his intercession, and thus alone, 
 can we inherit eternal life. I seem to see Him 
 standing there, on the common ground that 
 other men were treading, with the actual every 
 day sunshine on his meek head, with a solemn, 
 earnest face looking at you and me as we stand 
 with the multitude about Him, and saying 
 with that awful authority, egovo-ias, which 
 He is said to have always seemed to have, he 
 that believeth shall be saved he that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned. He that be 
 lieveth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he 
 that believeth not shall not see life. And out 
 of that word believeth it is impossible to get 
 any but the plain, straightforward meaning 
 of accepting his claims and assertions as ab 
 solute truth. . . . You speak of Tennyson, I 
 take it that in In Memoriam we have the 
 autobiography of his progress through disbelief, 
 doubt, to full faith I don t mean that he 
 
78 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 wrote it as such, but his views show them 
 selves from epoch to epoch of his mind s life. 
 The introduction was written last, and I in 
 terpret that as orthodox Church-of-England be 
 lief in the Christian religion. . . . 
 
 "Another thing. I came at Christianity one 
 night thinking about what we are, and what 
 God must be, from another side (don t you 
 know, that often we seem to think around to a 
 certain subject by way of a newtrain of thought, 
 and suddenly seem to come upon it from an en 
 tirely different point of the compass from our 
 usual view of it). I was thinking out into the 
 material universe creeping out from star to 
 star, from system to system, till I got way 
 off where I was afraid almost of the awful dis 
 tance and darkness, and then still there was 
 infinite space stretching on and on, and no 
 nearer to God, yet, where was my Maker? 
 Not there; the air and ether even of boundless 
 space was not the medium in which He was. 
 Completely as my little human soul shrunk 
 and cowered before the mere material universe, 
 still there was another more awful, more in 
 conceivable the universe of Spirit, in which 
 (except that in, which denotes a space-rela 
 tion, means nothing when used of that world) 
 God is and as the overwhelming thought 
 came upon me of the utter, hopeless distance 
 (for that means space, that can be traversed) 
 
CALIFORNIA 79 
 
 between Him and us, I suddenly thought 
 Oh, if we had a Mediator some one to stand 
 upon the boundary land. If God would but 
 reveal Himself, and tell us some little word 
 that we might cling to as actual truth, among 
 all the shadows. And then I thought how 
 could He, how could He be likely to, but 
 through the Perfect Man. And my ideal im 
 agination of what such a revealed God would 
 be, and what he would do and say to men in 
 such a world, so tallied with all we know of 
 Jesus, the Son of Man, that I was awed 
 thinking what things we may have been re 
 jecting. 
 
 "I used to think if God revealed Himself to 
 the world, He would have given some sign 
 which would have compelled belief, some 
 great miraculous revelation, but what could 
 He have done which we should have been sure 
 of as the work of Him? If He had blazed across 
 the sky in some terrible grand spectacle or 
 given any conceivable display of power how 
 could we have known that it was not the work 
 of some lesser divinity some evil arch 
 angel or (if you dislike the Bible name) some 
 inhabitant of Sirius or the Pleiads? If you will 
 but think of it, the only possible way to con 
 vince us completely, and beyond chance of 
 doubt, would have been to re-create for us 
 the universe, before our eyes, and even then 
 
80 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 we should not be sure but it was some phan 
 tasm and deceit. Does it not seem probable 
 that He would do just what this strange book 
 says He had done? Coming as a man, doing 
 a few simple miracles to attract men s atten 
 tion and prove that He was at least more than 
 mere man, making his miracles acts of benefi 
 cence, to prove that he was a good, not evil, 
 Superhuman, proving his wisdom by his knowl 
 edge of the human heart and his ethical teach 
 ings, his unselfishness by his life and death, his 
 perfect purity and truth by a sinless character? 
 Even as I write, I am almost persuaded to be 
 a Christian. I have prayed and do pray for 
 light, and if I seek truth with a pure desire 
 and intention, I believe I shall find it at last." 
 
 He now debated the ministry and halted 
 between two opinions. In this letter, written 
 from Oakland in June, 1866, he seems to be 
 sure of the negative decision; who could 
 help being deflected toward literature with a 
 volume of poems in his trunk? but within 
 the year, he and Shearer were on their way to 
 the Harvard Divinity School. 
 
 "I ve been writing a lot of poetry. Shall 
 want to consult you about it when I see you. 
 Have got one poem of about a thousand lines 
 and a lot of short ones, about as much more, 
 enough to make a gay little volume, if illus- 
 
CALIFORNIA 81 
 
 trated a little, and got out nicely but as to 
 the inside don t know the more I write the 
 less satisfied I am with any of my doings in 
 poetry verily, art is different from handi 
 craft as Grimm says only the perfect works 
 ought to be given to the public a bad boot 
 or a tolerable article of cloth may be worth 
 offering for sale but when it comes to offer 
 ing tolerable art after Tennyson and the 
 Brownings - - t won t do a poor devil ought 
 to be hung for doing it unless he be very 
 poor, when his punishment might be commuted 
 into imprisonment for life with only Tupper 
 and the Country Parson for food and drink - 
 in the way of stale toast or so. 
 
 "I m reading Marx s Musical Composi 
 tion. Ever read it? ... 
 
 "You ask . . . what I we want to do 
 when we get on there. ... I can t tell at all till 
 I have got there, found how my health is going 
 to be, how much chance of literary success there 
 is for me, how much of musical . . . 
 
 "I can t ever preach that has slowly set 
 tled itself in spite of my reluctant hanging on 
 to the doubt I can t solve the problems 
 only the great schoolmaster Death will ever 
 take me through these higher mathematics of 
 the religious principia this side of his school 
 ing, in these primary grades, I never can 
 preach. I shall teach school, I suppose." 
 
82 EDWAED ROWLAND SILL 
 
 It is one of the surprises in Sill s correspond 
 ence as in his writings to find how few are the 
 allusions to the war. Except for his poem on 
 the death of Lincoln, it never inspired his 
 muse. Not that he was indifferent; he was too 
 much of an abolitionist for that; but appa 
 rently he felt that the moral issue was being 
 obscured, and his sympathies were estranged. 
 In 1862 he wrote :- 
 
 "The war still drags along. We hear by tele 
 graph the main facts when there are any 
 - about as soon as you do but none of the 
 particulars till the steamer brings the New 
 York papers. I wish we had acknowledged the 
 Southern Confederacy in the first of it, then 
 wiped the pro-slavery blot out of our consti 
 tution and then pitched in and wiped out the 
 South, with Freedom out on our banners fair 
 and square. I hope in the 1st of January 1 and 
 an overruling Providence. God is just, and the 
 right is bound to prevail in the end." 
 
 Again in the same year he expresses his dis 
 satisfaction with the course of events : 
 
 "I hear that 2 is captured, and am not 
 
 sorry. For he will be well treated, and it is 
 better than fighting on the Devil s own side, 
 especially with the risks of getting verily 
 
 1 The 1st of January, 1863, the date on which the Emanci 
 pation Proclamation went into effect. 
 
 2 A friend on the Confederate side. 
 
CALIFORNIA 83 
 
 thrown overboard by some patriotic rifle 
 ball. . . . The war drags its slow length along. 
 I wish we were well out of it. What a hideous 
 farce it has been so far. I am glad you are not 
 in it. A wise Providence will bring good out of 
 it all but through much that is evil. God s 
 will be done!" 
 
 In 1863, after Emancipation had become a 
 fact, there was a new note in his letters: - 
 
 "How people s ideas have advanced since the 
 war commenced : We abolitionists are no longer 
 the feeble minority when so many of the 
 faces of their own sons and brothers are be 
 grimed with gunpowder and the smoke of bat 
 tle, even the old wooden-headed Democrats 
 don t look very critically to see whether the 
 men who are fighting for the flag had white 
 skins originally or black. They have tried hard 
 to get up a war in this State have fitted out 
 pirates in the harbors (which Uncle Sam has 
 nabbed), got up secret organizations and arms, 
 etc., and several leading politicians have gone 
 to Dixie to fight for Jeff and slavery. But there 
 is too much New England, Ohio, and Michigan 
 blood out here to allow their chivalry any 
 chance." 
 
 Many years afterwards the recipient of some 
 of these letters, jotting down his recollections 
 of Sill, summed up the California period and 
 added another to the list of professions which 
 
84 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 beckoned to him during these years of uncer 
 tainty. 
 
 "A few months after reaching California, Sill 
 decided to study law. But I fancy that his legal 
 studies, if ever taken up, were very brief. It 
 would be difficult to imagine a man of ability 
 less fitted than Sill for practising law. Some 
 what later he came under the influence of a 
 physician, and for a while had some serious 
 intention of studying and practising medicine. 
 No doubt he was led in that direction by the 
 desire of getting his living in a business that 
 could be made, he thought, philanthropic. But 
 afterwards he was glad that he did not engage 
 in the study of medicine, for he had lost con 
 fidence in the specific certainty of medical 
 knowledge. Another project that Sill very seri 
 ously considered, during his first stay in Cali 
 fornia, was going on to the stage as an actor. 
 
 "He told me that several times when in San 
 Francisco, he passed and repassed the theatre 
 trying to brace up his courage enough to go in 
 and ask the manager for employment; but 
 turned away without going in. If Sill could 
 have endured the drudgery of an actor s work 
 and some other objectionable features of the 
 business, there can be but little doubt that he 
 would have risen so to eminence. He had most 
 of the physical qualities which are so im 
 portant. He was tall, straight, well-shaped; his 
 
CALIFORNIA 85 
 
 features were regular, his face mobile, his eyes 
 large and expressive; his voice was sonorous 
 and flexible, and in utterance was agreeably 
 distinct, so that what he said without effort 
 was easily understood in a crowded room. In 
 the movement of his arms and legs he was 
 rather angular, but not so much so as Sir Henry 
 Irving. There can hardly be any doubt that 
 his capacity for mastering and learning to ren 
 der a part was great; and his mind had so much 
 original insight, and was so fertile in expedients, 
 that his acting, when he had become thoroughly 
 at home in the work, would have abounded 
 in creations. But, with all his qualifica 
 tions, he could not quite make up his mind to 
 seek a place on the stage. I do not know 
 whether Sill ever seriously thought of painting 
 or drawing as a lifework. He had an aptitude 
 for both. With suitable instruction and per 
 sistent effort he could have won distinction 
 with brush or crayon. Music Sill hungered for, 
 as for necessary food. His taste, by natural 
 affinity, was of the best. With great composers 
 he seemed to be at one in their most serious 
 moods. He acquired considerable skill in 
 playing upon several musical instruments, but 
 never practised enough to master any; yet in 
 rendering some short production that he had 
 become familiar with, he showed exquisite 
 sensibility and power of expression." 
 
SETTLING DOWN 
 
 SILL probably little realized, when he sailed 
 from San Francisco in the summer of 66, that 
 the two great questions of life were both to be 
 answered for him so soon that within the 
 year he would be mated in love and settled in 
 his life-work. 
 
 He sailed on the 18th of June, in company 
 with his friend Shearer, still inseparable, on the 
 same ship and under the same captain that had 
 brought them round the Horn five years be 
 fore. The last line before sailing was a hasty 
 scrawl to his classmate, [Governor] Simeon 
 Baldwin: 
 
 DEAR SIMMUN, I think this is about pos 
 itively the last from this side the planet. I hope 
 when we get East that you and I may have the 
 opportunity to make each other s acquaint 
 ance. 
 
 In summing up the years I ve been here I 
 find that very few friends have passed the 
 valves of the auricle and ventricle. Mighty 
 few, as Sex [Shearer] w d say, and conse 
 quently there s room in that capacious organ 
 
SETTLING DOWN 87 
 
 for not only the old shoots to remain un- 
 crowded, but to enlarge and spread in it. 
 
 It is bedtime and my pipe is smoked out. I 
 wish I had an angel to put her wings over me, 
 as you have, I rejoice to reflect. I suppose this 
 particular Beast is not considered quite worthy 
 of Beauty yet. So good-night. 
 
 There was no journal on the return voyage, 
 and apparently there were no letters, though 
 there seems to have been some labor of the file 
 upon the poems alluded to in an earlier letter, 
 and there is a passage in "The Earth-Spirit s 
 Voices" which seems to belong to this voyage 
 rather than the earlier one. He has been writ 
 ing of the voices of earth " appealing to mortal 
 spirits across the barrier of the limited human 
 intelligence," and he goes on: - 
 
 "At sea, also, I once heard this unavailing 
 cry. It was a hundred miles, and more, from 
 the coast of Brazil. The night was clear star 
 light, the breeze light and steady, so that we 
 were sailing silently. The stillness, indeed, was 
 so unusual that we were all leaning at the 
 weather rail, listening to it, and peering far off 
 into the vanishing waste of waves. Suddenly a 
 distant cry arose from the night; no one could 
 say where, or how. Then it was twice repeated : 
 not a human cry, that is certain : perhaps a sea- 
 bird s, but not like that of any bird or beast 
 
88 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 I ever heard. If it expressed anything, it was 
 not pain nor fear, but some intense, infinitely 
 lonely desire." 1 
 
 Sill and Shearer had determined to go to the 
 Harvard Divinity School, there to study the 
 ology ; having selected the place because, as one 
 of their friends surmised, "they would not be 
 required there to believe so much as in other 
 American schools " a design which, in Sill s 
 case, was destined to defeat; for, as the same 
 friend confesses, "the beliefs were too much for 
 him"; or, as he put it himself not unscornfully 
 sometime later, "I found it was the same old 
 whine in new bottles." But that is to antici 
 pate. Now, arriving in New York in the late 
 fall of 66, the travellers went on to Cambridge 
 to look the ground over, and Sill then turned 
 back for a visit with his relatives in Ohio 
 before settling down to texts and commenta 
 tors. An eventful enough visit it proved. From 
 Cuyahoga Falls he writes in December : 
 
 DEAR H , I intended to let you hear 
 
 of my safe arrival here before this, but visit 
 ors can t write letters, and I find myself a 
 visitor, and almost stranger, at my " home " 
 so long have I been away. 
 
 I was in hopes to have heard from you, but 
 
 1 The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill, pp. 48, 49. 
 
SETTLING DOWN 89 
 
 I suppose you are waiting to know where I am. 
 I found things in Cambridge more favorable 
 than I had expected; they will pay most of 
 my expenses, furnish room, books, etc., and a 
 man s tenets or intentions are not in the ques 
 tion at all with them which it is gay. 
 
 I shall go there sans doubt, and commence 
 with the term at the end of February. I may 
 decide to go right on there next month and 
 settle myself. Whenever I go it is my hope and 
 intention to stop among you for a season. 
 Ralphy says his bed is always twoable, and I 
 want to get acquainted with you all. It was a 
 little snip of a " see " which I got at you there, 
 yet I enjoyed it very much. 
 
 MRS. FLORRIE! The music I received at the 
 depot and thank you very much. I have been 
 longing for those " Songs Without Words " for 
 a great while. I believe I love Mendelssohn 
 best of all. I wish I knew something about 
 music. It was very kind in you to send me that 
 music. I have n t heard it yet. The piano here 
 is in a vile state of out-of-tunitiveness, but is to 
 be reformed so soon as the man from Cleveland 
 can come down to our little village to it. Then 
 I shall hear them all, though I can t play them. 
 My fingers don t know how to find their way 
 without great deliberation and bungling. I can 
 only pick out little easiest places from good 
 music. Perhaps that is something like the way 
 
90 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 in which my present acquaintance with you 
 stands. Indeed, I don t know but it would hold 
 of H , too, now. 
 
 I think I shall see you in about a month. 
 Affectionately your friend, 
 
 ED. ROWLAND SILL. 
 
 This miserable climate ! A perfect caricature 
 of our California rainy season! I ve had a cold 
 and the blues ever since I got home here. 
 
 Sweetest privilege of friendship an ear 
 whereinto one may growl! May n t I? 
 
 In the next letter the poems reappear, and 
 the plan for a book, "The Hermitage, and 
 Other Poems," the only volume offered to 
 the public in Sill s lifetime, takes more defi 
 nite form. It came out something more than a 
 year later and had a reception not wholly novel 
 for a poet s first book, of which more when the 
 time comes. Meantime, the past tense and the 
 tone of the comment sound the final chord in 
 the little love song that quavered so uncer 
 tainly in California: 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, XMAS, 66. 
 
 DEAR H , I am sorry you have had 
 
 so much nuisance in that old Concertina 
 peace to its ashes. Let er repose on some 
 shelf of yours. I am greatly obliged by your 
 effort to lay the ghost, but if it won t " down, 
 
 99 
 
SETTLING DOWN 91 
 
 let it stay up and be . I perceive it will 
 
 be like poor Sparrowgrass boss, wbich he 
 could n t even get anybody to steal. 
 
 You just go to work and get over tbat 
 "separation" idea as an attachment to the 
 Theol. idea of Sill. Going to be nothing of the 
 kind. Is thy servant to be a Jesuit? Nay, not 
 even a priest. A " Minister " if you will are 
 we not all ministering spirits? Impossible to 
 separate us and I not only feel confident 
 that I can t be done so to, but I know that so 
 long as I live I shall be trying, at least, to be the 
 kind of man whom you must Kke and cleave to. 
 
 I don t think you d better send the Poems 
 back I ll send you soon a piece to insert in 
 Hermitage a footnote, as who should say, 
 "This whelp was in love, that he whines so." 
 Also some short pomes. 
 
 DEAR MRS. FLORRIE: Merry Xmas and 
 a most Happy New Year to you. I think you 
 write a most delightful business letter. I am 
 afraid you spoke a little too warmly about the 
 
 poems, though I m glad Mr. L likes them, 
 
 so do I some of them but not all. I liked 
 Bob W. s 1 ever so muchly. 
 
 The Hermitage is subjective, of course, so 
 is Life, to us. The public must be educated to 
 
 1 Robert Kelley Weeks, of the class of 1862. He published 
 several poems in the Nation, and a couple of small volumes, 
 got the enthusiastic approval of Stoddard and Stedman, and 
 died young. 
 
92 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 be more subjective themselves. " Pomes " are 
 not to tickle them but to help them up. I don t 
 want it to be any mere dramatic a " dram " 
 in the "attic" is not the way I write my 
 poetry, but by sunshine, on cold water, in the 
 same room I live in. Could perhaps put in 
 some Swinburne, but don t approve of looking 
 at life from that sty and trough. 
 
 I am really glad at heart that you and 
 
 H enjoyed reading my things, for I like 
 
 you both so much, and should be very suspi 
 cious of poems which did not please you at all. 
 
 I am having a pleasant visit at my uncle s 
 here a sort of second father he is to me. But 
 I am having some perplexities to manage and 
 worried a good deal hope it will be over in a 
 little, when I will write you less like a maniac. 
 I am curious to see your footnotes on my 
 margins. 
 
 Yours very 
 
 ED. R. SILL. 
 
 The next letter tells its own story, and needs 
 no comment. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO, Jan. 27, 1867. 
 I would not inconvenience you so con 
 stantly, but I have changed my plans so much 
 as to make it necessary to bother somebody 
 and I prefer you. 
 
SETTLING DOWN 93 
 
 So much for biz 
 
 Now open your ears for some news. You 
 and Mrs. Florrie are hereby invited to my 
 wedding on Thursday evening, February 7th. 
 My cousin Bess is to be the bride. Not the 
 " little Mrs. Browning " whom you suspected, 
 but her sister. I smiled at you having hit the 
 nail without having hit it on the head. Eliza 
 beth Newbury Sill (daughter of my best uncle 
 and my guardian all through my college days), 
 sometimes called Bess, also Bessie, also Lizzie, 
 also Eliz. It is a love match which has been 
 about ten years getting up. I Ve loved her ever 
 since I was a little chap, and she me. We al 
 ways tacitly considered the consanguinity as a 
 barrier, till, lately, we have decided to smash it 
 - and very lately have decided to marry soon, 
 and yesterday fixed the day as above stated. 
 
 Are you glad I m going to be happy at last? 
 I have always longed so for a satisfied, unim 
 peded love, given and taken now I have it. 
 I need not tell you, who have been there, that I 
 cannot love other friends less but always more 
 for this the other boys probably can t under 
 stand that so well except, to be sure, as you 
 have made the demonstration. 
 
 We shall stay here a week after marrying, 
 then visit a friend in Titusville, Pennsylvania, 
 for two days, then to Brooklyn, and in New 
 York I shall see you. Some day Mrs. Bess and 
 
94 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 I will walk in on you at the store and damage 
 your business for a while. I am going to Cam 
 bridge all the same, and Bess is to stay here till 
 I get through there. Her father wants her for 
 housekeeper and pet till I can and must take 
 her away from him. 
 
 From New York she conies back here with 
 some relatives, and I stay and see you folks 
 awhile and then go up to Cambridge. 
 
 I am in a hurry to write some other neces 
 sary letters so good-night. Remember us, you 
 two, Thursday night of next week, and think 
 your good wishes across to us. 
 
 Yours, doubly, 
 
 E. R. S. 
 Good-night. 
 
 Sill s stay in Cambridge was too short for the 
 best results; but the unsatisfactoriness of it did 
 not lie wholly, nor perhaps even chiefly, in its 
 brevity. Had he remained longer in those sur 
 roundings he might have penetrated into the 
 currents of high and eager intellectual life which 
 ran so strongly there, but it is not certain that 
 he would. His pride, his native reserve, and 
 his lack of contacts with the contemporaneous 
 thought of America, as well as of Europe, made 
 it unlikely. Nevertheless, that a genuine poet, 
 of no unworthy achievement, should come 
 into the neighborhood of Lowell, Longfellow, 
 
SETTLING DOWN 95 
 
 Holmes, Emerson, and Norton and yet meet 
 none of them, seems hardly short of a tragedy. 
 Among the fruits of the months which he 
 spent at the Divinity School was the hymn, 
 " Send down thy truth, O Lord," written for 
 a fellow-student s ordination and now a 
 favorite, not only in the Unitarian communion, 
 but beyond its boundaries. 
 
 The letters from Cambridge, such as are 
 preserved, are all addressed to classmates. Few 
 as they are, they tell the story in outline, indi 
 cating his lessening interest in theology and his 
 growing realization of the necessity of making 
 a living by some other means. His attempts 
 to make light of the rebuffs at the hands of 
 editors and of his own expectations from 
 the forthcoming volume need not deceive us. 
 Poets at twenty-six are not a callous folk, and 
 there never was a less indifferent member of 
 the genus irritabile. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, April 8, 1867. 
 DEARLY BELOVED [his classmate, Henry 
 Holt], Yours have been received, but I have 
 been waiting for a good chance when I should 
 feel like writing a letter. The Ticknor one you 
 enclosed was my regular one, of course. No 
 comments. I can t avoid the conclusion that 
 the "Atlantic" and I don t agree as to what is 
 decent poetry. I warn you in time if you 
 
96 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 take hold of those poems you ll have the Mags 
 down on em and the books unsold. They re 
 not popular whether they re good or not. 
 I have n t had the requisite cultivation; and 
 besides my knocking around and feeling the 
 cold shoulder of things has n t improved the 
 imaginative powers the delicacy is blunted, 
 and bloom gone if they were there. I believe 
 that born into a rich Englishman s son s shoes, 
 like all of those chaps, I could have added to the 
 world s little stock of poetry. As it is, I m out 
 and some one else is in, and there s no help for 
 it. So don t get into any scrape. I warn you, 
 I shan t feel at all more seedy than at present 
 if you send that bundle up to me instead of to 
 the printer. I grow less and less desirous to have 
 them published every day I live. . . . 
 
 Of course I needn t say that I m blue as 
 the devil started on a long track straight 
 track, you see no curves concealing hidden 
 and pleasant perhapses pretty sandy, and 
 only two foot-prints most of the way. 
 
 She may be here next year, but t will cost 
 like thunder, and I see plainly that there is no 
 hope of side earnings. This Taintor thing [Col 
 lege songs] is no go. I am trying to get him up 
 some things, but I make a melancholy failure. 
 Try to write some songs for young ones when 
 you re in the dumps, and see what you think 
 of it! I m going to send some things to him in 
 
SETTLING DOWN 97 
 
 your care because he was to change his address 
 and I don t know it. Will you address em to 
 him? Wretched things, not worth a cent a 
 thousand I wrote till towards morning on 
 em t other night and condemned ein to the 
 fire in the morning that s my present style. 
 I m not pregnant and how can anything be 
 born? The god has n t embraced my Muse for 
 a good many months. 
 
 Good place to study here, poor place for 
 anything else, so I won t even try any longer to 
 write a letter. 
 
 Now I m going at Mr. Cousin s ideas of the 
 idea of God. Mr. Monkey s chattering about 
 the man who threw a stone at him the other 
 day or was it cakes he threw? The monkey 
 can t tell. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Apr., 1867. 
 I am enjoying my opportunities here hugely. 
 They give me books and let me alone what 
 more could a man ask? Besides, some good lec 
 tures outside Agassiz, etc. I went to a sa 
 cred concert last Sunday night in Music Hall. 
 It was very fine I don t know that I ever 
 enjoyed music so much. Did n t hear the great 
 organ, though, so I am going over to hear 
 that in an orchestral concert this P.M. Sunday 
 
98 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 night there was glorious orchestra music, and 
 Arbuckle had a cornet arrangement of Ade 
 laide with orchestra which nearly drew my 
 heart out of my body. I have always raved 
 about that song, but never heard it perfectly 
 given before. What a splendor brass is when 
 exquisitely played how it winds and winds 
 into one s very Ego, and tangles itself up with 
 the emotions and passions and soars up with 
 them. The wood sings all around one the 
 strings wail and implore to us but the brass 
 enters in and carries one off bodily. Do you 
 concur? I want to hear that great organ it 
 was music only to look at it a great, dark, 
 shadowy cathedral looming up at the end of the 
 immense Hall Apollo Belvedere up in a niche 
 opposite, looking scornful, as if to say that all 
 that solemn, shadowy, bitter-sweet music 
 the heartbroken triumph the fire of tears 
 is poor by the side of his memories of the Greek 
 health and energy, and music that was sunshine 
 dissolved in wine. But one looks back to 
 the statue of the Master in front of the organ, 
 and thinks the man is truer than the false 
 god. 
 
 Delightful spring weather trees coming 
 out grass green. Nature is all under good 
 subjection, though, about here not even a 
 Tutor s Lane to refresh the jwild part of a 
 man. 
 
SETTLING DOWN 99 
 
 Wisconsin gone for Woman s Suffrage! . . . 
 It s gay, is n t it? Massachusetts must hang 
 her head and be second chop hereafter. 
 
 I think pomesj must be, anonymous. Are 
 you going to arrange for summer? 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, May 22, 67. 
 
 DEAR H , . . . Sex and I have been talking 
 about Zschokke have his stories been trans 
 lated? If not, why would n t it be a bully idea 
 to do it? And why could n t Sex and I trans 
 late, say a half dozen or eight or ten or two, to 
 put in a volume together. I have a volume here 
 containing twenty-one stories "Zschokke s 
 Novellen." They are very fine, to my taste, 
 and ought to be as popular here as in Vater- 
 land. What say you? 
 
 The way I look at it as concerning the owl 1 
 is this that solemn bird has confined its hoot 
 ing lately to lightish things. You need some 
 thing more solid for a change. Zschokke 
 is a sort of mixture of Jean Paul, G. P. R. 
 James, and Kingsley. There s love, ethics, 
 political economy, and transcendentalism. . . . 
 
 He had evidently been invited to look up 
 some facts and personal impressions of Tenny 
 son among those in Boston and vicinity who 
 
 1 An allusion to the colophon of Holt s publishing house which 
 bears the figure of an owl. 
 
100 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 knew the poet. The brief reply points again his 
 isolation in Cambridge of which he was 
 keenly conscious: - 
 
 "I couldn t unearth anything here about 
 Tenny[son], cause I don t know a soul and 
 can t know em to "root around among 
 my landlady and my washerwoman would n t 
 be productive." 
 
 Summer found him again in the hospitable 
 home at Cuyahoga Falls and in a mood of 
 comparative calm. The book appeared in the 
 spring of 1868 and was received with the se 
 verity which, for no explainable reason, it 
 sometimes befalls a first book of verse to en 
 counter. The reviewer in the "Nation," then, 
 as now, looked to by the author with peculiar 
 solicitude, was particularly harsh. Together 
 with other severities, and the indifference of 
 the public, this sufficiently discouraged Sill 
 from further publication. Never again did he 
 venture into the public with a book. It was 
 only after his death that the now familiar little 
 blue volumes "Poems," "The Hermitage," 
 and "Hermione" - were brought out. Later 
 still came "The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill" 
 and the "Collected Poems." Meanwhile the 
 modest square green volumes of 1868 have 
 become dear to booklovers and listed among 
 collectors "desiderata." 
 
SETTLING DOWN 101 
 
 As to the translating, he had misjudged his 
 temperament. He was far too high-strung for 
 that plodding sort of labor, as he discovered 
 when he undertook to put Richter s "Coopera 
 tive Stores" into English. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MONDAY MORNING. 
 
 DEAR H , We neither of us understand 
 
 French. Your German chap better take last 
 chapter and go on backward to meet us we 
 can t go any faster than now. I have been put 
 ting in every available hour since I began it 
 is the hardest sort of stuff we could possibly 
 undertake, half the words not in the dictionary, 
 only to be guessed at. Customs, etc., referred 
 to which I never heard of and also must guess 
 at. I have n t touched study or recitation since 
 I commenced; there was a recess last week - 
 anniversary week, and I flunked all the meetings 
 except one the Free Religion meeting. Forty 
 stories and a dozen poems would be child s play 
 to one work on Polit. Econ. for a foreigner. 
 Your German cove will have a good deal of 
 it to do, if it is to come out "immediately," 
 and I m very glad you have got him at hand. 
 
 Had I better call Statuten rules, and how in 
 the name of all the Teufels shall we translate 
 Markengeschafte ticket-method is the near 
 est I can come to it. How much shall I call a 
 franc in cents? A thaler I have computed at 
 
102 EDWAKD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 .72 taking it from this author s statement 
 that 6.66| thalers = 1 pound sterling. 
 
 Rushing this so, I have no time to correct 
 phraseology, or think of notes, but a revision 
 may be possible in proof-sheets. Please answer 
 immediately. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 P.S. We can t make it go an inch faster, and 
 there s no one here who could help. You had 
 better put the German chap hard at it, and 
 unless he s a sight faster than we, two of them. 
 
 The end of the academic year saw the end 
 of Sill s relation to the Divinity School and he 
 relinquished theology, though, as appears from 
 the next letter, not without a lingering back 
 ward look: for he was a preacher all his life 
 long. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, August, 1867. 
 SUNDAY P.M. 
 
 DEAR HENRY, I wonder how and where 
 this hot afternoon finds you. It is too hot here 
 to do anything, yet I am moved to write you a 
 sweltering word or two. 
 
 I have determined not to return to Cam 
 bridge. There could be no pulpit for me after 
 going through there, except as an independ 
 ent, self -supported minister, which of course 
 is open to any one with a purse. I came re- 
 
SETTLING DOWN 103 
 
 luctantly to that conclusion. Another person, 
 even with my opinions in theology, might have 
 judged differently. It is no sentimentalism with 
 me it is simply a solemn conviction that a 
 man must speak the truth as fast and as far as 
 he knows it truth to him. I may be in error 
 but what I believe is my sacred truth, and 
 must not be diluted. When I get money enough 
 to live on I mean to preach religion as I be 
 lieve in it. Emerson could not preach, and now 
 I understand why. 
 
 So, the alternatives. 
 
 School teaching always has stood first. No 
 decent salaries in this country. No freedom to 
 follow my own way. No position available so 
 far as I know. Hence, California. 
 
 After a quiet summer in Ohio, he returned 
 to New York, there to make trial whether it 
 was in him to earn his living by his pen. The 
 fragments preserved of his writing at this time 
 reveal his shortcomings as a journalist. He was 
 too severe in subject and manner for the New 
 York newspaper of the sixties. The story of 
 the adventure is told in a single letter. The 
 prose fragments which follow possess more than 
 a little interest as giving his view of New York, 
 and of the poems, one " Summer Afternoon " 
 - has a place in one of the slender volumes 
 collected after his death. 
 
104 EDWAKD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 BROOKLYN, N.Y., Nov., 67. 
 
 I came to New York something over two 
 months ago. Found nothing better than help 
 ing edit a one-horse paper. Did it six weeks. 
 Did n t suit, and was n t suited, and quit. 
 Am now translating a German romance [Ran s 
 "Mozart"]. ... It will take me six weeks or 
 more. . . . 
 
 What a horrid bilk New York is, speaking 
 of bilks. And the way they brag here Lord 
 John of the East you d think there was no 
 other centre, and very little if any circumfer 
 ence. Fact is, they have so little conception 
 here of the things there are to be known, that 
 they easily believe they know it all. A man 
 who never sees a tree, or a blade of grass, or a 
 bit of sky, or stops still long enough to look down 
 into another human being s eyes, of course has 
 no interrogation points awakened in him. He 
 has learned to know the streets of the city 
 which he remembers being ignorant of when he 
 came here and he has learned the cheap con 
 ventionalities which he blushed not to know, 
 once and there s nothing else to learn, is 
 there? So he knows it all, does n t he? And how 
 he swells up and swaggers on the strength of 
 it! ... I don t think a man needs any further 
 provocation to cut his throat, in simple moral 
 nausea, than to walk up Broadway, and then 
 down it on the other side, after he has got suf- 
 
SETTLING DOWN 105 
 
 ficiently used to the rattletebang to have his 
 eyes about him, so as to examine the faces, ex 
 pressions, of features, gait, gestures, etc. . . . 
 
 TIMOTHY GRASS TO BOHEMIAN GLASS 
 
 To Bohemian Glass, Esq., New York City: 
 
 DEAR COUSIN, In the midst of my rural soli 
 tudes here in the little village of Greenville, as I have 
 walked about the quiet fields, or through the au 
 tumnal woods, I have been thinking how "un 
 friended, melancholy, slow" our country life is, 
 compared with the keen and swift current of yours 
 in the great city. And for some weeks (for it takes 
 us a good while to make up our minds in the coun 
 try), I have been resolving to reach out an epistolary 
 hand to you, Cousin Glass, and ask you to write me 
 occasional letters, as you can snatch the time from 
 the whirl of your city avocations, giving me your 
 ideas upon men and books, and the incidents and 
 accidents of modern life. I say "modern life," for 
 I well know that I am behind the times. You know 
 my library. It consists of old books, for the most 
 part. The old classics, the old standard authors 
 well, I believe I should cleave to them if I knew the 
 moderns as well, but the moderns I do not know. 
 Can you not, from time to time, give me little 
 glimpses of the literature which comes and goes, 
 foam-like, on the current of the present? And will 
 you not, at the same time, tell me what is this great 
 mystery of New York life, what are its pleasures, 
 what does it give in compensation for the noise and 
 hurry, and the absence of all sweet natural sounds 
 and sights? For me, you know my pleasures; the 
 morning walks, these breezy autumn days, golden 
 alike with sunshine and the yellowing leaves; the 
 
106 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 fragrant air of the still woods, the quiet sail down 
 the winding river, with the ripples purling and 
 plashing against the prow; the evenings in the old 
 library at home, alone but seldom lonely, with my 
 books around me, and the little parlor organ 
 the gilt pipes are rather tarnished, Cousin Glass, but 
 the tones breathe purer and mellower for every 
 passing year. There I sit and read, and meditate, 
 and listen to the cheery crickets, and the Rune of 
 the river; and if sometimes a little lonesome twinge 
 comes over my back, like a sudden chill from a 
 draft of air, I pat my dog s head, and look into his 
 big, moist eyes (he looks me in the eyes like a man 
 did you ever see a dog do it?), and wonder how 
 far aloof his soul will follow mine through the grada 
 tions of the future after we die. For we re two old 
 vagabonds, Leo and I, young as we are, and good 
 for not much of anything but to lie in the sun. 
 
 Well, I write poetry now and then. Your well-in 
 formed and judicious critical papers there in the 
 city, which you have sent me, I see with grief do not 
 approve of this employment. No doubt they have 
 some good and wise reason for this opinion, but of 
 course it would be impossible for me to ask such emi 
 nent and learned writers what it is. Perhaps they, 
 like yourself, cousin Glass, have been so long in the 
 splendid and glittering life of the city with its wis 
 dom and polish and art, that they have forgotten 
 how beautiful the woods are and the gurgling brooks, 
 and the stars that dust the water s dusky bosom 
 with their fire. Perhaps they do not know how one 
 is driven, as by "a certain divine madness," to 
 hollow out in words a place for these splendors of 
 nature and set them there, carved into expression 
 with whatsoever fidelity one is capable of. 
 
 Well, Cousin Glass, I am writing too long a 
 
SETTLING DOWN 107 
 
 letter. Hoping for a speedy reply, I subscribe my 
 self your loving cousin, 
 
 TIMOTHY GRASS. 
 
 P.S. I send some verses which I wrote in the 
 summer, perhaps they will sound a little like an 
 echo now that autumn is come. 
 
 Summer Afternoon 
 
 Far in hollow mountain canons 
 
 Brood, with purple-folded pinions, 
 Flocks of drowsy distance-colors on their nests, 
 
 And the bare, round slopes, for forests 
 
 Have cloud-shadows, floating forests, 
 On their breasts. 
 
 Winds are wakening and dying, 
 
 Questions low with low replying, 
 Through the oaks a hushed and trembling whisper goes; 
 
 Faint and rich the air with odors. 
 
 Hyacinth and spicy odors 
 Of the rose. 
 
 Even the flowerless acacia 
 
 Is one flower, such slender stature, 
 With its latticed leaves a- tremble in the sun: 
 
 They have shower-drops for blossoms. 
 
 Quivering globes of diamond blossoms, 
 Every one. 
 
 In the blue of heaven holy 
 
 Clouds ^floating, floating slowly, 
 Pure in snowy robes and sunny silver crown, 
 
 And they look like gentle angels 
 
 Leisure-full and loitering angels, 
 Looking down. 
 
 Half the birds are wild with singing, 
 And the rest with rhythmic winging 
 Sing in melody of motion to the sight; 
 
108 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Every little sparrow twitters, 
 Cheerily chirps, and cheeps, and twitters 
 His delight. 
 
 Sad at heart amid the splendor, 
 
 Dull to all the radiance tender, 
 What can I for such a world give back again? 
 
 Could I only hint the beauty 
 
 Some least shadow of the beauty 
 Unto men! 
 
 TO MR. TIMOTHY GRASS, GREENVILLE 
 
 DEAR COUSIN TIMOTHY, Got yours glad to 
 hear from you will be pleased to correspond. We 
 city folks need little whiffs of the woods and mea 
 dows now and then, to keep our hearts in the right 
 place. Must n t expect much from me in the way 
 of letters have to write in a hurry, you know. 
 
 You seem to think we re awfully wise, here in 
 New York. Well, our life here is a good deal like 
 railroad travelling whizz bang whirling by 
 all sorts of things at a great rate, as if t were for 
 dear life. We on the inside poke our heads out of 
 the windows, and look very wise you d think 
 we knew all about it but we don t, Cousin 
 Timothy we don t. People out in the fields 
 alongside half the time know a good deal more 
 about it than we do but we look as if we did, and 
 a good many times we think we do; so it comes to 
 the same thing, in most people s estimation. 
 
 We re not all so good here as you seem to think, 
 either. It s a streak of fat and a streak of lean. 
 Great many fine men here great many good 
 books written here eloquent preachers able 
 lecturers, and all that but some of us are great 
 scamps, Cousin Timothy great scamps. Yet, 
 hosts of good men here, too young brains, and 
 
SETTLING DOWN 109 
 
 old ones, that are clear as a bell not to be taken 
 in by lies in opinion or lies in practice true hearts 
 that are brave as lions splendid fellows putter 
 ing over dry day s-works you would n t know 
 them till some pinch comes then you find them 
 always in the right place. It s a little like needles 
 in a haymow, to find them no more like hunt 
 ing the needles with a mighty magnet every man 
 with a magnet in his spinal column somewhere, 
 that draws his like out of the crowd and fastens 
 them to him. Here are a thousand faces, all 
 strangers all busy suddenly you find you 
 know every one you want to among them. Un 
 consciously the magnets were at work out come 
 your kith and kin. 
 
 We are terribly busy here blood thermometers 
 are kept up to the boiling point pulses tick fast, 
 like little trip-hammers. No meditation no 
 musings. All is business, business, business. My 
 brother, Blone Glass, who has tastes, says: " Tis 
 all very well; but this doing business is such a waste 
 of time!" T is a good deal so, I admit. Men here 
 are mainly bent on getting something for them 
 selves money houses position well, peo 
 ple generally are bent on that. Human nature is 
 mostly selfish, Cousin Timothy i.e., out of our 
 family. Still their toil and trouble goes for the most 
 part to somebody else, after all. We are all better 
 off for their shrewdness and energy. They "build 
 better than they know." That s Emerson you 
 know him? Too modern for you, I suppose. That 
 is nothing turn him upside down, and imagine 
 tis a mouldy Brahmin, discoursing in the Punjab 
 fifty thousand years ago, and you can t help liking 
 him. I know you cling to your old-fashioned bards. 
 But Emerson is worth the whole nursery of them. 
 
110 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 He is a perfect old telegraph line from the Infinite 
 to this world. People don t like him because he is 
 condensed and oracular, like all telegrams. They 
 won t take the trouble to understand the message 
 
 prefer to get its substance, diluted, in the morn 
 ing papers. You want to know about modern 
 writers get Emerson and read him. Take his 
 poems first. You 11 forgive his style easier as apolo 
 gized for by the music and the rhythm. 
 
 Speaking of poetry yours was very good 
 only Blone says that "Acacia does n t rhyme with 
 stature, and never will!" And, Cousin Timothy! 
 Don t write a thing in verse till you see it, sharp and 
 clear before your mind s eye as a flash of lightning 
 on a black sky. Xo danger but that you will feel 
 truly enough. Mind you see truly, first. Good eye 
 sight that s what the world wants. 
 
 That s what we get in the city, too. If a man s 
 eyes are not open, he gets run over every time he 
 crosses the street. And that s the way the purblind 
 fellows are disposed of run over, Cousin Timothy 
 
 by sharper competitors, or by the press, or by the 
 march of ideas, or some other driving institution. 
 And we that survive get our wits sharpened at last. 
 
 What we want from writers is new truths, truly 
 put. If you have got one, in politics, in religion, in 
 art, in philosophy, or in patent medicines you 
 are our man. 
 
 I, too, send some lines. They re not dignified. 
 "We can t spend time to be dignified, in New York. 
 You may not like the subject. Violets don t spring 
 up and fade on Broadway, Cousin Timothy, but 
 wall-eyed old steeds do. 
 
 Good-bye, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 BOHEMIAN GLASS. 
 
SETTLING DOWN 
 
 The Song of the Horse 
 
 A poor old stage-horse, lank and thin, 
 ,- Not much else but bones and skin, 
 I jog along, week out, week in, 
 Kicked, and cursed, and meanly fed, 
 Jammed in the side and jerked by the head 
 And the thing I can t at all make out 
 Is, what on earth it s all about? 
 
 Why was I made to toil and tug 
 For this odd little human bug, 
 Two-legged, dumpy as a jug, 
 Who sits aloft, my ribs to batter 
 Or why was he made, for that matter? 
 And, if I needs must be created, 
 Why is it that I was not fated 
 To prance and curvet, finely mated, 
 Silver-harnessed, sleek and fat, 
 With groom and blanket, and all that? 
 
 Here I go, day after day, 
 Pounding and slipping down Broadway, 
 Dragging these curious biped things, 
 With fore-legs gone, and yet no wings 
 Where they all go to / don t know, 
 Nor why hi the world they hurry so, 
 Nor what good use Heaven puts them to ! 
 
 It was n t my fault, you see, at all, 
 That my joints grew big, and my muscles small, 
 And so I missed of a rich man s stall, 
 I m clumsy, crooked, stupid, slow, 
 Yet the meanest horse is a horse, you know, 
 And his ribs can ache with the kick or blow, 
 As well as the glossiest nags that go. ^ 
 O Lord, how long will they use me so? 
 And when may the equine spirit go 
 Where glorified horses stand in a row, 
 Switching their bright tails to and fro, 
 
112 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Careless of either wheel or whoa 
 Where oats are always a propos, 
 And flies don t grow! 
 Oh, no! 
 O! 
 
 BOHEMIAN GLASS AS AN EDITOR 
 A Lamentation 
 
 To Mr. Timothy Grass: 
 
 DEAR COUSIN TIMOTHY, T is pleasant to im 
 agine you there in your quiet library these chilly fall 
 evenings, putting up your slippered feet in a chair 
 before the fireplace, pulling down some "quaint 
 and curious volume of forgotten lore," and having 
 a good old drowsy, comfortable time of it. It makes 
 "literature" seem a very nice thing to you, of 
 course. Oh, you leisurely, unmolested fellows! 
 What good, nonsensical, useless, blessed hours you 
 can spend over books ! 
 
 You Ve no idea how sick we get of literature here. 
 You ve no idea what cartloads of stupid, wooden, 
 flat, seasick stuff is written and printed here, day 
 after day and year after year you ve no idea, 
 and if you had, it would make you weep and howl. 
 The periodical literature you escape most of it 
 out there, where, in a measure, remoteness acts as 
 a kind of strainer, and gives you only the finer and 
 more enduring writings. You, who have a sort of 
 veneration for a writer, as if he were in some way a 
 second cousin of Shakespeare and Plato you 
 should see the stuff which a person on a daily paper 
 is obliged to see, in exchanges, periodicals, new 
 publications, and so on. You should know what 
 helpless donkeys some "writers" are. From 
 "Godey s Lady s Book" (which Blone calls the 
 "Great Female Mind Enfeebler") up to the last 
 
SETTLING DOWN 113 
 
 new treatise on the "Inscrutable Periodicity of 
 Perihelions." 
 
 Then, too, you who adore the fine arts so much, 
 should see the pictures in the police papers, which 
 are posted up proudly at all the news stands, and 
 surrounded by crowds of rapt and ravished gazers. 
 The most filthy, brutal, beastly, abominable wood 
 cuts and the bloated and leering fool-faces gloat 
 ing over them, from one end of Broadway to the 
 other! 
 
 Ah! Cousin Timothy. "And God saw every 
 thing that He had made, and behold, it was very 
 good." But that was ages ago ages before 
 Babylon was builded. It was all garden, then, and 
 there was neither emigration, rum, nor fashionable 
 religion. 
 
 A writer on a paper has other crosses, too, be 
 sides a compulsory acquaintance with current litera 
 ture. He has his unpleasantnesses, "late" and early. 
 For instance, I noticed a man s book in the paper. 
 I did n t say it was nice. It was n t nice. He met 
 me on Broadway. With a furious glare he roared, 
 "Sir, you re an ass!" I replied, with a placid smile, 
 "Sir, what of it? " He went away. 
 
 I did n t deny his charge. Relatively speaking, 
 perhaps, there was some truth in it. The fact is we 
 are all a little tinged with a gentle asinine element. 
 There s a certain amount of dulness, obstinacy, 
 wrong-headedness, about all of us, if you get us in 
 just the right light to show it. 
 
 Strange what a natural and instinctive desire 
 there is in the human breast to call somebody else 
 an ass ! We come up against somebody s particular 
 point of stupidity or perversity (or what seems so to 
 our plans), and the soul is absolutely refreshed and 
 exhilarated by expressing our feeling towards a 
 
114 T EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 fellow-being in that Saxon epithet. How my heart 
 bleeds for a man when I see him wrought up to ex 
 actly that pitch of emotion, but restrained and 
 muzzled from satisfying his inward yearning by 
 some conventional idea of dignity or politeness. 
 
 T is getting cold nights and mornings here in 
 New York. The poor children that one sees, with 
 their bare legs and their naked feet on the pave 
 ment, begin to strike one with a shivery sensa 
 tion. 
 
 The placards in the drug-shop windows adver 
 tising "ice-cold soda-water" are getting to have a 
 dreary aspect, as one glances at them of a drizzly 
 cold morning. But winter is n t winter in New York, 
 you know. It is philharmonics, and brilliant gather 
 ings, and opera marrying and giving in marriage. 
 Winter is no winter here for the rich, Cousin Timo 
 thy; for the poor, O t is horrible! Freezing and star 
 vation, fiery rum, when no longer food is possible, 
 hunger and cold goading men to robbery and 
 murder, and women to despair and worse. God 
 pity the city poor in winter, men will not. 
 
 I enclose my usual splash of verses. 
 
 In haste, yours truly, 
 
 BOHEMIAN GLASS. 
 
 The News Girl 
 
 A tiny, blue-eyed, Elfin lass 
 Meets me upon the street I pass, 
 
 In going to the ferry; 
 Barefooted, scantly clothed, and thin, 
 With little weazen cheeks and chin, 
 
 Yet always chirk and merry: 
 
 Ever merry, however pale, 
 I always hear her, as I draw near her 
 
 " Ere s THE MAIL, sir ! MAIL? MAIL?" 
 
SETTLING DOWN 115 
 
 With that same piping little tune, 
 She waits there every afternoon, 
 
 Selling her bunch of papers; 
 She scarcely looks aside to see 
 What s passing by, of grief or glee 
 
 No childish tricks or capers; 
 
 Her pattering bare feet never fail 
 To run and meet me, and chirping greet me, 
 
 " Ere s THE MAIL, sir! MAIL? MAIL?" 
 
 Her dingy frock is scant and torn, 
 Her old, old face looks wan and worn, 
 
 Yet always sweet and sunny; 
 Week in, week out, she is the same 
 I asked her once what was her name, 
 
 And, jingling all her money, 
 
 Holding a paper up for sale, 
 The little midget answered, "Bridget! 
 
 Want THE MAIL, sir? MAIL? MAIL?" 
 
 I wonder where she goes at night, 
 
 And in what nook the poor young sprite 
 
 Finds room for rest and sleeping; 
 I wonder if her little bones 
 Go home to blows and cuffs, and tones 
 
 That roughly set her weeping 
 
 When, rainy days, the pennies fail 
 And few were buying, for all her crying 
 
 " Ere s THE MAIL, sir! MAIL? MAIL?" 
 
 O rich and happy people! you 
 
 Whose ways are smooth, and woes are few, 
 
 Whose life brims o er with blisses, 
 Pity the little patient face, 
 That never knows the tender grace 
 
 Of kind caress or kisses, 
 
 For you, the blessings never fail; 
 For her t is only to wait there lonely 
 
 And cry: "THE MAIL, sir? MAIL? MAIL?" 
 
116 EDWARD; ROWLAND SILL 
 
 At this last winding of the road as it enters 
 upon the long straight stretch, it is interesting 
 to see how the bends and turns of the course 
 looked to Sill in retrospect. In writing to one 
 of his own students at the University of Cali 
 fornia years later, he said : 
 
 "You are getting on toward the close of the 
 Second Act the college days : and no doubt 
 the management of the Third Act begins to 
 occupy your mind a good deal and perhaps 
 to vex it a little. What to do with one s life 
 gets to be a large question toward the close of 
 the senior year. In my own, I was saved a part 
 of the question, for my health was frail and 
 threatened me a little, so that the immediate 
 duty was plain enough to cut and run; which 
 I did, on a long sea voyage; it was a toss-up 
 which way it should be, among all the oceans 
 and continents, but it happened to be to Cali 
 fornia. I had pretty much determined that I 
 would try to get a better aim than the com 
 mon ones. I could not hide that some had 
 striven, 9 at least, whatever they had attained/ 
 Egoism, pure and simple, had somehow al 
 ways struck me theoretically as mighty 
 paltry for a grown-up man; a kind of perma 
 nent cMcZ-condition. And I cast about for 
 some way of combining service with bread and 
 butter. The ministry, or teaching, I finally 
 settled it must be for me. It was a little nar- 
 
SETTLING DOWN 117 
 
 row ... to confine the choice to those two. 
 I can see now that there are lots of ways to 
 serve more even than ways to get bread 
 and butter. . . . 
 
 "I ... took a saddle-horse, rode about the 
 country and hunted up a locality I liked the 
 looks of, with a clean little school-house and 
 wholesome-looking farm people about it, and 
 taught that country school. I found there was 
 no difficulty in doing it, after a fashion, at 
 least; so I kept on. ... 
 
 "One thing is clear: a year or two of teach 
 ing is good honest work for any one an ad 
 vantage to others, and to self (for others in the 
 future), as well. But if you knew you should 
 then go into medicine, I think I should not 
 wait, but go into it at once. You may think 
 medicine ministers only to the body but, 
 1, the body is a necessary condition of higher 
 things, and 2, a good physician finds himself 
 in one of the most influential positions in the 
 community, for good. Nor need his work be 
 confined to his lancet and pill-boxes (though 
 there s a nobleness about those, when you 
 think of the relations of mind and body), but 
 there is an endless range of studies, and per 
 haps of writing, possible to such a profession. 
 "One thing we must try to realize. Our in 
 dividual drop of force is only one in a great sea. 
 Perhaps, even if we saw just what particular 
 
118 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 piece of work the world most needed, we should 
 not be the man for it. I see a number of things 
 that need tremendously to be done; but I can t 
 do them. I was n t properly endowed, or I 
 had n t, and could n t have got, the training 
 for it. Meantime I do what my hand finds to 
 do and try not to fret .... Anyway, the 
 thing is, not to spoil too much time and brains 
 trying to be sure of the absolutely best work 
 but to use all reasonable effort to see, and then 
 even if in vexatious doubt to strike into 
 the most probably sensible course, and work 
 like a locomotive. One can at least fix his 
 course for a year ahead and agree with his 
 conscience to let him alone to work at that for 
 the year. And so year by year, if no other way 
 is possible to one s temperament, one can get 
 through a fine stent of work in a lifetime." 
 
 The summer he spent as usual in Ohio and 
 succeeded in settling matters with himself. If 
 Literature would n t give him a living Teach 
 ing must. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, June, 1868. 
 
 When a man is actually living, he and Na 
 ture laying their heads together, and things 
 occupying whole days, all this use of symbols of 
 things words becomes a sort of mouldy 
 amusement, and my portfolio goes to sleep 
 when I get into real outdoor life. I never got 
 so near to Nature as this year that is, to 
 
SETTLING DOWN 119 
 
 homely Nature not, the sublime. I mean 
 to the good old mother Nature of gardens and 
 ploughed fields and river and tame wood 
 the mistress sort of Nature I have had more to 
 do with at some past times. 
 
 So I have not written any poetry lately, 
 but have had some real satisfactory thinks and 
 good useful times. What fun it is to see one s 
 muscles swelling up a little from pushing a 
 plane and handling spade and hoe, and to feel 
 one s backbone stiffening up as by deposits of 
 grit along the vertebrae. And what a whole 
 some thing it is to plant one s foundation on 
 the ground under an apple tree, and soberly 
 think while digging up the sod with a dull 
 jackknife how life is a pretty fair genial 
 thing after all, and how happiness evidently 
 is n t the only thing the gods consider good for 
 man; and how thoroughly it pays to try to 
 keep healthy like the apple trees and the 
 beasties and the winds and soil and kick 
 pleasures to the Devil, and be sturdy and real. 
 
 Of course, one gets peevish and sentimental 
 and sour and all other bad traits on him at 
 times afterward, but he can look back for 
 weeks to one thorough-going sensible forenoon, 
 and bolster himself thereby. . . . 
 
 It is a thousand pities that such fellows 
 as you and I should n t be able to earn a decent 
 living at some employment which wouldn t 
 
120 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 grind dreadfully. But what the Lord wants us 
 to learn, I begin to suspect, is to grind and 
 that in the dreadfullest manner. . . . 
 
 The fact is, we [ought to have learned some 
 one practical disagreeable trade not pro 
 fession, for it is better to be honest (the laws 
 of the universe being as they are) . . . and we 
 ought to have pitched into it as other people 
 do but this fair witch of poetry trips a 
 man up. 
 
 You say you ve got a dead book so have 
 I. Jolly, ain t it? I m content over mine, 
 though, and was long ago. If my shoemaking 
 does n t suit, the shoes must lie on the shelf 
 till I learn the trade better that s all. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO, Aug. 15, 1868. 
 ... I have made my mind up (and my 
 spinal column, too, I trust stiff and solid) 
 to earn my b. and b. so far as possible by work 
 that shall for other reasons, as well, seem useful. 
 That s the reason I prefer to teach rather than 
 go into business or law, etc. I wish you New 
 Haven fellows would collar every graduating 
 man and make him see that thing that the 
 mere fact of a certain occupation s being the 
 means of sustenance, is no honest claim for its 
 adoption or continuance. I believe every baby 
 that s born can make the longer or shorter 
 transition from cradle to coffin, decently, hon- 
 
SETTLING DOWN 121 
 
 estly, and comfortably (relatively speaking), 
 by letting their hands find to do only such 
 things as are intrinsically good and useful. 
 Probably three-quarters of them (the graduates) 
 ought to learn a trade or work a farm. I wish 
 I could annually take nine-tenths of the law 
 candidates and stake them out ("picket" them) 
 in a ten-acre lot with a few bags of seed, a hoe, 
 and the Bible there to be left for life. 
 
 I sympathize with your longing at times for 
 an ascetic bout with the devil that is in us. 
 But we both know (appealing to Philip sober) 
 that seven devils would come to the funeral 
 of the one smashed one, if we tried it ever so 
 thoroughly. So don t let s do it. And so far 
 from running away from each other (a part of 
 asceticism), let s run into each other all we 
 can. . . . 
 
 With the fall he got fairly to work at his 
 teaching : 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Nov. 8, 1868. 
 ... I shan t think of the poem till next 
 spring, for that is the time when birds pair 
 and sing, and poets prepare and ditto. Man 
 undergoes a shrinkage and goosefleshiness of 
 soul during the fall and winter, and only in 
 spring is the rock smitten. Don t you find that 
 the inner man takes that occasion to flap its 
 
122 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 wings, and mount all the highest rail-fences of 
 the moral world, and do up a year s crowing? 
 You mention a "librarian" idea. That 
 would have many temptations for me. Often 
 I think I am better fitted to deal with books 
 than with men. Perhaps I should do well to 
 fit myself, as you say, and try for a position. 
 Yet I have got the school-iron in the fire now, 
 and must wait till t is thoroughly tried. My 
 school is only a country school, and I suppose, 
 to answer your question as you meant it, we 
 are to only " exist " there, for a while. We are 
 to board in the village, however, and shall 
 have some little society. Wadsworth is the 
 place, and Medina County is the County. 
 Near here . . . 
 
 Then there fell a blow from which Sill did 
 not recover for many a year the illness and 
 death of his alter ego, Shearer, forecasted in 
 the letter from Palmer to which Sill refers: - 
 
 WADSWORTH, OHIO, Feb. 7, 1869. 
 DEAR H - , I enclose a letter from 
 California which will tell you its sad news 
 better than I can. Palmer is one of my and 
 Sex s first and best friends there. Lives at 
 Oakland. Do not let any one know about it 
 who will be in danger of writing dolorously to 
 Sex, or letting him know what we hear from 
 
SETTLING DOWN 123 
 
 friends there. You will see to that, though, a 
 little thing might save or kill him now. We 
 must all write jolly letters and often. I should 
 go out to him at once if I had means, for it 
 almost seems as if a companion, the right one, 
 might save him, for he is still able to ride and 
 be diverted. There is no one there who will 
 take him and do what ought to be done. I be 
 lieve it could be done. It is the mind that has 
 been killing him, not the climate. 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 There was evidently a plan for Sill to go 
 out to California and look after Shearer: in 
 fact Sill all but suggested it in the last letter, 
 but it was plainly enough not practicable. 
 Between the lines one reads the fine loyal com 
 radeship that united this group of college 
 friends: 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Feb. fcl, 1869. 
 
 DEAR H , Your three letters, two to 
 
 Cuyahoga Falls and one to Wadsworth, were 
 received. ... As it is there is nothing for it 
 but to renounce. Perhaps I could not do much 
 if I were there, but it seems as though it might 
 be won yet. [It is easy enough for a man to 
 look death in the face for himself, but for an 
 other, and such a one, it s awful to me. And 
 
124 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 the idea of a few thousand miles seems nothing 
 and paltry for such a stake, only, can it be 
 done? And if the answer is no, what help for 
 it? A man may curse or groan according to 
 his temperament neither wisely, I presume. 
 So I shall not go, but shall go about my own 
 business just as if all were well. And the out 
 look is that I shall not very long survive him, 
 only the difference is he would have done 
 something and I never should have. I am 
 pretty much played out with debating this 
 thing. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 The teaching succeeded: he is now in charge 
 of the town schools, and can re-read old books ! 
 
 CUYAHOGA FAIJ.S, OHIO, Aug. 29, 69. 
 
 I have been meaning to write to you to 
 morrow for ever so long. I have been very busy 
 and bothered or t would have got done. I am 
 just settled in winter quarters. We have 
 moved to our new boarding-place, rooms at the 
 hotel, and this is the first day I have really 
 been at home since I saw you. 
 
 I am going to stay here and take the High 
 School, superintending the other schools; and 
 I have been bustling about getting ready for 
 my work. It will be a pretty hard place, but 
 
SETTLING DOWN 125 
 
 what of that? As Sex always used to write 
 me about his own unpleasantnesses, "Quid re- 
 fert, Caio?" We have got two very nice little 
 rooms, southside with sunshine to order, trees 
 contiguous, quiet, and fixed up very pleas 
 antly. . . . 
 
 I have, several times over, been into "Won 
 derland" with Miss Alice. We have found it, 
 as you said, the very delightfullest book that 
 ever was. He that did it is a genius and a won 
 der himself. The Cheshire Cat, and the Fla 
 mingo neck that would n t do for croquet mal 
 let, the March Hare, and the way the animals 
 snubbed and contradicted and confused Alice 
 - 1 never read anything that pleased me so 
 much. I think the Mad Tea-Party is the best 
 chapter and for single incidents I believe I 
 award the palm to the Cheshire Cat coming 
 back to ask if she said Pig or Fig, and consent 
 ing readily to vanish by degrees, leaving the 
 grin to the last! The March Hare is the gem 
 of the pictures, too, with the King Lear touch 
 about his strawy head, and the glare of his 
 eye as he crowds the miserable dormouse into 
 the teapot. Oh, what a mad book it is! ... 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Sept., 1869. 
 I have commenced my school, been run 
 ning a week. "Central High School." 120 
 scholars: 2 lady assistants. Latin, Greek, 
 
126 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 astronomy, music, philosophy, physical geog 
 raphy, chemistry, etc., tapering down to 
 infantry, under the assistants fresh from the 
 swaddling clothes of the intermediate and 
 primary schools. I am "superintendent of 
 schools," so my cares are many, as there are 
 four primaries besides my own big school. 
 So that s "what I am going to do next.". . . 
 
 If , or any other very near-sighted 
 
 scum-skimmer, gives me any dabs that are 
 good for anything to me, send me a copy, 
 please. But otherwise, abuse is a mere nurse 
 of unprofitable egotism. I don t mean to care 
 whether any one thinks I can write well or ill, 
 so long as I can teach a good school. . . . 
 
 I am very busy, as I said. Plenty of time to 
 have thoughts of my friends, as you know in your 
 own case. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Nov. 7, 69. 
 ... I am tugging away at my school, and 
 think I did well enough in staying here; though 
 the work is almost too much for me. I can see 
 enough, every day, for about three like me to 
 do. Very likely a larger pattern than me might 
 get through the whole of it, but I have to leave 
 lots of things undone. I will enclose one of our 
 blank reports, to show you how we have to be 
 school and college in one; for but few of our 
 120 scholars can be got into college, ever, and 
 
SETTLING DOWN 127 
 
 so must be fed all their little stomachs can 
 possibly digest, here and now. 
 
 In one sense a man is an empty windbag 
 who pretends to teach all manner of things 
 without any thorough or even decent prepara 
 tion; yet it is better, is n t it? that they should 
 get some little inkling of how much there is to 
 be learned, than turned off on a light lunch of 
 arithmetic and orthography. 
 
 Winter has come, and I don t scruple to 
 shake my puny fist in his hoary face and call 
 him bad names. My voice is still for spring. . . . 
 
 The grumbling of these months is of a 
 healthy tone that of a man who has so much 
 to do that the time fails him. 
 
 Dec., 69. 
 
 More to do every day and night than I can 
 find minutes and spinal column for. Com 
 fortably off enough except for a thousand sub 
 jects to investigate and questions to be settled 
 and no hour for them. I am forced to be 
 occupied with details . . . yet chafed at the 
 unsettled state of these confounded general 
 principles. 
 
 . . . Well, I suppose t is a good deal illu 
 sion, these fine ideas of what we d do if some 
 thing was n t just as it is. Blessed is he that 
 wants things to be as he has em. But where 
 is the man? 
 
128 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 The work in Ohio was absorbing, but hardly 
 satisfying. Soon there came a call from Cali 
 fornia from the high school at Oakland 
 where Sill had left warm friends from his earlier 
 visit: 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO, 
 Jan. 23, 1870. 
 
 DEAR CHIEF, I am very glad to have you 
 writing to me again about the Oakland matter, 
 chiefly because it continues to let me know that 
 you would like to have me come back there 
 among you. I am queer, I m afraid, about my 
 way of looking (or not looking) at future plans. 
 Whether it springs most from faith, or a Mus 
 sulman sort of "fatality" despair of individual 
 planning and trying, I let the future alone more 
 than most seem to : perhaps too much. Except 
 as it affects the convenience of others who may 
 hinge more or less on our edges, I don t see 
 much advantage in taking thought far ahead, 
 especially as to details. 
 
 I would like to have a window opened 
 through which I might get a draft of fresh com 
 munion with the lives of you folks there. . . . 
 Strange that on such a great planet, alive with 
 us, our thoughts and loves and sympathies 
 should just cluster a half-dozen here and a 
 half-dozen there, and count all the "world," so 
 far as we care, on our fingers. 
 
SETTLING DOWN 129 
 
 I suppose we are reading the same tele 
 graphic news, every day, and hearing the same 
 topics talked, and the wives are playing the 
 identical pieces on the pretty-much-identical 
 pianos (only ours is out of tune at present) and 
 so on. ... 
 
 With the return of summer and its compara 
 tive leisure, we find our poet again communing 
 with himself: 
 
 June, 1870. 
 
 Once in a while there seems to come a sort 
 of eddy in the rush of my thoughts about my 
 school, which leaves me to think of things in 
 general, the future, etc. Such an one appears to 
 have come this Sunday morning, perhaps in 
 compensation for a night full of feverish dreams 
 about classes and plans for scholars. And my 
 eyes turn, first thing, of course, out your way; 
 and the question is, can I manage it to come 
 there? . . . 
 
 I wish, if you get time to write me "so large 
 a letter with your own hand "as I hope, you 
 would put in a word or two on your religious 
 status nowadays. We have both been thinking, 
 reading, etc., since a word has been said. For 
 my part I long to "fall in" with somebody. 
 This picket duty is monotonous. I hanker after 
 a shoulder on this side and the other. I can t 
 agree in belief (or expressed belief Lord 
 
130 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 knows what the villains really think, at home) 
 with the " Christian " people, nor in spirit with 
 the Radicals, etc. ... Many, here and there, 
 must be living the right way, doing their best, 
 hearty souls, and I d like to go round the world 
 for the next year and take tea with them in 
 succession. Would n t you? 
 
 This chapter, in which Sill finds himself and 
 actually takes up his livelihood, may be very 
 appropriately closed with a fragment wherein 
 he chews the cud of bitter and sweet reflection 
 and comes to a wholly false conclusion : 
 
 Dec., 1870. 
 
 If I were to commence any prose, for sample, 
 I believe I would take up and recount the things 
 that befell a man who had been so unfortunate 
 as to inspire his friends, early in life, with great 
 expectations of him. What woes it caused him 
 and them, when they repeatedly touched him 
 off as a rocket, and he infallibly came down like 
 a stick. I suppose that if taken young and 
 trained right I might have made a writer; but 
 the training has certainly been wanting. I have 
 got myself, by dint of nearly killing labor, into 
 the shape of an almost tolerable schoolmaster, 
 but higher than that I never shall get, till the 
 resurrection. 
 
VI 
 
 TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 
 
 i -S -. 
 
 THE second sojourn in California, covering 
 the twelve years from 1871 to 1883, formed the 
 largest block in the structure of Sill s life. The 
 invitation foreshadowed in the letter from Mr. 
 Palmer came, and was accepted, and in 1871 
 Sill began his work as teacher of English in the 
 high school at Oakland, across the bay from 
 San Francisco. There he taught until 1874, 
 when he accepted the chair of English in the 
 University of California at Berkeley, a neigh 
 boring suburb of San Francisco. 
 
 Sill was chosen Professor of English at the 
 young university then being set on its feet 
 by Daniel C. Oilman, who was drawn away not 
 long thereafter to organize Johns Hopkins, 
 and so had the rare distinction of laying the 
 foundations of two American universities 
 both of which have already grown great. The 
 acquaintance between Sill and Oilman grew 
 into a friendship which lasted until Sill s un 
 timely death. 
 
 The three years at Oakland were crowded 
 with work the absorbing, consuming work 
 which teaching becomes to the enthusiast like 
 
132 EDWAED ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Sill. So he wrote little poetry and few letters, 
 and these chiefly about problems connected 
 with his teaching. Such is one to his classmate 
 Williams at New Haven: 
 
 OAKLAND, CAL., Oct. 18, 1871. 
 
 Is there any tendency shown in Yale to 
 lessen the amount of Greek required for ad 
 mission, or any talk of teaching that language, 
 in connection with comparative philology (or 
 some hints at it) by lectures to juniors and 
 seniors? 
 
 There is a growing idea out here that such 
 a change should be made. I don t like to leave 
 off my Greek (I have learned it, since leaving 
 college, and taught it), but I ve a suspicion 
 that the reformers are right in claiming that 
 more might be done at it by the right sort of 
 lectures than by the excessive cramming of the 
 raw material of Greek culture as at present. 
 
 I think the university here would change, if 
 it got any aid and comfort from the Eastern 
 sisters. Will it get it? If not, I must make our 
 high school more Greekish, in the teeth of its 
 principal and public opinion. Latin they take 
 pretty easily, but are restive under Bouheva 
 or Avw ("Woman s Greek, without the ac 
 cents"). 
 
 The question is, would n t it have been bet 
 ter for you and me to have had German and 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 133 
 
 French before College, than lectures on Greek 
 culture, etc., with general language, during 
 college? . . . 
 
 The return to California meant a renewal 
 of old friendships and a revival of his old love 
 for that marvellous country which counts him 
 among its prophets. Glimpses of it run through 
 his poems, early and late. He had sung it in 
 his poem, always a favorite with Californians, 
 "Man the Spirit," written in 1865: - 
 
 "In this fair land, whose fields lie robed in bloom, 
 A living poem bound in blue and gold; 
 With azure flowers like little specks of sky 
 Fallen, tangled in the dew-drops, to the grass, 
 And orange ones as if the wealth below 
 Had blossomed up in beaten flakes of gold." 
 
 And again in "The Hermitage": 
 
 "The land where summers never cease 
 Their sunny psalm of light and peace; 
 Whose moonlight, poured for years untold, 
 Has drifted down in dust of gold : 
 Whose morning splendors, fallen in showers, 
 Leave ceaseless sunrise in the flowers." 
 
 Oakland, where now he went to live, and 
 the bay drew his tribute again and again: 
 
 "Beyond, long curves of little shallow waves 
 Creep, tremulous with ripples, to the shore 
 Till the whole bay seems slowly sliding in, 
 With edge of snow that melts against the sand." 
 
 The almost constant bloom and incredible 
 
134 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 profusion of flowers stirred his fancy. In "April 
 in Oakland" he writes: - 
 
 "Was there last night a snow-storm 
 So thick the orchards stand 
 With drift on drift of blossom-flakes 
 Whitening all the land." 
 
 And in "The Hermitage": - 
 
 "An April, fairer than the Atlantic June, 
 Whose calendar of perfect days was kept 
 By daily blossoming of some new flower." 
 
 An impression naturally deepened by a re 
 turn to Eastern winter : - 
 
 "Ah, give me back the clime I know, 
 Where all the year geraniums blow, 
 And hyacinth buds bloom white for snow." 
 
 Sill s three years at Oakland in the high 
 school were years of intense toil a sort of 
 sacrificial service as if he would spend himself 
 upon this task of teaching leaving no sinew 
 unstrained. 
 
 His reward was as much in the moral as in 
 the intellectual quickening he communicated 
 to his students. One of his students, Miss 
 Millicent Shinn, has left a record of the effect 
 of his teaching; and that this was no isolated 
 case, the outpouring of similar testimony at 
 the Memorial Meeting in 1887 abundantly 
 showed : - 
 
 "It was as if he had carried into the school 
 room the same ideals that would have taken 
 
EDWARD R. SILL, 1872 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 135 
 
 him into the pulpit. He was full of it, at 
 every turn in the day s work he referred every 
 thing to ideal standards, duty, and eternity, 
 and man s chief end. It was like having a very 
 religious person teaching children, except that 
 having no stable religious creed, he gave to all 
 he said of ideal aims the spontaneity and ardor 
 of original feelings, experiences wrought out 
 on his own lines. A negligent lesson was apt 
 to be rebuked with reminders (evidently fully 
 felt) that we were forming our characters, and 
 perhaps for more than this life: You are work 
 ing out your eternal destinies now, he would 
 say. He filled the schoolroom with the ardor 
 and poetic elevation of the idea of Duty as in 
 Wordsworth s ode, and his rigid applica 
 tions of it made it no mere poetry to us, 
 either, but a stern daughter of the Voice of 
 God, too. 
 
 "He was fond of bringing any great idea, all 
 his own chief topics of spiritual meditation, to 
 the schoolroom. The object of human exist 
 ence, the summum bonum, the chief end of 
 man, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, 
 the service of humanity, the ideals of mediaBval 
 chivalry, of Hale s Ten Times One, were every 
 day subjects to us." 
 
 From Miss Shinn also I have these jottings 
 on Sill s personal relations with his students: 
 "He was in the habit of having little talks with 
 
136 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 pupils, at recess, or at odd minutes in school; 
 and often asked them to come to his house for 
 this or that, to get a book, try a piece of 
 music with Mrs. Sill, etc.; and most of them 
 thought, when they found a new flower or bug, 
 or a striking passage in a book, that they must 
 needs take it to show him. He concerned him 
 self about our outside affairs, music-lessons, 
 eye-strain, etc. Yet he was not the sort of 
 teacher who goes out and plays with the boys, 
 helps in the organization of clubs, etc. He al 
 ways, with all his easy freedom of manner, 
 kept a distance, and an authority. He en 
 couraged us to talk freely, to argue back and 
 criticise, and would take more of that than any 
 teacher I ever knew; but he drew strict lines, 
 and never permitted an impertinence, never 
 laughed with the boys good-naturedly in a joke 
 against himself (which, indeed, they scarcely 
 ventured upon) ; and in any real case of discip 
 line, his voice was always for severity. He was 
 not ordinarily sarcastic in the schoolroom; but 
 either pert smartness or deliberate neglect of 
 a duty would bring a crushing contempt into 
 his manner and speech sometimes, more his 
 manner than his speech, for I do not recall 
 especially sharp things that he said. He would 
 not sit and labor through an ill-learned lesson; 
 he would throw down the book contemptuously 
 and refuse to hear it. He explained much less 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 137 
 
 than teachers I see nowadays, and expected us 
 to dig out most of our difficulties for ourselves. 
 For dishonesty he had no mercy, but that was 
 practically unknown in the school in his day." 
 
 "Once," Miss Shinn adds, "he and Mrs. Sill 
 took me with them to hear Booth and McCul- 
 lough in Lear - -my first play: and after it 
 was over Mr. Sill asked me if I wanted to cry 
 anywhere: I said I did very much when Lear 
 recognized Cordelia. He said, That was the 
 place where I had to look away and begin study 
 ing my neighbors behavior very hard." 1 
 
 In a letter of Professor Royce, who was Sill s 
 assistant in the Department of English at the 
 University, there is a bit of reminiscence which 
 illustrates the spirit Sill brought to his teach 
 ing: 
 
 "Once I found him very gloomy. His work 
 at Berkeley was wearing him out, and certain 
 of his worst pupils, to whose interests he had 
 been showing his usual unsparing devotion, 
 had just been paining him by bitter speeches 
 and cruel misunderstandings. I gossiped on 
 about the affair to him, in an irresponsible 
 way, of course, until among other things I said : 
 You see, Sill, all this comes from your deter 
 mined fashion of casting pearls before swine. 
 Why will you always do it? Ah, Royce, he 
 responded, with a perfectly simple and calm 
 veracity in his gentle voice, you never know 
 
138 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 in this world whether you were really casting 
 pearls at all until you feel the tusks. " : 
 
 But no better expression of Sill s ideal in 
 teaching can, I fancy, be found than the un 
 published notes of a talk to his high school 
 class shortly before leaving Oakland to take the 
 post at the university. It came to me in pencil, 
 having been found after his death among his 
 papers, probably preserved as a memento : 
 
 "I cannot feel that this is a common time. 
 Either because of the direction my own thoughts 
 and feelings have lately taken, in attempting to 
 guide yours, or the thoughts I have had about 
 each one of you, or the thoughts you your 
 selves have expressed, or a something which 
 I have seen shadowed forth on your faces, or 
 glimmering in your eyes from time to time 
 lately this or something else has filled me 
 with the sense of an unusual potency and 
 import in this particular point of your lives. 
 When I look at you, it is as if I looked out on 
 the dim, misty spaces of the dawn of a new 
 creation, and as if I saw vague shapes of un 
 known possibilities forming and dissolving 
 and re-forming before me, and as if as of old the 
 spirit of God were moving on the face of the 
 waters. The air seems astir with prophetic in 
 timations. It is as if I heard the voices of 
 awakening souls questioning the universe in 
 which they have just awakened, questioning 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 139 
 
 themselves, turning from their past with con 
 tempt, or sorrow, or anger, or ridicule, or pity 
 turning to their future with hope, or wonder, 
 or growing purpose. 
 
 "It may be only my imagination: but it 
 seems to me the whole air is electrical with it 
 lately with this casting-off of old chrysalis 
 husks, and the awakening rhythm of spiritual 
 wings. 
 
 "Let us consider for a little, what it is we are 
 doing, or what we may do, if we will. 
 
 "There are three most momentous events 
 that come in most people s lives : the birth into 
 this mystery of life, out of that other preceding 
 mystery, of which we have not even a gleam: 
 the birth out of this life, into whatever mystery 
 is to come: and between them, at some point, 
 that time that day that morning or that 
 mid-day or evening when the soul makes 
 its one final irrevocable choice of what its life 
 and what itself shall be. 
 
 "I do not think one always knows, at the 
 time, what is being decided, or what has been 
 decided. It may come casually, in some quiet 
 moment of watching a cloud, or a bird, or a 
 star it may come after a strong logical 
 wrestling between duty and desire it may 
 come slowly, day after day, as the good green 
 grass in spring, or it may come like a thunder- 
 flash out of a passionate storm of tears and 
 
140 EDWARD ROWLAND] SILL 
 
 prayer but come it will, to most of us. Before 
 it, our days are aimless, useless, unsatisfactory, 
 if not worse after it, we have a motive for 
 what we do, and a satisfaction in what is done. 
 Before it, the soul s flight is only the haphazard 
 fluttering of an insect, afterward, it is the 
 swift, sure flight of the bird, that seeks its own 
 tree-top and sings upon its way. 
 
 "Most men have no ruling purpose. It may 
 be so with some of you, but with some I know 
 it is not true. Individually, in your own 
 secret souls, I believe you have made choices 
 that if carried out will blossom and bear fruit 
 in good lives. But it is not quite enough that 
 this is true of us separately and secretly: I 
 wish we might in some way be more than a 
 group of separate, self-contained individuals 
 in this. I cannot ask you to talk much about 
 this, in any personal way. There is an instinc 
 tive delicacy that forbids it. But I wish that 
 by some sudden revelation of each self to each 
 other, each might know that every one of 
 us was from this time forth devoted to a high 
 ideal. I do not believe much in vows, or excited 
 avowals but I wish that in some sudden 
 flash of insight, some answering eye-glance of 
 mutual understanding, each might say in his 
 heart Here are others, who, like me, are 
 disgusted and ashamed with what they have 
 been, have done, have left undone, and who, 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 141 
 
 like me, are steadying themselves among the 
 strong waves of circumstance, like ships in a 
 pent sea, and steering their course by the same 
 stars that I, too, look up to. And we all belong 
 to a larger company of other times and places. 
 Many have striven to attain ideals; they are 
 of many different ages and climes. The com 
 pany of the heroic souls of history are the real 
 Round Table, and their king is that blameless 
 man to whose law of love they have all, in one 
 way or another, been loyal. And that Round 
 Table, why may we not all join? 
 
 "The old world goes on, day after day; with 
 much mixture of toil and suffering and injus 
 tice and foolishness in it. Life in it does n t 
 seem a very great or valuable affair. No wonder 
 so many throw it away, not caring to live out 
 even the few winters and summers that might 
 be allotted to them. But it often seems to me 
 it might be such a glorious old world if some of 
 us would conspire together to make it so. What 
 a beautiful earth it is! What splendor in the 
 mornings of it the sunrises, the clearings 
 away after rain, the moonrises, the superb dis 
 tances, the hill colors, the elastic spring of mus 
 cular strength, the power of thinking, of re 
 membering, the confidence we can put in each 
 other, the help and services we can render 
 each other, the love we can give, and get. It 
 seems a splendid earth to live on. If only we 
 
142 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 always lived up to the level of our best mo 
 ments ! 
 
 "How are we to do this? I have no revela 
 tion to give, no secret wisdom, in answer to 
 this. I can only give expression, as one of you, 
 to the question. But there are some things I 
 feel sure would help us, and one is, let us get 
 help from other lives. We can find out how 
 others have lived, and what they have tried to 
 do, and how they have succeeded. These people 
 of whom we read in books have been, after all, 
 just like us. The wiser people get, the more they 
 say they discover how much they are like every 
 one else. The child thinks nobody ever was like 
 him he looks out on other people, and es 
 pecially on people of past times, as being a dif 
 ferent sort of creatures. Nobody ever had just 
 his feelings, or just his expectations. By and 
 by he discovers that each child of them all has 
 had just that thought about the rest. It is 
 likely that such a person as Abraham Lincoln, 
 for instance, or Mrs. Browning, or Socrates, 
 had at one time or another every single thought 
 and every single mood and feeling, that you 
 have had. It is probable that you have never 
 had an emotion, a desire, a temptation, a wish, 
 which has not been in each other mind here. 
 How else could we understand each other? 
 Let us draw what inspiration we can, then, 
 from the man and woman the immortal girls 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 143 
 
 and boys, that have trodden these earth-ways 
 before us. When you look at Sirius, or the 
 Pleiades, or the Great Dipper to-night, try to 
 think how those other souls have age after 
 age looked up at those same twinkling lights, 
 and had the same thought, or the same ques 
 tion, or the same vacancy, in their human 
 heart as they looked with just such eyes, and 
 turned away with just such footsteps as yours. 
 "And one more suggestion; if we are so much 
 alike, let us help each other. Don t let us be 
 ashamed of what is best in us. Let us not any 
 longer pretend we are superficial and shallow 
 all the time. If we have feelings and thoughts 
 on other subjects than the trifles we generally 
 chat about, let us frankly speak them out. The 
 wisest and profoundest people, when we come 
 to learn about them, seem to talk most freely 
 about beauty, and truth, and love, and earnest 
 things. It is only children and childish people 
 who are afraid or ashamed to be themselves. 
 The telegraph brought us yesterday the last 
 conversation that Sumner had with the emi 
 nent men, lawyers and statesmen and judges, 
 that were with him; and one of the last things 
 he said was, Tell Emerson that I love and 
 revere him/ 
 
 "Which of you would feel free to write the 
 same of anybody or anything and read it here? 
 Yet what is it but a childish falling-in with 
 
144 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 shallow custom of shallow people that should 
 prevent. 
 
 "Am I mistaken, or has not the time come 
 when we are talking to ourselves, and do not 
 care either if we say it aloud, saying: Soul 
 of mine, you have not been all that you might. 
 You have neither done for yourself, nor for 
 others, what you might yet do, if you would. 
 You have kept your best feelings hidden. You 
 have like a coward showed of yourself only 
 what others were showing of themselves and 
 done only what others expected of you. You 
 have been cowardly, and foolish, and worth 
 less and conceited. Rise up, and from this 
 hour live out your true self, modestly, courage 
 ously and let this base, timid, indolent, self 
 ish body in which you live, be not your mas 
 ter, but your loyal servant for all noble ends. 
 
 "Some such thing as this I believe every one 
 of these greater souls of whom we read must 
 have thought, at some such hour as this. There 
 must have been in the lives of Socrates and Lin 
 coln and Washington, probably in their boy 
 hood, a decisive hour, when from that time on 
 they might have been only common creatures. 
 But the heroic soul rose in them equal to the 
 hour, and their lives became immortal types of 
 goodness and greatness. 
 
 "I suggest to you as the best motive I can 
 find : a life for the service of others. I offer you 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 145 
 
 the motto which a Saxon knight of old time 
 used to bear on his shield, Ich Dien I 
 
 serve." 
 
 The talk, which was given in classroom, 
 called forth various responses in letters and 
 compositions and to at least one of them Sill 
 wrote a reply : 
 
 OAKLAND, March 23, 74. 
 MONDAY NOON. 
 
 DEAR MILLIE, Then, too, if we should 
 decide on service as the principal thing, the 
 question arises: of what sort? Shall it be like 
 the washing of the feet, or the dying on the 
 cross? That is, the small common helpful 
 nesses and services chiefly, or some special 
 great absorbing service. Shall we let our lives 
 run along in apparent insignificance, in chan 
 nels others dig for them, mere irrigating 
 trenches, or cut their own channels, under 
 guidance of some idea of our own great if 
 possible, good certainly, and at least our own. 
 . . . Somebody wrote to me, " Why don t you 
 stop trying to make something of other people, 
 and make something of yourself?" Which will 
 you do? They are hardly compatible. Sup 
 posing the same amount of good to others from 
 either way, is there not an additional grain of 
 good in the greater abnegation of self involved 
 in the washing the feet theory? 
 
 May one not look at it in this way : to be all 
 
146 EDWAKD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 we might includes " character " as perhaps its 
 highest part (considered in the light of immor 
 tality, as security for gains of all sorts in the 
 future: as basis therefor, and essential condi 
 tion : certainly the highest part) : now it is so 
 necessary to the highest character to serve 
 others: to bear one s cross, as well as to be 
 lifted up on it: to renounce, for others sake: 
 that the gain is always more than the loss, even 
 if we gave up ten years of study and thought to 
 tend some bed-ridden cripple, whose highest 
 want seemed only a cool cup of water now and 
 then. 
 
 Well, one thing is certain: we can seek the 
 highest and best and truest we know: under 
 guidance of half a dozen good motives: no 
 matter if they be inextricably mixed; and no 
 irreparable loss if even some bad ones insist on 
 mixing in with them. 
 
 Is it certain that the reason is in all ways 
 higher than the emotions? Perhaps they can 
 not be compared wisely : any more than a yard 
 and a color. Love seems to me a pretty high 
 thing. I suspect that to say a certain motive is 
 based on love, is not saying it is any lower than 
 one based on logic. 
 
 As Mr. says, one would n t like to 
 
 have to choose whether he would prefer to have 
 the oxygen or the nitrogen taken out of his 
 atmosphere. 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 147 
 
 We get a prejudice against the emotions, 
 when we see them acting regardless of reason; 
 and against calculation, when it is cold and 
 emotionless. How if they both go streaming in 
 one current, like the light and the air? 
 
 I like it that there are some subjects on 
 which, when one has said anything, he has 
 after all said nothing at all. 
 
 The Oakland period can perhaps hardly be 
 better closed than by another reminiscence of 
 Miss Shinn to whom the record of those years 
 owes so much : 
 
 "When I was a schoolgirl, my mother 
 was speaking somewhat anxiously of the care 
 needed in environing young people; and Mr. 
 Sill said, Well, I suppose so; yet I often think 
 that a young soul, if it is only a truthful soul, 
 might safely enough be tossed off anywhere in 
 the universe, sent off at a tangent into space, 
 and will come out all right. - I should 
 want to know what a young soul was going to 
 come into contact with, before I sent it spin 
 ning off that way, if it was any one dear to me, 
 said my mother, a little concerned. Come 
 in contact with God s good worlds, anyhow,* 
 said Mr. Sill, dropping the subject by rising to 
 move about, as he often did. I do not know 
 quite how much he meant by the phrase; per 
 haps only to avoid further pressing of the 
 
148 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 point; but it struck me at sixteen as poetic and 
 lofty, and gave me a sort of feeling of safety 
 and intellectual courage." 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Sill began his work as Professor of English in 
 the University of California in 1875, when he 
 was thirty-four, full of ardent enthusiasm and 
 eagerness to teach. It was a moralizing, New 
 England, proselyting zeal that inspired him 
 akin to that which he had expressed in "Man 
 
 the Spirit": 
 
 "Here 
 
 Upon a coast whose calmer-blossoming surf 
 Beats not with such an iron clang as theirs, 
 We plant the Newer England; this our word, 
 That man is no mere spider-like machine 
 To spin out webs of railroads after him 
 In all earth s corners, nor a crafty brain 
 Made to knit cunning nets of politics 
 Or sharpen down to insignificance 
 On the grinding wheels of business, but a Soul, 
 That travelling higher worlds in upper light 
 Dips down through bodily contact into this." 
 
 Need enough there was of it; for California 
 was "practical," materialistic, Philistine. Sill 
 did what he could to stem the tide, and while 
 he was at the university, letters never lacked a 
 champion nor the life of the spirit an exponent. 
 Some there will be to regret that he did not 
 give himself wholly to letters, leaving pedagogy 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 149 
 
 to others. He was, of course, first and last a 
 man of letters, and say as loud and often as he 
 liked that he was "only a school teacher who 
 occasionally wrote verses," he probably knew 
 in his moments of insight that the pen was his 
 true weapon and the written word his deed. So 
 long as he was teaching, however, he gave him 
 self manfully to his teaching, writing but little 
 poetry and very few letters except to students 
 either in tutelage or out of the academic nest and 
 themselves grappling with the teacher s task. 
 
 The letters and fragments of letters which 
 follow are taken from the "Memorial Volume " 
 issued in California in 1887, the originals no 
 longer obtainable and the very names of the 
 recipients unknown for the most part. Full of 
 preaching they are. "We plant the Newer 
 England!" 
 
 "I hope you are not trying to do any brain- 
 work. Let your brains vegetate and make new 
 growth undisturbed, for next term ! there s 
 so much I shall ask you to do. Mind you, I 
 know about brains. The thing you want now 
 till term opens is absolute stupidity, and great 
 activity in the digestive apparatus. Horrid, 
 is n t it! Item, so much carbon; item, so much 
 nitrogen: five forms of protoplasm : muscular 
 exercise to distribute them well about the tis 
 sues. Then, next term, we will enter upon our 
 
150 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 birthright as heirs of all the ages and the * long 
 result of time. " 
 
 "Your question of 26th May was too good a 
 one to leave so long unanswered. It was not 
 left as being too hard to answer, but I have 
 been very busy, and really could not find time 
 to settle myself to say anything on so import 
 ant a question till to-night, and now it must be 
 a brief note. The real value of being well read 
 seems to me to be in the wider and truer life it 
 gives us. By wider I mean that our thoughts 
 and feelings and purposes are more complex 
 and more consonant with the complexity and 
 manifoldness of the universe we live in: the 
 microcosm gets a little even if a very little 
 - nearer in quality and quantity to the 
 macrocosm. The crystal leads such a narrow 
 life just along one little line a single law 
 of facet and angle: the plant a little wider: the 
 fish a little wider: and the different sorts of 
 people widening and widening out in their inner 
 activities and much according to their read 
 ing (since living, human contact is not possible, 
 except with the few relatives and neighbors). 
 
 "And by truer life, I mean truer to nature: 
 more as we were meant to be: the inner rela 
 tions, between ideas, corresponding closer to 
 the other relations or real relations be 
 tween things. These real thing-relations are in 
 
 VV aLi+f 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 151 
 
 fact very complex and vastly inclusive: so must 
 the thoughts and feelings be, if true, or truly 
 correspondent or mirror-like to them. 
 
 "I don t see that culture (unless you spell it 
 wrong) needs or tends at all to cut one 
 off from human warmth. Are not some of the 
 * best-read people you know or hear of, some 
 of the broadest-hearted also? The very essence 
 of culture is shaking off the nightmare of self- 
 consciousness and self -absorption and attaining 
 a sort of Christian Nirvana lost in the great 
 whole of humanity: thinking of others, caring 
 for others, admiring and loving others. 
 
 "I should like to have you write me more 
 fully about it sometime." 
 
 "If you have a shadow of suspicion that your 
 own manner . . . may be at fault (or at misfor 
 tune), pray endeavor to change it. We must 
 accommodate ourselves to the imperfect na 
 tures of people, just as they have to to ours. 
 No man can be just his natural, unrestrained 
 self, without impinging too much. Angles col 
 lide with angles. Suspect yourself is a great 
 aid towards getting along with people. It s the 
 littleness of our natures that lets us stand on 
 our rights so much as we constantly do. I sup 
 pose the great men stood chiefly on their duties, 
 instead. Et ego have been knocked and rubbed 
 a good deal; but in the retrospect it seems to 
 
152 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 have been mainly my own fault or unwisdom. 
 Jesus would have got along pretty smoothly 
 with nearly everybody. Even the whip in the 
 temple is said to have been for the cattle, not 
 their sellers. 
 
 " Of course charity is not to blind our judg 
 ment; but only to enlighten it. Exempli gratia, 
 I have some little charity for the present Legis 
 lature. Nevertheless, my judgment is that they 
 are largely knaves and fools. Still, at this dis 
 tance, I can recognize some of them as fellow- 
 critters. But what a mess they are making of 
 educational matters. . . . 
 
 "If you ever get thinking too much about 
 yourself, and your own concerns, read King 
 Lear, or As You Like It, or Hamlet :- 
 taking the whole play at a sitting or two. 
 
 It is a great pity that in making plans, etc., 
 one has to think so much about one s self. 
 Beware, my dear child, of too much or too 
 exclusive interest in yourself, and your own 
 inner experiences. Make sensible plans for 
 yourself, and then go at their fulfilment, for 
 getting yourself (one can, since all plans are for 
 work of some kind, and that may all be from 
 within outward. Even reading and study and 
 thought and writing are so). Have you read 
 Spencer s Ethics ? Better do so. (Did you 
 read Emerson on the Sovereignty of Ethics in 
 North American Review, May, 77?) Spencer 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 153 
 
 has a very sharp passage on Carlyle, but who 
 has expressed the protest against egoism so 
 well so very salt and bitter and good as 
 he in the second part of Sartor Resartus (that 
 part the autobiographical part though he 
 pretends it is not auto is worth reading over, 
 even if you have n t lately.) " 
 
 "Here are a few points of advice from a 
 veteran, which I wish you not only to read, but 
 to solemnly adhere to : 
 
 " 1. Don t care in the faintest possible degree 
 what the children think of your doings. (You 
 may think as much as you please of what they 
 care for. They have tender little hearts.) 
 
 "2. Don t try to do (or have them) two 
 days work in one. Little by little, and the 
 least things first, and many times repeated. 
 
 "3. Their education consists mainly in their 
 working: not yours. Sometimes the teachers 
 that work hardest do the poorest work, on 
 that very account. (Your work out of school, of 
 course, helps them : but I mean, in.) 
 
 "4. If you find yourself getting excited, or 
 talking loud, or moving quickly (i.e., hurriedly) 
 just stop, and let the steam go down. Give the 
 children something to do quietly, as a composi 
 tion on What I should like to have, or some 
 thing, meantime. 
 
 "5. Go to bed early, after giving yourself a 
 
154 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 rubbing, to get the blood out of your brain into 
 your skin and muscles. 
 
 "6. Keep warm: every minute, day and 
 night. Be sure you are clothed warmly enough 
 for that climate, especially when winter comes. 
 
 "7, 8, 9, and 10. Never allow yourself to 
 think of what you have been doing; during the 
 day, for instance. It is the going over things in 
 the head afterwards, that kills. Throw your 
 mind off from a thing, when it is done, and look 
 only forward, planning the next thing. All 
 night, for example, think about the next day s 
 work, not the past one. This rule is worth 
 everything. 
 
 "You will feel queer, perhaps, for a day or 
 two or three, but will soon like it and enjoy 
 yourself." 
 
 "Truly it would be pleasanter for you to be 
 teaching with me . . . but perhaps not so good 
 for you after all. That which teaches us most, 
 is the best for us. I often wish, myself, that I 
 were in some loveliest village of the vale/ with 
 an old wooden schoolhouse and a parcel of bare 
 foot urchins; with a little stream to fish in, and 
 a long meadow to see sunsets from, and a little 
 old church where I might hear a country choir 
 and doze o summer afternoons. But better 
 not. And so with you. . . . 
 
 "It is good, also, to be alone for a while. 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 155 
 
 That s the bitterest medicine one ever has to 
 take, but we need it. So peg away at the small 
 duties of these days. A good many of us have 
 had very similar experiences, translated into 
 different languages of circumstances and par 
 ticular individuals, but the same in pur 
 port. . . . 
 
 "Don t let any more of the molehills seem 
 mountains than you can help. Who cares? 
 is a good nightcap. 
 
 "Think how dreadful it must be to be such 
 people as we wot of. What is anything they 
 can do to others, compared with that ?" 
 
 "Your letter of 20th was received yesterday, 
 on my return from a horseback ride with Mr. 
 McLean, up through Napa and Sonoma. I 
 sent you a paper from Napa, by the way ... it 
 contains a couple of spirited pictures. Don t 
 you like those frogs, with the moonshine on 
 their slippery legs? and the walrus picture is 
 good. I think I should quietly substitute any 
 such for the villainous ones which may be 
 among those you speak of on the walls. I used 
 to put up newspaper pictures on my school- 
 house walls, for lack of finer ones. Children 
 absorb so much through the eye. . . . 
 
 "You are right about the geography class. 
 Give them all the physical, I should say to 
 gether. Skip much of the other geography, 
 
156 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 having them learn only the principal things, 
 and those with great thoroughness. Outline 
 map recitations: pointing to rivers, great cities, 
 etc., and stimulating them (a large class of 
 mixed grades can do it) to quick accurate an 
 swers the best thing. . . . Get the class to 
 take an imaginary voyage with you down a 
 river, or along a coast, or so forth (in a balloon 
 over a country, say). Then each in turn de 
 scribes what they see. Play we have come to 
 such and such a town: what costumes; ex 
 ports ; trees and plants; climate, etc. . . . 
 
 "You will get along very well, I think, with 
 your little flock. Your big boys won t trouble 
 you much. If either of them should, be firm 
 as a rock. He must do as you say, or leave. 
 You must remember that you are not only 
 hired by that deestricJc, but by the State of 
 California. . . . You have the Governor and 
 Supreme Court and Legislature at your back 
 for support, provided you do just right. . . . 
 But I ve no idea they will offend. They are 
 coarse enough, no doubt; but a good deal of it is 
 superficial. At heart they have good about 
 them. Every one had a mother. Half of these 
 students are just as bad, under the surface. You 
 or I are bad enough, if it comes to that. We 
 must n t be squeamish: physicians (moral and 
 mental, as well as physical) have to stand some 
 things that are offensive. You must take 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 157 
 
 things right by the horns. Don t allow any 
 thing bad for fear of speaking of it. Take your 
 sinners one by one, however. Never chide in 
 public, if you can help it. ... See the good in 
 your children, all you can." 
 
 "I am very glad you have the lovely things 
 to look at, in sky and mountain. We could 
 hardly get on otherwise. With those, and a few 
 human beings whom we believe in and trust, 
 and these both as prophetic intimations of 
 something beyond, higher than either we 
 can do very well even if they fry the steak, 
 and the grammar class seems panta konis, 
 pant a ouden. 
 
 "I wish I could help you in some way. I can 
 only send my sympathy, and urge you to do all 
 you can for the children, regardless of their 
 defects of breeding, the disagreeableness of 
 their parentage, etc. ... If you can help one or 
 two of them ever so little: or even make them 
 happier the cup of cold water, you know : 
 there is a good deal in that." 
 
 "You should be writing a good deal, in odd 
 moments. Send me anything that s good 
 after it gets cold : so that you need n t feel 
 that it s going to be sent while writing; for 
 what we all need is to keep clear of restraining 
 influences these obscure, subtle ones, that 
 
158 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 throw us out of rapport with ourselves, and 
 make us think of the writing instead of the 
 thing to be written. I believe we could all of us 
 write something worth while if we could get 
 free from everything but the looking clearly at 
 the inner thing we are trying (or should be) to 
 transcribe." 
 
 "If your brain wheels run on ... give them 
 some good important grist to grind: as, a new 
 book or a bit of natural science (natural 
 science is a good healthy inanity to relieve the 
 brain with, any time), or some French (e.g., 
 Katia, a Russian story, by Tolstoy, translated 
 into French). Take this rule for yourself: 
 
 THINK OF THE LARGEST THINGS (among all that 
 
 come through your brain, hour by hour) and 
 those that have the least reference to yourself. 
 You d much better be thinking about the 
 explorations in Assyria, and act in your per 
 sonal affairs from momentary common sense 
 and instinct, than to neglect all these world- 
 interests and be planning, be reminiscing about 
 some small personal relation or piece of con 
 duct." A personal glimpse from Miss Shinn s 
 diary supplements these scraps of letters. 
 
 "Mrs. Sill got her little dog, Twinkle, that 
 afternoon, I do not remember whence, - 
 a spaniel puppy; she called him Twinkle later, 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 159 
 
 because the white spot at the end of his tail 
 twinkled so. She called to Mr. Sill to come and 
 see him as soon as he got home, and I heard him 
 say, * Where s Millie? Has she seen him? 
 They were both much taken up with the puppy, 
 and she said that if Ben ate up her little dog, 
 Mr. Sill would have to dispose of Ben. The three 
 of us played with or held him most of the even 
 ing; and then Mr. Sill spent a long time over 
 him, putting him to bed; the puppy would cry 
 when left alone, and Mr. Sill would come back 
 and fuss over him; at last he got a hot- water 
 bag, and put it just under the straw in the box, 
 and the puppy snuggled down to it and stopped 
 crying at once. Mr. Sill came and told me that 
 we had a good joke on that little dog; he thought 
 it was his mother. Then he took his wife out 
 doors to look at the stars, and by and by came 
 and asked me if I knew what time it was, and 
 told me it was a quarter before eleven. I urged 
 that I had not finished my work, saying that 
 I found the Epistles slower reading than the 
 Odes. He said the Epistles were interesting, 
 however. Then I called his attention to a large 
 and uncanny insect which had settled on my 
 wall, above the door; he stepped inside to look 
 at it, and exclaimed at it. I should think you 
 would put him out! I said I was afraid to. 
 You d rather put him out than have him in, 
 would n t you? he said; he then went off and 
 
160 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 got a brush, saying, Who ll put him out? 
 Little Johnny Stout/ knocked the creature 
 out into the dining-room and shut my door, 
 saying, Good-night. But he stayed in the 
 next room some time himself, petting and 
 feeding and talking to the little dog. 
 
 "The puppy occupied them off and on much 
 of Sunday; but in the afternoon we took a walk; 
 and as we came back to the house, Mr. Sill said, 
 Betty, do you know the people who live here? 
 
 - I ve met them, she said, but I don t think 
 much of them. - - The man s a queer sort of 
 fellow, he said; I ve met him a few times. 
 He does n t have much to say to you, does he? 
 
 - No. I guess he has n t much to say. 
 I think such whimsical speeches as this were 
 with Mr. Sill an expression of that sudden 
 sense of externality to one s self that comes 
 over people of a metaphysical bent at times." 
 
 The same friend has jotted down some re- 
 miniscential impressions of Sill s personality 
 during that period : 
 
 " When I think of Mr. Sill when he was not de 
 pressed or absent-minded, I think of a gentle, 
 pervasive brightness, a quick, humorous ap 
 preciation of everything, a light quaintness and 
 original and whimsical turn of speech and be 
 havior, which kept one amused when with him, 
 and kept the atmosphere of his house alluring. 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 161 
 
 It was like all the other charming traits in his 
 personality, a good deal in the vivid yet subtle 
 response of his voice and manner and face to 
 his mood, the lighting-up of his eye, the 
 confidential and delightful tone of voice with 
 which he took you into the joke, something 
 flattering, intimate, whole-hearted, and friendly 
 about it. Certainly, he was never one to keep 
 the table in a roar, to be the centre of a laugh 
 ing circle, it would have shut him up 
 promptly. 
 
 "If there had been anything nervous or 
 abrupt about his manner, I think Mr. Sill 
 might have been called a restless man in his 
 ways at home. He did not seclude himself in 
 a study and work for hours together; he would 
 get up and go and attend to this or that; he 
 passed to and fro often; would come, perhaps 
 twice or three times in the evening, to ask a 
 question, show a book or picture, go to look at 
 the weather, to see the puppy, etc. He did not 
 sit down for a long talk, but would exchange a 
 few sentences and off again. When smoking 
 with a man friend, or when off on a long walk, 
 there would sometimes be long talks, but rarely 
 under other conditions." 
 
 Plainly enough his professional responsibili 
 ties failed to repress or pedagogize him; he 
 remained swift, alert, unpredictable always, 
 
162 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 and incurably addicted to outdoor vocations 
 and amusements. As long as he was in Cali 
 fornia he made seasonal jaunts into the moun 
 tains; the first dated back to 1863 during 
 his first sojourn on the Pacific slope an 
 expedition of adventure and discovery which 
 he recorded in a dithyrambic effusion in the 
 Sacramento "Union" beginning, "We have 
 just returned from a three weeks horseback 
 ride among the mountains." From 1871 to 
 1882 he usually made these excursions in com 
 pany with his neighbor and friend the Rever 
 end J. K. McLean, who has left a pleasant re 
 cord of Sill as fellow camper-out : 
 
 "With equal enthusiasm would he court the 
 sly wood hummingbirds and delightful water- 
 ousels, and coax the lizards; help to fell trees 
 for river foot-logs; gather fir and redwood 
 boughs for bedding, and chop stumps for fuel; 
 take out rattlesnake fangs for microscopic 
 examination, stalk deer, and praise the forest 
 flowers and mountain lilies." 
 
 It is to one or another of these jaunts that 
 Sill alludes in two bits of prose: 
 
 "I remember one night when we were camped 
 by the McCloud River, deep in the heart of the 
 redwood forest in northern California. There 
 was no moon. Far above us the great plumy 
 tops of the redwoods, own kin to the giant 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 163 
 
 trees of the Sierras, rose like cathedral roof and 
 towers, and hid the starlight. The aisles below 
 were empty and silent, and mysterious with that 
 soul of shadow that haunts the solitary woods 
 at night. The aisles were silent, but not the 
 choir. For, a stone s-throw to the right, the 
 voices of the clear, deep river were talking and 
 laughing all night long. They were perfectly 
 human tones. There would run on for a few 
 moments an even, continuous babble; then out 
 of it would rise a mingled peal of musical 
 laughter, like bells, or clear pebbles striking 
 together, or tinkling of ice, yet all the time 
 human. Then there would run merry chuck- 
 lings up and down the river; and then a shout 
 would arise, away downstream, and another; 
 and then all the hurrying voices would talk 
 loudly together; and then a moment s quiet; 
 and then, again, inextinguishable laughter. 
 
 "If I had lain there alone, perhaps I might 
 have understood some fragment of this inar 
 ticulate music, or speech. But perhaps, too, 
 I might have paid for it by never hearing mor 
 tal accents more; so weirdly this tumult of elfin 
 syllables wrought upon me, even well com 
 panioned as I was, there in the dimness and 
 unearthly solitude of the starlit forest. 1 
 
 "Over in the Sierra Nevadas, it is true, I lay 
 
 1 The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill, p. 47. 
 
164 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 one sunshiny afternoon along a gleaming slope 
 of the primeval granite, and cooled my cheek 
 against its ice-planed polish, and admitted that 
 here at last was something pretty old. Yet 
 * rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun as was this 
 gigantic adamantine couch, there was a still 
 older thing playing at that very moment about 
 us. It was the mountain wind. I could put out 
 my hand to it, and reflect that it might have 
 been this very identical breath of air that 
 bubbled up through the sea when the towers of 
 Atlantis went down; or it may have flickered 
 the flame on Abel s altar. You need not, I 
 might have said to it, think to palm yourself off 
 as a freakish young zephyr, just born of yonder 
 snow-streak and the sun- warmed rock; you 
 have been roaming this planet ever since its 
 birth. You have w r hirled in cyclones, and 
 danced with the streamers of the aurora; it was 
 you that breathed Job s curses, and the love- 
 vows of the first lover that was ever for 
 sworn. " 1 
 
 As a teacher Sill was suggestive and inspiring 
 to a degree seldom matched, so that his old 
 students speak of his classroom talks to this 
 day. He was, of course, especially interested 
 in language and its niceties. One of his Latin 
 students writes of his attention to "true ade- 
 
 1 The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill, p. 259. 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 165 
 
 quate renderings in English. He used to say, 
 *When Virgil wrote this he did not merely 
 choose words that expressed his literal meaning 
 to Roman readers, as if he had been telling his 
 grocer which kind of vegetable he would take: 
 he had also to convey to his reader the atmos 
 phere, the poetic suggestion, the "light that 
 never was on sea or land," which was in his 
 own vision, and which would cling about the 
 well-chosen word in Latin just as much as in 
 English poetry; and you do not render him truly 
 into English unless you reproduce all that. A 
 happy choice of a word in our Virgil class was 
 a find, over which he openly rejoiced, and the 
 class with him." 
 
 And in another place the same writer gives 
 a somewhat austere view of Sill s teaching 
 methods : 
 
 "Comparative philology, derivations, the 
 laws of language, especially the comparative 
 laws, drawn from different languages, inter 
 ested him greatly, and was one of the things 
 most emphasized. He liked to speir into the 
 psychology of different forms of language ex 
 pression, why did the Latin reduplicate 
 the perfect, and why should an auxiliary like 
 have express perfect tense to us? Why should 
 the Greek mind and the modern European 
 mind demand an article, and the Roman mind 
 none? etc. He read chapters of Max Miiller 
 
166 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 and other philologists to us, and his own zest in 
 the matter made comparative philology seem 
 the most exciting of researches. How he found 
 time for all this, I do not know: we entered 
 college with a preparation as severe as that 
 of to-day, in grammar and translation, and 
 although our course was three years, and they 
 take four now, and have specialized teachers 
 in each subject, they get no time for all these 
 literary and philological divagations, for the 
 careful polishing of translations, the attempts 
 to render in English verse, the construction of 
 models of Caesar s bridge, and yet Mr. Sill 
 was quite a martinet in the grammatical accu 
 racy he required. He expected paradigms to 
 be so learned that they were rooted for a life 
 time; syntax to be minutely understood; and 
 he had an old-fashioned (and I think perfectly 
 sound) respect for a rule, committed to memory 
 till it was a lifelong possession. He was not in 
 the least a New Education man, and all his 
 variations were played on a conservative theme. 
 Rigid drill, memorizing, repetition, underlay all 
 his work; and we were never allowed to begin 
 to have fun with a subject till we had accom 
 plished the drudgery of it. He did not fear or 
 shirk drudgery for himself, and had no idea of 
 letting us do it." 
 
 It is recalled that "he kept photographs of 
 classical statuary in the room . . . and we had 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 167 
 
 sundry talks about them which . . . gave us 
 an infection of his genuine liking for them." 
 It was probably his recollections of seeking 
 suitable pictures that set him writing years 
 later, when he had laid aside the professional 
 toga: 
 
 "If I were a Professor of Literature, I should 
 desire to hang my lecture-room with pictures, 
 not of the old traditional and forbidding 
 decrepitudes, but of Milton, for example, as 
 the charming young swordsman, with velvet 
 cloak tossed on the ground and rapier in hand; 
 of Homer, no longer blind and prematurely 
 agonized, as it were, with our modern perplexi 
 ties in finding him a birthplace, but as the splen 
 did young Greek athlete, limbed and weaponed 
 like his own youthful vision of Apollo, as 
 
 "Down he came, 
 
 Down from the summit of the Olympian mount, 
 Wrathful in heart; his shoulders bore the bow 
 And hollow quiver; there the arrows rang 
 Upon the shoulders of the angry god, 
 As on he moved. He came as comes the night, 
 And, seated from the ships aloof, sent forth 
 An arrow; terrible was heard the clang 
 Of that resplendent bow. 
 
 "I would tamper with even such venerated 
 traditional dignities as Mrs. Barbauld, for the 
 sake of their own rehabilitation in the eyes of 
 misguided youth. She should no longer frown 
 formidable behind the stately prsenomen of 
 
168 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Letitia ; she should be given back her true 
 girl-name of Nancy, and be represented, after 
 her own account, as lithely and blithely climb 
 ing an apple tree. Pythagoras should be a gra 
 cious stripling, crowned with ivy buds and 
 stretched at a pretty goat-girl s feet, touching 
 delicately the seven-stringed lyre. Even Moses 
 might be shown as a buxom and frolicsome boy, 
 shying stones at the crocodiles. Only Shakes 
 peare, of all the pantheon, would need no 
 change. His eternal youthfulness has been too 
 much for the text-books and the monument- 
 makers, and we always seem to conceive him 
 as the fresh-hearted and full-forced man he 
 really was." 1 
 
 For the three ensuing years students and 
 classes and the problems of education absorbed 
 him. His letters few and far between 
 seldom touch upon anything else. His class 
 mate, Henry Holt, remains his standby for all 
 
 needs : 
 
 BERKELEY, May, 77. 
 
 DEAR HENRY, Your package of books 
 for the Students Library is received. ... It 
 has excited considerable enthusiasm in the 
 students that one of the great publishers in 
 New York should send such a gift. I think it 
 has had some result on their views of human 
 
 1 The Prose of Edward Rowland Sill, p. 251. 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 169 
 
 nature, as well at the prospective scholarly re 
 sult. If you know what my notions of teaching 
 are, you will understand what place books for 
 the student hold in my views of the universe. 
 It is my hobby that the best education you can 
 give a young fellow (if not about the only edu 
 cation) is to bring his mind in real contact 
 with the best other minds. My labor goes in 
 that direction: selecting with (I hope) con 
 stantly better discrimination the best things, 
 and the best parts of the best, and contriving 
 new ways to get the boys the power and the 
 desire and the opportunity to assimilate them : 
 to "get outside" of them. . . . 
 
 Who would have thought, that night when 
 we were sleepily talking about the future, in bed 
 in your room in New Haven, in 1860, that 
 seventeen years after (what a distance that 
 seemed then !) I was to be hammering at the 
 young brains in these longitudes, and you were 
 to be sending out a lot of steam-power to keep 
 the hammer going. The whirligig brings round 
 lots of things besides revenges. 
 
 What a surprise it will be a thousand years 
 hence if we happen to be doing similar 
 things. 
 
 The next three letters are addressed to Daniel 
 C. Gilman, who had been President of the Uni 
 versity of California when Sill went there, and 
 
170 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 was now President of Johns Hopkins. They 
 introduce a new figure, Josiah Royce, who was 
 to become very well known later, and, by the 
 way, to become a very good friend of Sill. 
 
 BERKELEY, Nov. 14, 77. 
 To DANIEL C. OILMAN: 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I may as well say again 
 that I was very much disappointed at not see 
 ing you. I did not call at your house for the 
 reason that I feared you would make the ef 
 fort to see a caller when you were not really 
 well enough to do so. I trust you are well again 
 by this time: and so ready to be bothered once 
 more with questions; as, item, do you know of 
 any college in good standing that gives the 
 degree of A.B. without Latin and Greek, or 
 without Greek? What colleges give A.M. 
 without Latin or Greek (aside from compli 
 mentary degrees)? If I understand aright you 
 give A.B. for certain courses which may not 
 include Greek. And why not? if a course is 
 contrived with stuff in it equivalent. 
 
 Our new President is about announcing a 
 course in "Science and Letters," which is to be 
 a "liberal education" for businessmen. I tell 
 him as about the old jjftrawberry " -there 
 might be made a course, perhaps, and may 
 perhaps in the future, which shall give a 
 "liberal education" without Latin; but who 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 171 
 
 has seen such a one as yet invented, or any 
 certain product thereof? 
 
 I for my part am unwilling to have much to 
 do with or to be responsible at all for any 
 regular college course, with a degree, which is 
 not worthy, at least, of A.B.: or equivalent 
 thereto. I am willing to lecture to teachers 
 and others on Literature, etc., and do do it; but 
 I don t believe a "college" ought to give a regu 
 lar four years curriculum and give a degree at 
 the end of it, unless there is good substantial 
 stuff in it, enough to make a rich and trained 
 mind. 
 
 Do you know of any young man who has 
 the making of a professor of English literature 
 in him, and whom I could get next year and 
 maybe sooner for assistant, to teach rhetoric, 
 composition, etc., 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 BERKELEY, May 6, 1878. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I wish you would tell me 
 if you know of just the right man for my 
 assistant here next year. I have some little 
 hope that I may get the Regents to give $100 
 a month. Of course nobody could be imported 
 for less than that. In fact I shall try to make 
 them offer $125. I believe I have succeeded, 
 in spite of the world, the flesh and the Presi- 
 
172 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 dent, in creating a demand for English studies 
 in the university, getting a start largely through 
 you. The students want it, and most of the 
 faculty do, in theory, though in practice the 
 Mathematics still ride us like a nightmare. 
 I want a young man for assistant: young, so 
 that he may be receptive and willing to do my 
 way rather than some older and worse one 
 (if he have any better one, I hope to be recep 
 tive) : he should have a genuine love of litera 
 ture and quickness to comprehend it (I don t 
 care so much for wide attainment in it as for 
 the gift of appreciation of literature and dis 
 crimination as to it) : he should know a good 
 deal about the English language (and to know 
 about that he must be a good mental philos 
 opher more important even than the phil 
 ology) and the Latin and Greek, and, if pos 
 sible, German. Finally, he should be a good 
 writer and speaker (both of these in the natural, 
 i.e., modern style) and so the cause of it in 
 others. 
 
 If you can point me to such a man, I will be 
 very thankful. And if he be, in addition to these 
 foregoing graces and perfections, a man with 
 a bit of aesthetics about his brains somewhere, 
 I will verily use all the eloquence I have or 
 can borrow to get him $150 a month. 
 
 I can t get over the conviction, in truth I 
 get more and more under it, that the best 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 173 
 
 thing "education" can do for a boy next to 
 bringing him into communication with his living 
 fellows, both students and teachers is the 
 getting him into full communication with the 
 best that is in literature. I feel as if I wanted to 
 set twenty men at work on these students here, 
 helping me to do it, or letting me help them. 
 
 I am obliged to you for an occasional paper 
 and so forth; I am always glad to get anything 
 that keeps me acquainted with your doings. I 
 read to my juniors a considerable part of the 
 addresses at your anniversary, as notable scraps 
 of modern literature. I mean to have them 
 know, and I am glad of whatever may help 
 to keep me well aware, that there is a world 
 outside of Berkeley, and that it moves. 
 
 Sincerely, EDW. R. SILL. 
 
 BERKELEY, Sept. 4, 78. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, Royce has been duly re 
 ceived, and found to answer the description. 
 He will do excellently well here, there is no 
 doubt only, he must not stay too long in the 
 wilderness, for his own sake. A certain period 
 of isolation in the Desert and of being tempted 
 by the Devil is probably good for any of the 
 sons of men, but not too long. I shall look out 
 that he is not drudged to death. . . . 
 
 I open this again to assure you that I have 
 had no trouble whatever from his independence. 
 
174 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 For instead of trying to make him fit into any 
 cast-iron plans of work, I have made the plans 
 fit him; and have given him things to do that 
 would make the given man most useful to the 
 given pupils: giving him logic, for instance, 
 instead of the English language, to teach the 
 freshmen. And he does admirably with it. 
 
 Scraps from various letters show how vital 
 and how wide Sill s interests in education were. 
 He is for books and reading, and finds he holds 
 a minority view : he wants a Students Library 
 to "supply a crying want of our poor young 
 sters, who have and can have next to no books 
 of their own. I find no one here (except now 
 Royce and I could hug him for it) to agree 
 with me as to this need of the students. The 
 faculty take the ground that reading is a very 
 dangerous habit for students! I wish I had 
 you here for a spare hour in which to pour out 
 to an appreciating spirit my views of the said 
 faculty for such (and many such) ideas. . . . 
 I am making a list of books to recommend for 
 our public school libraries. If you know of any 
 list made by competent hands I wish you d 
 tell me. ... I would give a good deal for a 
 really well-chosen list of a hundred volumes 
 for girls and boys reading. ... I want to get 
 into communication with somebody in Eng 
 land who knows (or cares) about public edu 
 cation there. . . . We have always been hear- 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 175 
 
 ing about the German schools and universities. 
 I am more and more coming to think it is the 
 English schools we want to know about and 
 universities, judging by results in producing 
 
 thoroughly civilized men. . . . was spoilt 
 
 (temporarily only, I hope and believe) by going 
 to Germany before he had thought much him 
 self. I always have said, damn the French, 
 and of late I am getting to extend that gra 
 cious sentiment to the Germans." 
 
 At President Gilman s suggestion Sill sent 
 his inquiry about English schools to Matthew 
 Arnold and got an answer. One cannot help 
 regretting that this should be apparently the 
 only contact between these two spirits, so 
 close akin, but separated by "the unplumbed, 
 salt, estranging sea": - 
 
 "I have just heard in reply from Matthew 
 Arnold, who says some good strong things in 
 favor of the classics for their own sake, and 
 as sine qua non for a real appreciation of Eng 
 lish literature. But he does n t tell me what 
 I just now want to know: what books or re 
 ports give the truest and fullest idea of educa 
 tion (below university) in England. I partic 
 ularly want just now a history of education in 
 Great Britain. I wish Mr. Arnold would write 
 one, with full notes and comments!" 
 
 He keeps at his task of helping his students 
 
176 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 even after they have left college and has re 
 course again to President Oilman : 
 
 BERKELEY, Sept. 9, 78. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, Do you know of any wise 
 man (or woman) who is interested in the ques 
 tion of occupations for educated girls, and to 
 whom I could write on the subject? Here we 
 graduate every year a number of intelligent 
 and virtuous and industrious young women 
 but what are they to do? Teaching, of course, 
 is open, but sometimes they don t like that, 
 and are not suited for it, or have n t the nerves 
 to stand the public school drudgery. . . . 
 
 They drive me to my wits end every year, 
 with the impossibility of seeing anything for 
 them but teaching or getting married. 
 
 Do you know of any one East who would act 
 as an intelligence office for educated girls? 
 
 Or doesn t the East, any more than "the 
 Coast," want any more educated girls? 
 
 Had we better stop producing them till the 
 demand increases? By the way, when are you 
 going to open Johns Hopkins to girls? 
 
 Royce is fairly at work and begins well. 
 Yours, 
 
 EDW. R. SILL. 
 
 Royce just comes in and wishes to be re 
 membered to you : says he shall write as soon 
 as he can. 
 
EDWARD R. SILL, 1879 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 177 
 
 There have not been wanting hints that Sill 
 found himself at times in but imperfect sym 
 pathy with his associates. A further hint of it 
 comes in a postscript to a note written late in 
 1880:- 
 
 "They ve been tossing me in a metaphorical 
 blanket in the faculty for teaching irreligion - 
 especially in a course of lectures I ve been 
 giving Saturday mornings to teachers from 
 Oakland and San Francisco. 
 
 "It would make you laugh if you knew all 
 about it. Alas, that you are so far away! I 
 could from time to time tell you many a good 
 thing, if you were not: humors of the educa 
 tional arena." 
 
 Which recalls a remark among the recollec 
 tions of one of his students : "Had we not heard 
 from parental criticism outside, and from his 
 absence from the prayer-meeting and church 
 activities with which Oakland abounded, that 
 he was not considered orthodox, I do not be 
 lieve we should have thought of anything at 
 odds with orthodoxy about him." 
 
 But when a professor s religious views or 
 lack of views become subject of discussion 
 in the faculty there are breakers ahead. 
 
 BERKELEY, Feb. 24, 82. 
 
 Some of my young people are trying to find 
 out something about Ruskin s St. George s 
 
178 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Society. Can you lay your hand on any recent 
 promulgation with regard to it? ... This is 
 one of the last times I shall bother you about 
 such things probably, for I m going to quit my 
 chair here and propose not to try to find out 
 anything more than comes along naturally, for 
 the rest of my life. I have even almost a notion 
 I will go to the other extreme and try writing 
 some poetry or something, for a year or 
 two. 
 
 I have resigned my professorship to 
 take effect in August. Congratulate me. I am 
 tired nearly to death not so much with the 
 work, as with the unpromising conditions of 
 it, and its environments. . . . 
 
 The interval was filled with interest. There 
 was first his twentieth anniversary at Yale to 
 which he returned gladly, and there was his 
 first and only visit to Europe. Meantime his 
 interest in writing becomes more practical. He 
 writes, freely as ever, to his classmates, Holt 
 and Dexter. 
 
 DEAR HENRY, As to the wee bookie 
 [" The Hermitage"] I have pondered, and more 
 than that have (for the first time in six years) 
 looked over the volume. If I were to get it out 
 again it would be with just half the things out, 
 and just about as much put in their place (from 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 179 
 
 magazines, etc.). But this I am not anxious 
 to do; for while there is a little demand (as 
 I hear constantly from our booksellers here 
 abouts) for a new edition, I look upon it as 
 a demand not for poetry but for the Professor s 
 poetry. That is, you understand, not a legiti 
 mate demand. The poetry, if good for any 
 thing, ought to make me in demand, not I the 
 poetry. 
 
 I am getting on well enough, considering 
 what planet we are on. ... I am still trying 
 with considerable energy each day (which 
 gives out toward night, I confess) to see what 
 is good and valuable in English (and other 
 peoples ) literature. The more I look the less 
 I find, but the more I prize what little I do 
 find. 
 
 I should like to make a prose book or two for 
 you to publish, but I shall not live long enough 
 to do it, nor will you ever be likely to be rich 
 enough to afford to publish the sort of books 
 I should write. 
 
 BERKELEY, CAL., Feb. 13, 1880. 
 DEAR HENRY, Thank you for the in 
 formation for my inquiring student about the 
 book-man. I knew about the Social Science 
 Association, but my point was that they don t 
 go to the bottom-difficulty, viz., what end are 
 we after? And secondly, is it the end we had 
 
180 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 better be after? My notion is that Spencer is the 
 only man that has begun to answer that ques 
 tion namely in the "Data" and in previ 
 ous hints which he that did n t run too fast 
 might read and that the Associations have 
 been puttering about contagious diseases, 
 drainage, prison reform, and other such excel 
 lent matters to work at, but the perfection of 
 which would leave us very little better off than 
 at present. The best thing you can do with 
 such people as we have now is to let the con 
 tagious diseases thin em out a little, perhaps. 
 As to your thought that I have scattered, 
 and ought to make myself "favorably known." 
 My dear fellow, I like your caring for me enough 
 to say this and wish this, but if you knew 
 about my life of late years and my ideas of 
 life, you would see. I am not and have n t been 
 trying for it. I have been working to educate, 
 in some high sense, successive classes of young 
 people; and meanwhile to know more about 
 education, and especially literature as a means 
 of it, and about education in its relation to 
 society and life. I am contented to die un 
 known, if I can arrive at the truth about cer 
 tain great matters, and can put others in the 
 way thereof. If there is anything which utterly 
 disgusts me and makes me howl aloud and 
 swear, it is these infernal fools who are fight 
 ing to get their names abroad, and care for no 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 181 
 
 other work. That a man like Spencer should 
 be well known is a matter of course and all 
 right; but he has not cared for that. Let a man 
 work his work in peace, and the devil take his 
 name the less likely to get anything more 
 of him than that. 
 
 But I am ever yours. 
 
 You think I write on various subjects. 
 No. Only on education (which is my hobby) 
 and on literature, with an occasional wild ex 
 cursion into sociology. I take a great and grow 
 ing interest in being the cause of writing in 
 others. Have trained up already two "Atlan 
 tic" writers and various smaller fry. I like to 
 help at the incubation of poets, especially. 
 
 BERKELEY, Feb. 27, 1881. 
 
 DEAR HENRY, ... Glad you ve a cello, 
 too. What a shame for George Eliot to make 
 her villain in Deronda play a cello. I wonder 
 if Lewes tortured one, and she got to hate it. 
 
 Do you know any way to get introduced 
 to the editors of the " Nineteenth Century " or 
 any other first-rate British magazine, where 
 they would take a poem a sonnet or so now 
 and then by an American? 
 
 I have a friend who has contributed to the 
 " Atlantic," and can, I suppose, whenever she s 
 willing, but her poetry is so far above their 
 level that I want to get it into a British maga- 
 
182 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 zine. (This not to be quoted; somebody might 
 think I send to the " Atlantic " and am rejected, 
 which is n t true.) 
 
 Why does n t New York have a first-class 
 magazine of Literature and Thought? You 
 start one and make me editor. If a little pro 
 vincial city like Boston can have a decent 
 magazine, why can t New York have a really 
 good one? Is n t the time ripe? Really, is n t 
 this worth thinking of? 
 
 Want me to go to England with you, if 
 you go? Or I suppose you would wish to go on 
 the Continent. 
 
 Yours ever as ever, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 ... I hope there will be a good gathering 
 of our class. Not that I expect it to be a very 
 jolly company, for I presume we are all begin 
 ning to get pretty thoroughly sobered down. 
 But there are a good many whom I would like 
 very much to see. It will be interesting to see 
 whether we have all got entirely incompatible 
 points of view, by this time. Shall we find old 
 friends who can t discover a single common 
 ground to meet on beyond the weather or a 
 college prank or two? 
 
 I for my part feel a sort of vaguely 
 lonesome desire to make a new friend or two 
 out of the old ones if it were possible. I 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 183 
 
 would like to find one or two fellows who be 
 lieve in something that I do and in doing 
 something that I believe in trying to get done. 
 Or must we all fight it out alone solitary 
 skirmishers when we are come to forty 
 year. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 There was "a good gathering" and Sill was 
 welcomed and honored as he had always been, 
 and so, with his heart warmed at the old 
 shrine, set out on his trip to Europe. Doubtless 
 he was worn and tired from his long stint of 
 teaching; for apparently he wrote nothing 
 while he was away. Only the merest scraps of 
 letters remain, and for his impressions of the 
 journey we have to turn to fragments from his 
 later prose. 
 
 From Switzerland and the Lake Country he 
 sent scanty notes to Miss Shinn whose career 
 he followed with keen interest : 
 
 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, Sept. 1881. 
 I was thinking this morning, as I lay wait 
 ing for it to be time to get up (and waiting 
 also for the clouds to clear away from Mont 
 Blanc, so that I could see it better from the 
 window), about the difficulties that beset writ 
 ing under all circumstances. It is easy to 
 
184 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 see why so few good or valuable books have 
 been written. The wonder is that any one ever 
 surmounts the obstacles, and gets anything 
 accomplished beyond plans. I am wondering, 
 also, whether you are doing anything with the 
 pen. Remember the Statue and the Bust. 
 
 These Alps are very near kin to our Sierras : 
 more picturesque, more full of surprises, more 
 to the painter s hand, perhaps; but hardly 
 more beautiful or impressive except a few 
 regions, as that of Mont Blanc, the like of 
 which I have not seen. . . . 
 
 What a long time it takes the mail to crawl 
 around such a little pocket planet. 
 
 AMBLESIDE, WESTMORELAND, Sept. 81. 
 
 This violet is a descendant of the one Words 
 worth is always writing about. At least I 
 picked it to-day on the side of the path where 
 he must have walked many times, between his 
 house and the Stock Ghyll Force. It is a beau 
 tiful region, this of the English Lakes; but one 
 does n t see, after all, why poetry should n t be 
 thought and felt and written as well at Niles or 
 Berkeley, as in Westmoreland. The Alps and 
 this region you must see some day. 
 
 In haste, with regards to you all, from both 
 of us 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 185 
 
 There is a curiously interesting allusion, in 
 an essay entitled "Can Tunes be Inherited?" 
 to the voyage to England : 
 
 " It was on a Cunarder in mid-ocean, on the 
 voyage to Liverpool. One evening I was loiter 
 ing up and down the deck in the warm moon 
 light, when a group of steerage passengers, sit 
 ting or reclining about the foot of the foremast, 
 began to sing in a low and half-unconscious 
 strain in the midst of their talk. They were, 
 it seems, Welsh people, who were choosing this 
 particular time to revisit the fatherland be 
 cause of an approaching Eistedfod, somewhere 
 in South Wales. It was, I perceived instantly, 
 the * music of my dreams. To the best of my 
 knowledge and belief, I had never heard these 
 tunes, or any such tunes, sung, whistled, or 
 played anywhere before. It had so happened 
 that I had never lived in or near any Welsh 
 settlements. I had never chanced to make the 
 acquaintance of so much as one solitary Welsh 
 person, so far as I know. Yet here, sung by these 
 returning Cymric exiles in the yellow moon 
 light, as we rose and fell on the gently heav 
 ing waves, here were the very strains that 
 had for years been floating, unbidden and un 
 recognized, through my brain." 
 
 When he writes on "The Oldest Thing in the 
 World," he is reminded of the cathedrals, and 
 but for these parenthetical allusions we should 
 
186 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 have no idea of his route or the range of his 
 journey :- 
 
 "We cross the sea to find a cathedral that is 
 truly ancient, and they point us with pride to 
 this summer s restorations; but while the group 
 stands admiring them, the American slides 
 away quietly, and slips behind a tomb, or is 
 found rapt on some dear, unrestored nook of 
 the ivied cloister. Just so it is on the Conti 
 nent: Paris is always too wonderfully new and 
 shining, as if Orpheus had strummed it up only 
 this very morning from entirely new materials. 
 My favorite spot is in the Louvre, between the 
 five-footed bull of Assyria and the rose-colored 
 granite sarcophagus of Rameses III. The 
 Hague is delightfully swept-up and washed- 
 down and immaculately fresh and resplendent; 
 but my best moment there was when, in the 
 museum, I took in my hand a gold coin of 
 Alexander, and as it lay cool and smooth in my 
 palm I thought it was probably one that the 
 conqueror himself flung ringing against the 
 tub-staves of Diogenes, the day that worthy 
 growled at him to get out of his sunshine. 
 
 "It is astonishing how insensible we some 
 times are to the most beautiful or sublime spec 
 tacles. Noble scenes, which at another time 
 would inspire the imagination and thrill the 
 heart with a tumult of emotions, now unfold 
 their glory before our unmoved eyes, and the 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 187 
 
 humdrum thoughts plod along their accus 
 tomed way. Travellers know this phenome 
 non very well. Ely Cathedral lives in my mem 
 ory as a delicious vision of solemn loveliness; 
 but when my friends praise York Minster, 
 I hardly recall that I was ever there. This in 
 difference is to be ascribed to the fact that in 
 York my brain happened to be dough or putty 
 for the time being, and in no respect on the 
 architecture of the minster." 
 
 Returning from England in October, stop 
 ping by the way at Cambridge, New Haven, 
 and Baltimore, Sill took up his work at Berke 
 ley for what was to be his last year. A note to 
 President Gilman and a few lines to Dexter 
 bridge the episode over, and now our man of 
 letters takes up what, in spite of his New Eng 
 land conscience, his inherited predilection for 
 preaching, and his relentless ethical tenden 
 cies, was his real calling and life-work litera 
 ture. This is the last of the pedagogy: 
 
 BALTIMORE, Oct. 20, 81. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I am sorry not to say 
 "how d ye do" and "good-bye" in person, 
 but I would not come round to your house lest 
 you should see me when you were really feeling 
 unfit for it. I trust you will take a run away and 
 not let yourself get ill. I have enjoyed looking 
 
188 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 into the rooms of the university a bit, and 
 hearing some of the exercises, and wish I could 
 stay longer; but must return to California next 
 week. My stay in England cheated me out of 
 my anticipated visit here and elsewhere in the 
 East: though I did get a peep at Yale and 
 Harvard. 
 
 In haste, as ever yours, E. R. SILL. 
 
 To PRES. GILMAN. 
 
 I am very sorry to hear of Mr. Lanier s 
 death. His book on English verse is the only 
 thing extant on that subject that is of any 
 earthly value. I wonder that so few seem to 
 have discovered its great merit. 
 
 I want to find an assistant in English 
 Composition and Rhetoric, etc.: if possible 
 one who has in him the making of a professor 
 of English literature, to take my place before 
 long. Know him? 
 
 Yours, E. R. S. 
 
 BERKELEY, March 26, 82. 
 
 I sent you one college paper epitaph, and 
 here is another. You may be interested to 
 see it, and I am rather glad to have you; for 
 maybe nobody will ever say any more good- 
 natured things about me, unless it be on a 
 veritable tombstone. Nil de moribundis nisi 
 bonum.* . 
 
TEACHING IN CALIFORNIA 189 
 
 "Perhaps I ought to add that my resigna 
 tion was entirely voluntary (not that I have 
 any reason to think the Regents have any ex 
 aggerated estimate of my value). My posi 
 tion had become intolerable for certain rea 
 sons that are not for pen and ink, and after a 
 good deal of consideration I decided to leave 
 it; though I have no immediate intention of 
 leaving Berkeley." 
 
 One of the last things he wrote that bear the 
 academic stamp is a bit of jocular verse to 
 his colleague Stearns, on which light note we 
 may let the chapter close : - 
 
 July, 1882. 
 TO R. E. C. S. HORTATORY 
 
 "Come back, my children," arid Berkeley cries, 
 Come to my leathery gum trees bluish shade, 
 Come where my stubbly hillside slowly dries, 
 And fond adhesive tarweeds gently fade. 
 
 Here murmurs soft the locomotive s shriek, 
 And o er the plain the antic dummy squeals; 
 Here picnic eggshells bloom beside the creek, 
 That sweetly mid its dried-up hummocks steals. 
 
 At morning howls the neighbor s pensive dog. 
 At noon the flower-beds don their stony crust, 
 At evening softly falls the genial fog, 
 And every hour bestows its bounteous dust. 
 
 Come when you ve got to, not a day before! 
 Till then, stay there, and heed not Berkeley s lures; 
 Drink health and blessing from the mountain s store, 
 And still, dear Stearns, believe me, 
 
 Ever yours. 
 
VII 
 
 MAN OF LETTERS 
 
 ALTHOUGH his relation to the university 
 closed with the end of the academic year in 
 June, 1882, Sill did not immediately leave 
 Berkeley, but remained ordering his affairs, 
 and putting into effect some old plans which 
 included preparing for the press a collection of 
 his poems, "The Venus of Milo, and Other 
 Poems," to be privately printed for his friends. 
 Perhaps he found it easier also in the accus 
 tomed surroundings to make the transition 
 from teaching to writing. At any rate, he lost 
 no time in entering upon the new profession; 
 he seems to have given no thought to a new 
 post as professor, but to have launched him 
 self at once upon literature. In September he 
 was in full correspondence with the editor of 
 the "Atlantic," and had already taken a hand 
 in star-ting the new California magazine, "The 
 Overland Monthly." 
 
 The correspondence with Thomas Bailey 
 Aldrich, then editor of the "Atlantic," grew 
 more intimate as time went on, and the rela 
 tion became one of mutual admiration and 
 regard. Aldrich wrote twenty years later: 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 191 
 
 "It was my good fortune to be one of the 
 first to recognize the fine quality of his poetry 
 and the very first to introduce him to his pub 
 lic through the pages of the Atlantic. He 
 was sadly in want of encouragement at the time, 
 and I encouraged him by printing everything 
 he sent to me. He was a busy maker of lyrics 
 in those days, and in order not to seem to have 
 too much Sill in the magazine, I published 
 some of the poems over a pen-name, at his own 
 suggestion." 
 
 That was a little later; he was now knocking 
 at the door : 
 
 BERKELEY, CAL., Sept. 11, 1882. 
 EDITOR ATLANTIC: 
 
 DEAR SIR, Your kind note of the 4th 
 declining my paper on the Anglo-Saxon lan 
 guage is just received. 
 
 I trouble you with a reply only because I 
 have sent a second paper, and I want to assure 
 you that my articles are neither of them scraps 
 from my reading of other men s work, but are 
 at least "my own" if "poor things." I ve no 
 doubt your judgment is best, as to how it would 
 strike readers of the "Atlantic" and the first 
 paper does no doubt sound like "odds and ends," 
 since it has struck you that way, for one. I had 
 an idea my tracing of the Yankee dialect and 
 other "mistakes" in speech back to Anglo- 
 
192 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Saxon was new. Would you mind telling me 
 where I may find anything about that? I sup 
 pose it is only another case like the man in 
 Ohio who invented the screw propeller over 
 again after it had been used a half -century or 
 so. One has to be horribly well read to hope to 
 contribute to the mag[azine]. 
 
 I warn you that I shall send you some 
 verse if you do not accept my prose. 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 BERKELEY, CAL., Oct. 3, 1882. 
 EDITOR ATLANTIC : 
 
 DEAR SIR, I send you a review of Her 
 bert Spencer s "Education." It seems to 
 me high time that the error of this very influ 
 ential treatise should be shown, and I should 
 be very glad if it could be shown in just the 
 region covered by the "Atlantic" that is, 
 among the illuminati and so "work down" 
 through educational thought and practice. I 
 believe in Spencer, for the most part, but I am 
 sure he is wrong in the fundamental theory of 
 this treatise. I enclose stamps for return if not 
 used. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 193 
 
 BERKELEY, CAL., Oct. 81, 1882. 
 EDITOR ATLANTIC: 
 
 DEAR SIR, Your card of 24th is received 
 telling me of acceptance of my review of Spen 
 cer s " Education." Can you let me read a proof 
 of it? I am accustomed to that luxury, and 
 don t like to forego it unless it is necessary. To 
 be sure, I have the habit of making my man 
 uscript ready for the printer, even to punctua 
 tion, but for all that, one can always, by a little 
 touch here and there in just the right place, 
 add greatly to the value of a paper (or a poem 
 even) . I have been accustomed to tell my stu 
 dents that the value is usually added by the 
 erasing touch here and there : that is to say, by 
 lessening the denominator rather than increas 
 ing the numerator. If you are not afraid of 
 my being too savage with my own work, I hope 
 you will send me a proof. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 BERKELEY, CAL., Nov. 18, 1882. 
 EDITOR ATLANTIC : - 
 
 DEAR SIR, I send in to-day s mail re 
 turn proofs of my paper on Herbert Spencer s 
 "Theory of Education." I registered them be 
 cause our distance is so great that it would not 
 do to have them lost on the way. On the last 
 page I have changed the spelling of Shak- 
 
194 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 spere s name from mere force of habit. If you 
 prefer to have your magazine hold to a uniform 
 spelling the other way, of course I don t care 
 a fig about it. I have very liberal views as to 
 an editor s privilege to make non-essential 
 changes. Nothing except poetry has any rights 
 which a competent editor is bound to respect. 
 I am much obliged to somebody for calling 
 my attention to certain infelicities, in blue pen 
 cil. If your proof-reader, please make him my 
 compliments. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., March 21, 1883. 
 MR. ALDRICH : 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I send registered a paper 
 on "English Literature in the College Course." 
 It is something I have been getting ready to 
 say for a long time, and I feel sure that it is true. 
 It is for you to judge, of course, whether people 
 will be interested in it; but it follows naturally 
 after my paper on Spencer s "Theory," as giv 
 ing some positive suggestions, after that, which 
 was negative criticism. It is calculated to stir 
 some persons to wrath, no doubt; but it would 
 be good for them. And I believe that the best 
 of the readers of the "Atlantic" will agree with 
 me and be glad to hear the thing said. At any 
 rate, I would like to have it appear in the 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 195 
 
 "Atlantic," rather than elsewhere, because I 
 know it would do most good from that van 
 tage-ground. You will find the ball of the 
 whole cartridge in the last pages : the rest is for 
 powder. 
 
 May I ask you to keep the manuscript for 
 me for a few days if you should not use it, and 
 I will write or call for it. And will "the editors " 
 be kind enough to let me know by a note what 
 you decide? 
 
 Pardon my addressing you personally, this 
 time. 
 
 Sincerely yours, E. R. SILL. 
 
 Sill had now settled down at the "hospitable 
 house" with which we are familiar at Cuya- 
 hoga Falls, and his correspondence ordered 
 itself with three nuclei the group of Cali 
 fornia friends at Berkeley, his Yale classmates 
 in New Haven or New York, and the maga 
 zine editors. To California he wrote gossiping 
 letters, not disdaining the weather, although 
 he was tempted into jocular verse when he got 
 meteorology in reply : - 
 
 TO MY CORRESPONDENT WHO WRITES OF 
 THE WEATHER 
 
 Write all about yourself, my dear! 
 
 For I don t care, I m sure Oh, 
 Reports as if from "Probs" to hear, 
 
 Or from the Weather Bureau. 
 
196 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 I wish to hear of you the straws 
 That show which way you re blowing; 
 
 I want to know your life, because 
 Your life is worth the knowing. 
 
 I love to follow all your hours; 
 
 Your dreams when day is winking; 
 And what you like, in folks and flowers, 
 
 And what you think you re thinking. 
 
 Then put away upon a shelf 
 The outside world; and whether 
 
 It snow or blow, just write yourself, 
 And never mind the weather! 
 
 "Zero weather. Snow creaks and crackles 
 under foot. Two people cross a carpet and give 
 a sharp spark to one another s noses. Went 
 skating yesterday. Did n t cut across the 
 shadow of a star because it was daylight, and 
 besides the critics say it can t be done. Shad 
 ow ? No: what is it? Reflex ? Sparkle ? 
 
 "A white world, with skeleton trees ner 
 vous systems anatomized and set up in the air, 
 frozen stiff is a queer thing: unearthly." 
 
 "It s a bad time to take up trees in the 
 winter; ground is frozen; roots can t go down. 
 This is a parable. If it were summer here, 
 no doubt I should be taking long walks and go 
 ing fishing, and mooning about, nights and 
 keeping my old environment out of my head as 
 thoroughly as possible. But it s winter the 
 dead vast and middle of it (as Howells quotes 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 197 
 
 of the summer) and my roots are all in the 
 air as yet, and I feel extremely queer. We are 
 supposed to have got settled. ... I have estab 
 lished a writing-table with the birds contiguous, 
 as near a window as I dare put em for fear of 
 freezing their noses off; you remember how the 
 cold air pierces in between the sashes of a win 
 dow like a long thin knife? . . . They manage to 
 have some green leaves and posies under a 
 glass but what looking gardens! They were 
 spaded in the fall, so that when not mercifully 
 veiled with snow they look all lumpy mud, 
 frozen. Gracious! what a looking world. 
 
 "I am supposed to be entered upon a mad 
 career of literary work. Have so far only writ 
 ten some very mild verses suitable for nurs 
 ery use in some amiable but weak-minded 
 family. But then I ve been skating twice! 
 Think of that real ice, too. You can make 
 
 Mr. B^ feel bad about that, if you tell him 
 
 - and make him think he d like to be here; 
 but he would n t. 
 
 "It s a curious illusion of yours out there, 
 that you can go out and pick flowers and hear 
 leaves rustle and see grass grow and feel 
 thorough-going sunshine. You can t, you know, 
 cause it s winter everywhere : snow and ice, or 
 frozen slush and mud it must be. I used to 
 have that same hallucination when I was out 
 there. Queer. Effect of the Climate, I s pose." 
 
198 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 "The air here makes a man feel like stirring 
 around lively. Sets your feet to walking you 
 of indefinite distances. But there s no splendid 
 Berkeley view to behold when you get to the 
 end of your walk. We can t have everything 
 in one spot. What s the use of crying for the 
 moon? Better flatten one s nose on the pane 
 and gaze upon it and try to be glad he has n t 
 got it. Should have to take care of it and pay 
 taxes on it if we had it." 
 
 "I am and shall be interested in all Cali 
 fornia goings-on, for I am glad to accept the 
 axiom some one has quoted to me, Once a 
 Californian, always a Californian. We may 
 be forced to blush sometimes for our politicians 
 out there, but our Bay civilization is a thing 
 to be congratulated on. ... 
 
 "Spring just faintly appearing here- 
 snubbed by a snow-storm every few days. No 
 leaves out, but robins and blue-birds, and buds 
 swelling." 
 
 "Summer is a-cumin in. Loudly sings 
 cucku, that is to say, the wobbin, and the 
 gluebird, and the noriole. It is 80 - - warm, 
 and a thunder-storm night before last, and 
 crocuses and jonquils and hyacinths and prim 
 roses are in bloom in the gardens, and hepati- 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 199 
 
 cas and anemones, as well as arbutus, in the 
 woods. But there is not enough oxygen in the 
 warm south wind. It is a very soft and musical 
 wind on the blossomed elms and maples, and 
 just beginning to be scented with cherry blos 
 soms but it lacks the oxygen of the sea 
 breeze. Funny old world! Where there are 
 lovely things to see in the country, the air 
 tries to prevent your having the energy of a 
 dormouse, to go out to walk and see them. 
 Where the air is bracing, there s nothing much 
 to go out for to see. Evidently a world not 
 meant to make its denizens perfectly contented. 
 The duty of not being contented! what an 
 easy duty!" 
 
 His letters to Dexter and Williams are in the 
 old vein, and there is one to (Governor) Bald 
 win showing how well the college bond held: - 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., April 25. 83. 
 
 Your note and the package came yesterday. 
 Thank you very much. . . . 
 
 But the real difficulty with me is to get 
 books. No, there s a worse one to get peo 
 ple. But that, I suppose, we all have, every 
 where. I have organized a town library asso 
 ciation in the village here. Where can w T e get 
 any gifts of books? ... I am trying to get the 
 schools into the library work. But oh, for books I 
 
200 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 I hope to see your face again some day. 
 But I don t know when or where. It is a long 
 ways from here to New Haven. Further than 
 from San Francisco, a little. . . . 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, May 7, 83. 
 
 . . . Papers again received. Thank you. 
 "The Critic" I see. It is Bohemian, though 
 bright enough. Why can we have no magazines 
 or papers that are not just a little second 
 choppy? "Life," now, as compared with 
 "Punch"! Gray-Parker, compared with Du 
 Maurier (why does the former never by any 
 accident depict a lady or gentleman? Because 
 he never saw one, near?) 
 
 "The Spectator" I like very much. Should 
 like your copies all the better if you ran your 
 pencil here and there where you have said 
 "hear, hear." A paper with a pencil line is 
 most as good as a letter. " The Church Times " 
 is the funniest comic paper I have seen. No 
 wonder they can support a "Punch" in Eng 
 land, where the church is itself an education 
 in the ludicrous for the whole people. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., May 15, 83. 
 TUESDAY. 
 
 MY DEAR BALDWIN, Yours of 10th is at 
 hand. I was unusually glad of your letter, from 
 the fact that I looked upon you as pretty much 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 201 
 
 gone out of my horizon. This epistle brings 
 you in again, most visibly, and I seem to recog 
 nize that you were not gone at all. You speak 
 in a very friendly way of my small volume of 
 poems. Yes, they are very middle-age-y; and 
 maybe it s better to let the youngsters do the 
 piping, as they do the dancing. Tityrus with 
 a bald head and false teeth and a shrunk 
 shank, it s enough to titter-us, isn t it? 
 (That s the very kind of bad pun you used to 
 do in freshman year.) Land of love! that 
 was in 1857-58. Was that just before or just 
 after the glacial epoch? As to the Bones poem, 
 I shall be most happy to try to have something. 
 Perhaps I shall be your way next week, or week 
 after, for a day or two, and will try to see you. 
 Thank you very much for your kind offer 
 of hospitality to us. I don t know whether it 
 will be possible for my wife to go on, but I 
 should be most happy to accept for one or 
 both of us. Let me see. The Bones address 
 will be sort of humorous, won t it? and so 
 the poem might be pretty serious if short? 
 Or must I frisk and be very foolish "pin 
 nacled dim in the intense inane " ? I think I 11 
 have to be serious. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 He accepted the invitation, read a poem at 
 
202 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 the reunion of Skull and Bones at Yale, and 
 spent a few weeks of old-fashioned vacation 
 at his birthplace, Windsor, whence he writes : 
 
 WINDSOR, CONN., June, 1883. 
 
 I have been making a pilgrimage to Elling 
 ton to-day. ... It has been, to begin with, a 
 perfect June day, and you remember the look 
 of it in these regions: the blue sky with white 
 dapples in it, the lustrous leaves not yet long 
 enough out of their sheaths to have lost their 
 tender new green, the fields full of daisies (too 
 full, the honest farmer would say but not too 
 full for the passing vagabonds to enjoy), the 
 laurel glimmering in the woods (remember it?), 
 the roads as they run through thickety places 
 full of the smell of wild grape blossoms (re 
 member em?), the rye soft and wavy (nothing 
 but rye in the sandy plains betwixt here and 
 Ellington, or a little tobacco and spindly corn) 
 plain living and high thinking must be the 
 rule out around there among the farmers. . . . 
 
 Ellington is beautiful. It might be just a 
 little quiet in the winter, for gay people like 
 you . . . but at this season it is great. There s 
 a glorious silence there. I saw a man, and a boy 
 with a toy wagon, and another man, all on the 
 street at once. But they went into dooryards 
 and were seen no more. What a dignity and 
 placid reserve about the place! The houses 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 203 
 
 all look like the country-seats of persons of 
 great respectability who had retired on a com 
 petence and retired a great ways while they 
 were about it. And what big houses they used 
 to build. Used to, I say, because there is n t 
 a house over there that looks less than a thou 
 sand years old : not that they look old as seem 
 ing worn or rickety at all, but old as being very 
 stately and wise and imperturbable. I am 
 struck, all about here in Connecticut, with the 
 well-kept-up look of the houses. Paint must 
 be cheap no, t is n t that. Paint is prob 
 ably pretty dear; but they believe in keeping 
 everything slicked up. Yet there are a few 
 oldest of the old houses that came out of the 
 ark, I know. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO, July, 1883. 
 I have myself just "lit" from a flight among 
 Eastern places. Have been gone about two 
 months : the old habit, you see, of getting away 
 for summer vacation. No mountains, to be 
 sure, to flee to, but the White hills .vcy 
 snKtto are considered and believed to be 
 mountains in New England, and I would not 
 cruelly undeceive them there. I called them 
 mountains whenever I could think of it 
 especially Mount Washington, which really is 
 a very pretty piece of rising ground: specially 
 at sunset when it * e wraps the drapery of its " 
 
204 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 cloud-shadows and ridge-shadows about it, 
 and gets rosy on top. ... I had a few days in 
 New York: found it as of old (and more than 
 of old, a good deal) a splendid city: nothing 
 in Europe handsomer or gayer than Fifth 
 Avenue of an afternoon, or by electric light 
 in the evening. But I rather hated it, except as 
 a wonderful show, and got out of it quickly 
 to old Windsor, which is sleepier than ever: 
 lovely old place though, "home of per 
 petual peace." 
 
 It is a generous soul that writes without 
 reference to accurate tally of give and get. 
 You and - - are about the only ones among 
 my friends that will do it. Why should n t we? 
 Are we bound by the slaveries that women sub 
 mit to, with their double entry (front entry 
 and back entry) book-keeping of social "calls" 
 (hence the phrase, the "call of duty"?) Poo* 
 women ! Who would be thou ! 
 
 July 16, 83. 
 
 I am just back from a summering in the 
 ancient and somnolent pastures of New Eng 
 land : some weeks at my old home, Windsor, in 
 the Connecticut River valley you remember 
 how green and peaceful that region is, corn 
 fields and hay-fields, and elm-shaded streets 
 and maple-shaded houses (with green blinds, 
 mostly shut tight), and patches of their pretty 
 woods the trees only shrubs to a California 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 205 
 
 eye, but ever so fresh and graceful, and lus 
 trous with rain or dew: a week in the White 
 Mountains they, too, dwarf varieties, but 
 capable of good coloring and various pictur 
 esque "effects": and a few days on the Maine 
 seashore. 
 
 No discount on the Atlantic Ocean. The 
 only thing East that does n t seem like a feeble 
 imitation, after living so long in California. (I 
 hardly except the people as to certain charac 
 teristics. . . .) 
 
 Aug., 83. 
 
 It is an evidence of the irrational attach 
 ment one gets (as cats do) to places, that the 
 Berkeley postmark (which the good Dr. - 
 makes very conscientiously : ex pede Herculem, 
 the mark of a careful and just man) gives me 
 always a pleasant little twinge of homesickness. 
 It is an evidence of the somewhat more rational 
 attachment we get to people, that your hand 
 writing does likewise, only more so. ... 
 
 We are having hot, moist, muggy summer 
 weather. We live on the recollections of the 
 Maine coast and the White Mountains. It is 
 pleasant to know that there it does n t rain hot 
 water. Once in a while I reflect, also, with 
 pleasure, that you in Berkeley are cool and 
 vigorous and chipper, while we are being par 
 boiled. But there are beautiful things to behold 
 here on these summer mornings, and glorious 
 
206 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 summer nights. We have moonlight here. The 
 full moon is a ripper, I tell you. Great on a row 
 of maples big fellows with a shade deep 
 and black. I hope Mr. Crane is all right 
 again. 
 
 Aug. 11, 83. 
 
 DEAR KELLOGG, Yours of 4th was re 
 ceived yesterday, and papers containing the 
 same sad news of Mr. Crane s death. I had 
 heard that he was seriously ill, but afterward 
 that he was supposed to be out of danger; so 
 that I was greatly surprised when the news 
 came. Somehow he seemed a man that would 
 not die: there seemed such an amount of quick, 
 active life in him. I always thought of him as 
 so thoroughly alive. He always came to my 
 recollection as he looked when speaking in the 
 Club perfectly quiet in manner and tone, 
 and every fibre of his brain evidently electric. 
 I had written him a letter a few weeks ago, 
 from an impulse to tell him how well I appreci 
 ated him and liked him. I am specially glad 
 now that I did. Another evidence that a man 
 had better always follow his first impulse. . . . 
 And it [his mind] was kept clear and reinforced 
 all the time by an integrity of intellect that 
 made him look first of all to see what was true. 
 Other men were after the right sound, or the 
 prudent word, or the polite one, or the amiable 
 one, or one that would stop a gap when ideas 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 207 
 
 were wanting. He was after the exact and una- 
 dulerated fact. And my brain was actually in 
 love with his, ever since I first knew him. 
 
 Personally, he never in the least warmed 
 toward me; but I never in the least looked for 
 that. One of the things that made me like him 
 was that I seemed to see that he divined my 
 own limitations, and weighed me pretty accu 
 rately. I admired him the more from the fact 
 that he did not at all admire me, 1 and I liked 
 him the more from the fact that his intellectual 
 honesty seemed to do justice to mine a 
 thing which from boyhood has been a perma 
 nent craving with me. Well, I did n t expect 
 him to die, and I am mighty sorry to lose him 
 from this world. Yes, he is one of the men that 
 help one to believe in the immortality of the 
 soul. I think Crane the real man must 
 be, somewhere, to-day, just as truly as he was a 
 month ago. 
 
 To the Californian friends, particularly Miss 
 Shinn, whose literary taste having largely 
 formed it himself he found congenial, he 
 wrote freely and without reserve, mixing sense 
 and nonsense, gossip and criticism as the fol 
 lowing scraps and paragraphs from the letters 
 of 1883-84 will show: 
 
 1 In fact, Mr. Crane cherished a peculiar admiration for 
 Professor Sill. 
 
208 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 I ve just finished a paper on the co-educa 
 tion question (you see how the public, at last, 
 has got excited about that? Oh, they will get 
 the old fogy colleges into it, yet) which I shall 
 maybe send to some magazine. The trouble is, 
 nobody agrees with anything he reads unless he 
 agreed with it beforehand so what s the use? 
 I don t believe a man was ever convinced of 
 anything since Adam. People blunder into 
 opinions somehow, and then stick to em. 
 
 I ll tell you what you are sure to enjoy 
 reading Jane Welch s letters. I was reading 
 a book about Rossetti t other day, in which 
 he is quoted as saying she was a "bitter little 
 woman " - but she probably snubbed him and 
 thought small beer of his brass crucifixes and 
 aesthetic flummeries. She was a cracker at let 
 ter writing, anyway. And she must (from his 
 own account of it) have suffered no end from 
 Carlyle s dreadful ways. She says in one letter 
 to him, "it would never do for me to leave you 
 for good [I infer she had really considered that 
 question], for I should have to go back next day 
 to see how you were taking it " ! I wish I could 
 step into my neighbor s there to see how you 
 are taking it. Bet you have forgotten where we 
 lived and how I spell my name! (Two 1 s 
 capital S). 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 209 
 
 So my A verses went in unre vised. 
 
 Just as well. The idea is all there. I almost feel 
 like despising and violating all/orm, when I see 
 the fools that worship it. I always understood 
 why Emerson made his poems rough and I 
 sympathize more than ever. 
 
 Nor do I like two adjectives with comma, in 
 description. Always, I should say, strike out 
 one of them (vide vs. Turgenieff) . 
 
 Exception 1. When the first qualifies the sec 
 ond + the noun as one quantity (no comma). 
 
 2. When the two describe practically the 
 same quality (as, the long, narrow slit). This 
 is not to be found in books, I guess, but is 
 correct, is n t it? 
 
 I don t think there s anything in the idea 
 that a man must stay out of medicine unless he 
 can go in like a monomaniac i.e., an enthusi 
 ast. Why shouldn t people go into things 
 soberly, seeing the other side, and all sides; and 
 with no vows to stay in till death do them part. 
 It sounds well to lay down great moral axioms 
 about what people should do and should n t do, 
 and get them off solemnly to young people 
 to their great impressment but ultimate con 
 fusion; but it is a little absurd. 
 
 Read Caine s "Recollections of Rossetti" 
 
210 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 but it will make you melancholy. Heavens! 
 what does n t? Carlyle and Emerson corre 
 spondence, for instance. 
 
 Jefferson s "Real Lord Byron" (Franklin 
 Square) makes him awfully real indeed : selfish, 
 vulgar, low. Shelley was ten times as much of a 
 man. 
 
 C. Kegan Paul s "Essays" are good. 
 
 Old Don Quixote is perennially good read 
 ing. A Dore copy lies on our parlor table, and 
 every few days at some odd ten minutes I open 
 it and read again. That of the enchanted boat, 
 for instance. It is universal human nature. 
 Cervantes really was like Shakspere. 
 
 Do you know Landor s "Imaginary Con 
 versations"? Some of them are Shaksperian. 
 Read some of them if you have n t. They are 
 real dramatic poems, like Browning s, some of 
 them. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, e.g. 
 and Dante and Beatrice. 
 
 Hamerton s "Round my House" is pretty 
 reading for light reading. But I have lately 
 some moods that require the things that go 
 right to the core of the intellect, or else the 
 piteous and tragic things that wring my heart. 
 Sometimes history plain prose will serve 
 best. Mommsen s "Rome," e.g., in the Julius 
 Csesar epoch. The novelists for the most part 
 seem idle chatterers. . 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 211 
 
 Read "Emily Bronte" in the Famous Wo 
 men Series (the style, etc., you need not resent 
 or criticise the total effect of the picture is 
 all) -- then re-read " Villette." 
 
 How do you like Miss Phelps s new book? 
 I confess it moved me greatly perhaps hit 
 ting just the right mood to do it in. ... Read 
 A. Trollope s "Autobiography"? (Franklin 
 Square and big print.) To me very interesting. 
 Think of that mother of his! Would like to 
 have known her. Be sure you read Renan s 
 "Recollections." 
 
 Oct. 25, 83. 
 
 Did you know Kant wrote some poems 
 when young (I don t know but later than 
 young) ? This is one : - 
 
 "Was auf das Leben folgt, deckt tiefe Finsterniss; 
 Was uns zu thun gebiihrt, des [sic] sind wir nur gewiss, 
 Dem kann, wie Lilienthal, kein Tod die Hoffnimg rauben, 
 Der glaubt, um recht zu thun, recht thut, urn froh zu 
 glauben." 
 
 Have you read Daudet s bit of reminis 
 cence of Turgenieff in "Century"? And the 
 portrait! 
 
 If only men did n t die just as they are get 
 ting ripe and great! Death isn t a gentle 
 angel. The old view is the true view. No 
 flowers can hide the skull. It is not only awful 
 it is horrible that people should die. 
 
212 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 You are not like me if you don t find yourself 
 doubting the tangible existence of people when 
 you have no current evidence. (Talk about 
 belief in immortality: I find it hard enough 
 to believe in real being at all, when it is well 
 around a corner anywhere, out of sight. Still 
 I do sort o believe in immortality. Can t 
 make myself believe it s all hereditary pre 
 possession either. But whether old friends 
 will ever have time to find each other out?) 
 (Quid metui resurrectus ? Meantime this life is 
 enough for us to think about. There s no 
 doubting we live now.) . . . 
 
 The moral of it all is, brace up ! As young 
 Or me says in"Orley Farm "(you have to read 
 two or three of Trollope after his "Autobiog 
 raphy"), it won t do for a fellow ever to knock 
 under. To himself, you know. To let himself 
 see that he s afraid. Besides, what is there to 
 squelch anybody, in all these things? It s an 
 episode anyhow. What 11 you bet we are not 
 immortal? In that case the whole affair is only 
 a picnic a day s excursion and no matter 
 how it comes out. To-morrow will have new 
 chances. I rather incline to think that all those 
 people who die with no hope of (or fear of) 
 immortality are in for the biggest surprise of 
 their lives. 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 213 
 
 Jan. 4, 84. 
 
 You will like this winter weather. Remem 
 ber how the snow creaks under foot, in zero- 
 cold? and the good smell of frozen oxygen, and 
 how your mustache freezes up, and how the 
 fields of blue-white snow stretch away every 
 where, and Pan retires all his passions and emo 
 tions from the landscape, and leaves only pure 
 intellect cold and white and clear? One 
 ought to have, though, a house about seven 
 miles square, full of open fires and open friends 
 
 - both kept well replenished and poked up. - 
 I should like to see some of these winter scenes, 
 and some of these sunsets, out of your west 
 window. I wish you a very happy rest-of- 
 the-year. 
 
 You say you have written many times to 
 me mentally and say that such things bring 
 no replies. You do them injustice. Certainly 
 they do. Only the replies are also mental. You 
 have had no end of such. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO, May 12, 1884. 
 DEAR Miss B., You recollect old Geo. 
 Herbert after a season of dumps congratu 
 lates himself that once more he doth "relish 
 versing" so there are faint symptoms that 
 now that the apple trees are at last in blossom 
 I may relish writing to my friends. Alack, I 
 have not so many to whom I ever write, or from 
 
214 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 whom I am ever written to (I no longer teach 
 the English language), that I need wait so long 
 to write at least a brief scratch. . . . The truth 
 is I desire to hear from you. Otherwise there 
 are hardly enough apple trees out to move me, 
 even this May morning. Is it any wonder 
 people talk about the weather? For what is 
 there that plays the deuce with us like that? I 
 confess I am completely under it half the time 
 and more than half under, the balance. It s 
 very pretty now, I assure you. Treacherous, a 
 little, but full of greenery and blossoms. In 
 New England, no doubt, it is still prettier. In 
 the past week the sky even in Ohio has 
 been summer blue. You remember what that 
 is, between big round pearly white clouds? 
 But for six months previously it was a dome of 
 lead, or dirty white. Now and then, of a rare 
 day, the color of a black and blue spot on a 
 boy s knee. Once or twice in a month, when 
 the sun tried to shine, the hue of very poor 
 skim milk. The gods economizing, no doubt, 
 and taking that mild drink in place of nectar 
 or slopping it around feeding their cats or 
 the Sky terriers. If I recollect aright, you have 
 midsummer in May, there. Hot forenoons and 
 bootiful fog in the evening? I would like to 
 help you dig your garden. We have now ap 
 ple, pear, and cherry trees in blossom, yel 
 low currant, white and purple lilacs, flowering 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 215 
 
 cherry: pansies, tulips, lily of the valley, and 
 genuine solid green turf sprinkled with gold 
 buttons of dandelions. The air is full of fra 
 grance. The robins, bluebirds, wrens, and 
 orioles are building wonderful nests all over 
 the place. Three red-and-black game bantams 
 are parading on the lawn, and seven baby ban 
 tams about as big as the end of my thumb are 
 skittering around under the laylocs. 
 
 That is a pleasant picture "robins, blue 
 birds, wrens and orioles building nests all over 
 the place, and bantams parading on the lawn." 
 It suggests an easy, well-to-do, comfortable 
 way of life. In a sense this is a fair impression. 
 The home of his uncle and father-in-law at 
 Cuyahoga Falls was an ample house the 
 house of a sucessful banker in a Middle West 
 ern town. As to the household itself, Sill de 
 scribed it himself, in a little unsigned article 
 for the "Atlantic" on "The Cheerfulness of 
 Birds," with a fulness of detail from which he 
 would probably have shrunk if he had not felt 
 sure that both his own identity and that of the 
 household were safe from surmise : 
 
 We are, at our house, I confess, a rather sombre 
 family. There are no young children among us. 
 The elderly people are silent by temperament, and 
 grow more silent as age comes on. There is never 
 any ill-temper in the house, never any bickering 
 
216 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 or nagging, no spiteful epigrams or sidelong sar 
 casms. We seem really to like each other, although 
 we are all "blood-relations." We get on, therefore, 
 from year to year. No doubt we seem to others a 
 happy family, and perhaps we are; but we are never 
 a merry family. The house is so built that the rooms 
 where the sun shines liberally are not the rooms 
 most used; not the rooms, for example, that we are 
 accustomed to use together. The heating apparatus 
 is that most successful and most lugubrious one 
 steam. The radiators are large black surfaces, with 
 just enough of gilt at edge and corner to make the 
 black hopelessly conspicuous, flattening themselves 
 against the wall as if they were aware of their ugli 
 ness. No blazing and sparkling and cheerily snap 
 ping open fire illuminates any of the " living" rooms. 
 (The kitchen is the most cheerful place in the house, 
 as I have occasionally seen it, empty and de 
 serted, after the cook and the maid had retired at 
 night, with the rich hot coals still sending out 
 their rays merrily through chink and crevice of the 
 range, for the sole benefit of the house-cat, stretched 
 out with full abandon on the toasting-hot hearth.) 
 Our deplorable habit, at meals, is to attend to the 
 business in hand with grave decorum very de 
 cently and in order, no doubt, but for the most 
 part silently. I have known some one of us, ap 
 parently for the moment sensible of something op 
 pressive in this gravity, to venture on a frivolous 
 remark, and to have it received in silence, as a thing 
 not congruous with the roast meat, especially dur 
 ing the solemn action of its being carved and dis 
 tributed. We come down to breakfast not at all 
 out of humor (we are not invalids), but disposed 
 to a very calm and peaceful demeanor. We wish 
 each other good-morning with a genuine affection, 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 217 
 
 but the remark, having been responded to, is not 
 followed up. An observation concerning the weather 
 does not usually lead anywhere. When we have 
 a more lively visitor, we easily fall in with his mood, 
 and are capable of a good deal of sprightliness on 
 such an occasion, not in the least labored or af 
 fected, either; but by ourselves we are habitually 
 silent, and occupied with our own sedate reflec 
 tions. 
 
 All this makes I cannot but see it and feel it, 
 much as I myself share in the responsibility a 
 sombre house. 
 
 But there is one bright spot, and that furnishes 
 the text of my utterances now upon the subject. 
 It is the tame canary, " Johnny-quil." Not only is 
 he himself always cheerful (and who ever saw a well 
 canary depressed?), but he is the cause of cheerful 
 ness in others. In the midst of one of our long si 
 lences we hear his little pipe ringing out from his 
 sunny eyrie in the porch or the sitting-room, and 
 some one remarks, "Just hear Johnny-quil!" Our 
 barometers all go up ten degrees. Besides, every 
 body chirrups to him. It is not only, therefore, 
 what he says to us, but what we say to him, that 
 makes him the enlivener of the family. You can t 
 exactly chirrup to a grown-up human being, 
 especially if he is carving a fowl, or reading a re 
 ligious newspaper. But it is always possible, and 
 apparently always inevitable, to say something 
 chipper and chirpy to the bird, as we pass his cage. 
 I have noticed this odd thing: that when Rhodora 
 or Penelope or Cassandra stops at the cage, and 
 says some little nonsensical thing to the small yel 
 low songster, or half whistles to him in passing, not 
 only does he pipe up, but pretty soon you hear her 
 own voice, from a distant room, humming a bit of 
 
218 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 some gay waltz or madrigal. The unconscious lifting 
 of one s own more sober mood to the higher level 
 of the bird s irrepressible good spirits lasts on a 
 little beyond the instant. I recommend him and his 
 merry kind to other silent houses. He is worth his 
 weight in sunshine. 
 
 The setting, so to speak, for the house we 
 shall also get from Sill, in a few sentences from 
 another of his intimate little essays for the 
 "Atlantic," a picture of the first snow: 
 
 Yesterday the maples and oaks and the great 
 round-topped linden on the lawn were still full of 
 their wealth of color. There it lies now on the snow, 
 smouldering reds and yellows, burning with 
 dusky blushes on (not in, as ordinarily) the level 
 floor of the white cold. 
 
 The prettiest thing, however, in this particular 
 case of the first snow, is the way its softness, early 
 in the night, caused it to stick fast, silvering the 
 windward side of every object. Not only are the 
 firs deep loaded, the lower boughs weighted and 
 banked till each tree is, from the ground up, a 
 continuous tent of snow, but the trunks and every 
 round limb and forking twig of the elms and oaks 
 are puffed with fleckless white. It makes of them a 
 vivid kind of crayon sketch: every bough has its 
 dark shadow away from the sun, and its white high 
 light toward the wind. The gate-posts are capped 
 high with the rounded ermine. 
 
 The little wren-house on the stub of the dead pear 
 tree is piled thick to windward, and fringed with 
 icicles on the eaves to leeward, like the abodes of all 
 the rest of us. Across the river, on the crown of the 
 slope, stands a straight high wall of woods. It is a 
 
MAN OF LETTERS 219 
 
 reversed drawing in charcoal; all the tops, the soft 
 mass of bare boughs and twigs, being shaded dark, 
 while the stems of the tall hickories and oaks stand 
 forth white as marble columns, and on the smooth 
 snow of the lawn stands a slender upright wand, 
 left solitary in the deserted tennis-court, where it 
 supported the net in the middle. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE CRAFTSMAN 
 
 IN the pleasant surroundings just described, 
 having "established a writing-table with the 
 birds contiguous," and a "favorite pacing- 
 ground, a wide path from the round rose-bed 
 to the elm tree, running between lines of stately 
 cannas," he continued at his writing. He might 
 poke fun at it as he did, "I am supposed to 
 be entered upon a mad career of literary work. 
 Have so far only written some very mild verses," 
 etc., but in his heart he knew it to be as 
 serious a matter as anything had ever been to 
 him. In some respects the conditions at Cuya- 
 hoga Falls were all that could be desired, but 
 those that were lacking were terribly signifi 
 cant. First and foremost was the lack of atmo 
 sphere and companionship. He had "no man 
 like-minded with him." There was not a fellow- 
 craftsman within five hundred miles who shared 
 his ambitions and with whom he could talk over 
 his plans ; moreover, he was far removed from 
 the main currents of literary activity such 
 as it was in this country. That he should have 
 been able under these conditions to produce as 
 much both in poetry and prose as he did and 
 

 
THE CRAFTSMAN 221 
 
 tp keep the flame in the shrine ablaze is an 
 achievement. Yet it may explain why in the 
 five years between leaving Berkeley and his 
 death he planned and executed no work of sub 
 stantial proportions. A letter to Miss Shinn, 
 then editing the "Overland Monthly," throws 
 light on a frame of mind which was recurrent 
 rather than permanent, but which shows the 
 effect of being in a back-water and a touch 
 of his inveterate self -distrust : - 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO, Aug. 16, 1884. 
 SATUBDAY. 
 
 I sent you yesterday a pretty long screed 
 about Emerson, telling you to use the whole of 
 it, or part of it, or very little of it, or none at 
 all of it. I should be equally well suited either 
 way. 
 
 I don t think other people feel the way I 
 do about that. When a thing is written, they 
 have a trembling hope, at least, that it is good, 
 and anyhow wish to have it used. But you 
 should see the equanimity with which I write 
 thing after thing both prose and verse 
 and stow them away, never sending them any 
 where, or thinking of printing any book of 
 them, at present, if ever. Sometimes I do think 
 I will leave a lot of stuff for some one to pick 
 out a post-humorous volume from but more 
 and more my sober judgment tells me that 
 
22 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 other people have seen or will see all that I 
 have, and will state it better. 
 
 It is very strange, though, the difference be 
 tween my positiveness of judgment as to other 
 people s writing and my lack of any power 
 to judge at all of my own. It would, perhaps, 
 be an interesting psychological study for you 
 if I could make you see my mind about this. 
 I judge swiftly and positively of literature in 
 general. For one thing, the consciousness has 
 more and more been ground into me that my 
 whole point of view is hopelessly different from 
 that of people in general I mean educated 
 and intelligent people. Nor do I have the com 
 pensation of feeling this difference a superiority. 
 I should have made an excellent citizen of some 
 other planet, maybe, and they got me on the 
 wrong one. 
 
 I don t feel the least fitness for a writer. 
 When anything of mine is to be printed I have 
 often a horrid sense now the fingers of the 
 whole universe will be pointing at this fellow 
 as an example of a wretch that has mistaken 
 his vocation. When it is once printed, I feel in 
 stantly relieved, in the knowledge that nobody 
 reads things after all or cares whether they 
 are good or not. The fingers I perceive to be all 
 pointing at more conspicuous objects, or being 
 harmlessly sucked in the mouth: so I don t 
 care a bit till the next thing is about to be 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 223 
 
 printed. The "Century " has had some time a 
 sonnet of mine. You would not believe how I 
 have actually shuddered internally each month 
 with fear that now I am going to be stuck up on 
 a post without a rag on me at last, and my 
 nightmare was to come true. 
 
 I don t believe I ever shall write a thing 
 that is really good. Yet, with it all, I have 
 unbounded conceit of my own judgment about 
 the things I feel I see clearly. 
 
 Queer, queer fellows we all are. Must be 
 fun for the bigger fellows that hide in the clouds 
 and watch us. 
 
 Yours and I d like to hear how you are. 
 
 E. R. S. 
 
 The letters show his increasing preoccupa 
 tion with pen and ink. He might say what he 
 liked about teaching being his real business in 
 life: he took to the writer s trade like a duck to 
 water : 
 
 "Yes, I could do the review, but it might 
 not suit your public. I haven t the habit of that 
 sort of judicial tone, so called and considered, 
 which consists in thinking one man about 
 as good as another, and in showing wherein 
 everybody is mediocre and not quite so excel 
 lent as somebody else (who would in turn be 
 proved mediocre if being reviewed). ..." 
 
 "I would rather take a hand in a collection 
 
224 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 of French translations than German, for my 
 part. For I am coming to believe the Germans 
 an unpoetic people even their greatest poets 
 are pretty wordy and dull and clumsy. But 
 there is a school of modern French poets worth 
 translating. I have been doing some of Sully 
 Prudhomme, for instance. It is to the Ger 
 mans as cloud-fluff to cheese. Or as the 
 violin to the horse-fiddle. ..." 
 
 He continued the argument in a graceful 
 essay in little for the "Atlantic": 
 
 " Perhaps the best topics on which to feel the 
 difference are those two immemorial inspirers 
 of song, war and love. When the German poet 
 sings of war, it is with the solemnity of Korner s 
 Gebet Wahrend der Schlact. When the 
 French poet sings of it, it is with the *Gai! 
 Gai! of Beranger. In the one, you hear the 
 heavy tread of men, a dull, regular beat, which, 
 after all, is not very distinguishable to the ear, 
 as to whether it be an advancing column or a 
 funeral march. In the other you hear only the 
 bugles ringing and shouts of enthusiasm and 
 excitement. 
 
 "In their treatment of love there is even 
 sharper contrast. The German word Hebe has 
 quite a different atmosphere of suggestion 
 from the French amour. The German poet sings 
 of love and home; you feel that there is at least 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 225 
 
 a possibility that the passion of to-day will 
 outlast the year, or the years. Constancy is one 
 of its very elements. When the French poet 
 sings of love, it is very delicate, rosy, beautiful, 
 but we do not hear of home." 
 
 "Am hurried just now. Have a manuscript 
 story of an author-in-posse to examine and (I 
 fear) to criticise to pieces, an article to write 
 for the Tall Mall . . . and a book to review for 
 the Nation, which they have just sent me: 
 besides being awfully in arrears in correspond 
 ence. The spirit of writing letters has not 
 moved my ink-waters for a long while. My 
 friends (few enough at the best) must all be 
 disgruntled at my silence. - - is the best man 
 about that. He writes without regard to my 
 sins of omission. He knows I don t change my 
 animwn with my ccelum. ..." 
 
 "... I am suspicious of eccentric people, as a 
 rule, moreover. And the fag end of a famous 
 family is never wholly satisfactory: the be 
 ginnings of good blood are better than the thin 
 lees. Each generation pours fresh water on the 
 same old tea-leaves of genius, and it gets very 
 weak. . . . Did you ever look at Galton s 
 Faculty ? Interesting book. ... He gives 
 some copies of composite photographs. I have 
 been trying lapping one over another with the 
 stereoscope and it works beautifully. . . . 
 McGahan s Campaign against Khiva is a 
 
226 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 good book to read at some odd moments, for 
 distracting the mind. I ve taken to travels 
 again lately. ... I am in the midst of George 
 Sand s Histoire de ma Vie. You must read 
 it. It is great. We have to take her right in. 
 She is a beautiful mugwump. Decidedly you 
 must get up your French. 
 
 "This man Flaubert I must find out more 
 about. If George Sand (at sixty-two) loved 
 him so much at sixty-five, he must have been 
 something. 
 
 "I like to find in such histories, that people 
 can love when they are sixty, or seventy, or 
 eighty. It is all life till love goes." 
 
 Random flashes of self-disclosure light up 
 the letters, and a few passages here and there 
 show his moods toward the end of 1884 : 
 
 "Heweis s * Musical Memories has a number 
 of good things : among others account of Wag 
 ner s Trilogy descriptive, not so deep as 
 most of em. Oh, the idiots that write about 
 great men we idiots? Horrendum! 
 
 "Derelictum but I haven t yet looked 
 into Morley on Emerson. I do so hate all I see 
 about most anybody. Let a man write about 
 himself. It s the only fellow he knows anything 
 about. . . . 
 
 "... I want to write to you about a lot of 
 things, but I hate to use pen and ink. An Eng- 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 227 
 
 lishman is said to have invented an addition to 
 the telephone which writes out your message 
 for you on paper. Why not every fellow talk 
 his article or letter into it, and not use pen? 
 We re coming to it but * slowly, slowly, 
 and we * wither on the shore (if that s it). 
 Browning is great. Ever read his * Pauline ? 
 Early poem, but things in it. ... 
 
 "I never could see how any one past twenty 
 could reminisce to other ears, or to their 
 own. The past seems so full of mistakes and 
 follies and infelicities both from the without 
 and the within. Besides : what need to can 
 the old dead sea fruit there is always a fresh 
 day ready to pick off the tree Yggdrasill. Time 
 has a kind of tart fresh flavor that I always 
 like when picked fresh but others may have 
 all the preserves of that fruit. . . ." 
 
 The series of letters to Aldrich reveals a grow 
 ing regard which deepened as the acquaintance 
 went on. Both were poets and craftsmen who 
 loved "the tool s true play." The letter to Holt 
 comes in not inappropriately. 
 
 To Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., July 29, 1884. 
 MY DEAR SIR, You are very kind to 
 make these suggestions apropos of my returned 
 paper on "Studies." Perhaps I will try to pre- 
 
228 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 pare such an article as you have in mind, some 
 day. There is much in what you say concern 
 ing better methods in the humane studies. I 
 wish you would yourself write on that. You 
 are no doubt right in refusing this manuscript. 
 I know it is very true, but your judgment shakes 
 my faith in its useful or suitable form; so that 
 I shall not send it elsewhere, but try again for 
 you at some future time, unless some one else 
 states the thing better. 
 
 I had sent two poems before receiving your 
 note. I shall be doing that from time to time, 
 and wish you to send them back when you 
 don t want them with the impersonal printed 
 slip; for if I thought you were to be put to the 
 trouble of writing I should not feel free to 
 send. 
 
 You understand, I don t send my things 
 about. I have, to be sure, sent to the "Cen 
 tury," rarely; in fact they have a weak sonnet 
 of mine now whose appearance I have been 
 dreading monthly for half a year or more, and 
 which I ought not to have signed. And I give 
 the "Overland" something, now and then, from 
 patriotism and admiration of Miss Shinn s 
 heroic efforts to keep her magazine afloat out 
 there. 
 
 I am rather ashamed of sending you things 
 you don t want, but I have no friendly sage at 
 hand to help me judge of my things, and I can t 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 229 
 
 tell myself. So I have to send and trouble 
 you. 
 
 Thanking you again for your friendliness, 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Oct. 7, 1884. 
 Will you tell me whether you would rather 
 have more than one poem from a man at a time, 
 or not? I mean if they are acceptable poems. 
 That is to say, do you like to have on hand 
 accepted poems in advance from a writer of so 
 small fame as myself, or not? If I knew what the 
 supply was, I should be able to judge for my 
 self; but really I have always been at a loss to 
 know what you would prefer. As the "Atlantic " 
 is the only place I really care to print, and as 
 I send very rarely anywhere else, it would be 
 convenient for me to have a hint from you on 
 this point. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Sept. 26, 1884. 
 This picture is true to the great Redwood 
 forests of California. Perhaps it would not seem 
 untrue to the Eastern pine woods, as well. It 
 was pencilled down in the actual forest, though 
 only just now "written." 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
230 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Oct. 22, 84. 
 
 DEAR H , I send an article on Emer 
 son, good quotation for these times on one page 
 (leaf turned down). I shall vote for Cleveland, 
 but I don t like such a Hobson s choice. Vide 
 November "Atlantic" Contributors Club for 
 some French translations of mine. I only dared 
 say what I do about German poetry under the 
 fiction of a friend who thinks so. I still think 
 a volume of French translations would be a 
 good venture. I shall want to see and read the 
 German one when it is published, for of course 
 I know well enough there is some grand poetry 
 in German. 
 
 I will not say anything about Frank s 1 
 death. As Williams wrote me (announcing it 
 in five lines) "there is nothing to be said." 
 These things are getting to seem "life" to us 
 now which once looked to be something 
 different. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 1 Francis E. Kernochan, founder of the Red Room Club in 
 New York, from which grew the University Club. If there 
 was any sort of honest man that, at the outset of his college 
 life, Sill liked less than any other sort, it was the polished New 
 Yorker, and Kernochan was this ad unguem, and there never 
 was a better gentleman. Sill grew to appreciate him, and he, 
 William H. Fuller, the well-known art connoisseur, who died 
 in New York about 1895, and Stanford Newell, U.S. Minister 
 to The Hague at the time of the First Conference and a mem 
 ber of it, were the classmates probably next to those often 
 mentioned in the text in intimacy with Sill. 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 231 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Nov. 27, 84. 
 
 MY DEAR EDITOR, I send one other ver 
 sion of the sonnet, and the final one, I prom 
 ise you. I did not quite like the "Chateau in 
 Spain," for while its mood was congruous 
 enough if one understood her to say it with 
 some bitterness, which would account for 
 such a colloquial phrase, this might be too 
 much of a subtlety for the hasty reader, and we 
 must suppose all our readers to be hasty? 
 
 It would be a fine retort to make to me 
 "Allans done, oh, come now! when you get 
 your things to suit you send them, but don t 
 bother me so much." I will understand it to 
 be made, and try to be better in future. 
 
 I enclose a fresh sonnet as apology for this 
 note. Take either version of the other, or send 
 back both that and this if you like. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 "I like the anonymousness of the Contribu 
 tors Club. Would you not as soon print poems 
 for me unsigned? ... I like very much this 
 hammering at a poem when (as has too seldom 
 happened) I have a criticism that is worth any 
 thing, to suggest it to me. 
 
 "I should like it if I could talk over poetic 
 forms with you, by word of mouth, some 
 time." 
 
232 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 He opens the year 1885 with a dithyrambic 
 outburst on the weather and the landscape, 
 shot through with his ineradicable scientific 
 curiosity this time about the reasons for the 
 cylindrical structure of ice formations on the 
 branches and twigs of trees : 
 
 Jan. 18, 1885. 
 
 It would be the greatest Christmas card 
 you ever saw if I could send you a look at our 
 world this morning: mercury, 1 below zero; 
 ground, no ground at all but a sheet of ice- 
 crusted snow everywhere; every shrub and tree 
 a little cylinder of ice. The sun is on it now, 
 and the wind wags everything (not "waves," 
 because all is stiff in the ice-armor. It is 
 strange to see the awkward swaying of the elm- 
 boughs, as if drunk, and staggering about), and 
 everything glitters, with points of fire cold 
 fire (like Tennyson s stars, in "Maud") that 
 comes and goes incessantly. Why am I not out 
 looking at it? Because I went out and fed my 
 chickens, put hot water in their frozen crock, 
 got straw from the barn and filled one end of 
 their day-house, as foot- warmer for them, 
 stared around awhile, and got enough of it. 
 Zero weather nips the human nose and ears, 
 when these have been mollified by ten years of 
 California and more. 
 
 C. F. (the same that I was writing this 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 233 
 
 morning for it is still Sunday, Jan. 18, 85 
 except that the sun has gone down and taken 
 the glitter with it, though it has left all the ice). 
 It shone hard as ever it could all day, but made 
 no more impression on the ice-armor of the 
 trees than if it had been moonlight. I said this 
 morning, in my state of crude ignorance, that 
 each twig was surrounded by a cylinder of ice. 
 I have taken two walks since, one of them into 
 the woods down the river, and know more than 
 I did like the boy that the mule kicked. I 
 find that the ice has made a cylinder on the top 
 of each lateral (or slanting) twig, fastened to it 
 along a narrow line only. That is to say, the 
 twig is more than two thirds free of the ice. On 
 vertical twigs and branches, it is on the lee 
 ward side. It is a case for Professor John Le 
 Conte. I cannot understand it. The ice-cylin 
 der is one-fourth inch diameter on one-eighth 
 inch twigs. Little terminal clusters of maple 
 buds have small globes of ice around them. 
 Any weed that has pendent seeds or berries 
 left, has now diamond drops. The grasses that 
 stick up through the crusted snow (all glairy 
 like ice) have ice-cylinders on the leeward side, 
 sometimes one-fourth inch on mere threads, 
 and always attached only by a line on one side, 
 occasionally even skipping for a little space, 
 and not touching the grass. Some grasses 
 stand up thus [sketch] broken and pendent. 
 
234 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 The ice has made long drops on every thread 
 and seed. One field of delicate weed-stuff (dried 
 and frozen, left standing from last fall) was a 
 wilderness of glitter a mimic "glittering 
 heath" of Morris s "Sigurd." All this ice- 
 work, by the way, is perfectly pure, transpar 
 ent crystal. You know how finely divided an 
 elm s ultimate twiglets are, when bare? Imag 
 ine each one sheeted in this crystal and every 
 one a separate thread of white fire in the sun, 
 and glittering in the wind. One street is set 
 alone with such elms, arching over into maples 
 on the other side, and you can picture the vista 
 it makes. If you meet Dr. John, . . . ask him 
 what he makes of horizontal icicles, laid along 
 the tops of twigs, just touching them. 
 
 It is curious to see how much the matter of 
 signature that is, of publicity, bothered Sill 
 in his writing. He was perhaps supersensitive, 
 unduly self-conscious; but if that is granted, 
 the reason doubtless lies not so much in his 
 temperamental " skinlessness," as in the nature 
 of the writing into which he found himself 
 drawn. There was no solid block of work 
 biography, history, treatise or textbook set 
 or suggested to him. He found a demand and 
 a market for one sort of thing, fortunately or 
 not, the lyric and the personal essay. He was 
 thrown back upon himself: he must perforce 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 235 
 
 " look in his heart and write." To keep his 
 countenance he would fain keep hidden so far 
 as he might. His excuse for preoccupation 
 with the matter is complete, "but if writing or 
 printing verse is a serious or important matter 
 at all, of course this is serious and important to 
 me." He writes to Aldrich: 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Jan. 20, 1885. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, May I ask you about a 
 very personal matter. You know it is a com 
 mon experience that men have some mood 
 either a thing that properly belongs back some 
 where in past years, and recurs as a memory, or 
 one that pounces suddenly in on a life where it 
 does n t belong, and goes again a mood that 
 he expresses in verse perhaps exorcises by 
 doing so. He does not wish to put his name to 
 any such thing, and have his tailor or his den 
 tist confer with him about it the next day, and 
 yet it may seem a thing that is human enough 
 to be worth putting in print. Why should not a 
 man therefore assume a nom de plume (plume 
 de vie) to be used for certain writing? As if 
 Mr. Dick in "David Copperfield" had signed 
 his sane writing "Dick," and his accounts of 
 Charles I s head "lunadick." 
 
 You said you did not wish to print in the 
 "Atlantic" any anonymous poems (by the 
 way, I should like much to see more ones there 
 
236 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 1 
 
 since you told me of your own relation to 
 them). 
 
 It may be said but a man would be in 
 danger of printing (or offering for print) things 
 that he would have made better if his own 
 name were to go with them. No, I think not. 
 If he had a permanent mask he would be more 
 sensitive about this even than his own proper 
 face, and would do his best for it. 
 
 I wonder if this is not done more often than 
 people suspect. 
 
 For example, I send three things, signing a 
 name I have evolved from my inner conscious 
 ness. And one with my own name. If you can 
 find a leisure moment, sometime at your 
 convenience will you tell me what you 
 think about this matter of the mask? 
 
 The poems, of course, may come back with 
 out your being at any trouble about them, if 
 they do not seem available. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Jan. 25, 1885. 
 MY DEAR SIR, Let me add a word about 
 the mask or "nom de guerre 99 question. It has 
 just occurred to me that you may be under the 
 impression (as I find a number of acquaint 
 ances are) that I have published a volume of 
 poems. The little collection which I privately 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 237 
 
 printed two years ago was noticed among some 
 "recent poetry" in one or two magazines 
 (though I did not send them anywhere for 
 review) and so the impression got abroad that 
 it had been published. Now, if you supposed 
 me to have thus claimed a place among the 
 poets and failed to get it, you might possibly 
 interpret my wish to print poems over a mask 
 name, as that most absurd of things the 
 effort to retrieve under a mask, a failure of the 
 open face. No, it is far from being that ridicu 
 lous motive impossible in any case, as I have 
 never made any effort to make my own name 
 known. (I did publish a small volume when a 
 boy of poor stuff out of print years ago.) 
 My motive is what I mentioned to you 
 before; and another thing half fantastic you 
 might think it which cannot be very well 
 explained to any one at present. Pardon me 
 for thus forcing my personal affair on your 
 time and attention. But if writing or printing 
 verse is a serious or important matter at all, of 
 course this is serious and important to me. And 
 your courtesy to me hitherto has tempted me 
 into speaking of it to you. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 Meantime a matter of larger moment looms 
 up. Holt asks if he would consider returning to 
 
238 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 the academic world under conditions which 
 surely at an earlier day would have made the 
 strongest of appeals to him; namely, to teach 
 English at Yale. There is no evidence that 
 the Yale authorities were behind the question. 
 Mr. Holt has no recollection that they were. 
 It was only a desire on the part of a friend of 
 the man and the institution to see them to 
 gether. But now it probably seemed to Sill 
 too late. He states his own reasons; behind 
 what is said we may discern signs of the conflict 
 then raging between the "scientific" and the 
 "humanistic" wings in the faculties of Ameri 
 can colleges. Sill was probably wise in wishing 
 to avoid that strife. As to the "plain duty" to 
 which he refers, that appears to have been the 
 obligation to watch over the health of one of 
 the members of the household. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Jan. 23, 85. 
 
 DEAR HENRY [HOLT], Yours of the 21st 
 received. Thank you for answer to my ques 
 tion. 
 
 As to whether I would accept a certain 
 offer, if made : there would be two very seri 
 ous obstacles. First, that I am not the man, in 
 several important respects, to fill the place 
 well. I know the sort of man it requires, and I 
 am not the one. Second, that I could not leave 
 here at present. My plain duty is right here 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 239 
 
 and it would never do to run away from it. 
 Very good of you to think of such a thing. . . . 
 A man for that place should be picked out by 
 his enemies, not his friends. There is a great 
 opportunity there. 
 
 As ever, 
 
 Yours. 
 
 A few days later he writes again : - 
 "Neither ought I to give you the impression 
 that the religious question is my only reason 
 for not encouraging any effort to have me 
 selected at Yale for the vacant chair. . . . 
 Again, I would be sorry if I had made you 
 suppose that I am one of those bull-headed 
 enthusiasts who wishes to foist his own hobby 
 into every company. I remember one of my 
 students, since graduating, giving me warm 
 praise for the delicacy I had seemed to show in 
 respecting the religious points of view of my 
 classes, always. 
 
 "But, on the other hand, you cannot, of 
 course, realize (till you have come to teach the 
 subject) how all our best literature in this 
 century and a good deal of it in the last cen 
 tury dips continually into this underlying 
 stream of philosophical thought, and ethical 
 -feeling. In Memoriam/ for example, is one of 
 the poems I read with my senior classes. You 
 may discuss its rhythms, its epithets, its meta- 
 
240 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 phors, its felicities and infelicities of Art, 
 you are still on the surface of it. The fact is 
 that a thinking man put a good lot of his views 
 of things in general into it and those views 
 and his feelings about them are precisely the 
 literature there is in the thing. And the 
 study of it, as literature, should transfer these 
 views and feelings straight and clear to the 
 brain of the student. ... So of Middlemarch, 
 or Romola. Or Hume s* Essays. Or Faust, 
 or Manfred, or Kenan s Souvenirs de 1 en- 
 fance. 
 
 " The more you think of it, the more you will 
 come to see that the moment you drive the 
 study of literature away from the virile 
 thought of modern men and women, you drive 
 it into the puerilities of word-study, and 
 mousing about end-stopt lines and all that." 
 
 The allusion to Yale in this letter to Holt 
 evidently led his mind back to California, and 
 he lets out vigorously at the politics and nar 
 rowness of the place : 
 
 4 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, March 22, 85 (?). 
 
 DEAR H , Yours of the 15th was 
 
 received yesterday. I am sorry to hear you 
 have to look out for your health at all. No 
 doubt a few weeks of change will make you all 
 right again. My own prescription for nervous 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 241 
 
 dyspepsia would be a couple of months of 
 roughing it in the hills, say in California; but 
 perhaps it would not suit everybody. A New 
 Yorker would perhaps be unhappy without his 
 accustomed conveniences, and so defeat the 
 end. For it is necessary to be a little happy, I 
 suppose, to really cure dyspepsia. I shall hope 
 to get good news from you after you have been 
 free from business awhile. 
 
 Language chiefly conceals thought, and as 
 of old I never find that a letter has given much 
 light, on any complex subject, to my corre 
 spondent. I think we would probably agree 
 more nearly than a correspondence (epistolary) 
 would ever indicate, as to Yale College, et alia. 
 
 Perhaps I gave you the impression (not 
 that it s any matter) that my leaving the 
 University of California was caused wholly by 
 the religious question. In fact this was only one 
 vexation out of many. My heart was very 
 much set on two or three matters of university 
 progress, and things turned so as to defeat 
 them. For instance, I was interested (and am) 
 in the education of women. I wanted to make 
 co-education a complete success, and to that 
 end wanted to cut off a class of silly girls who 
 had no preparatory attainments and no par 
 ticular purpose, and who kept swarming in on 
 us as "specials" or "partial course" students. 
 Then the last straw was . . . which made the 
 
242 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 position of any self-respecting professor in 
 tolerable. The others stuck, liking their seats 
 and salaries ($3000 a year we had) ; but I let 
 that go in with a certain lack of physical tone 
 to determine me to resign. 
 
 He might easily have been thinking of Holt 
 and the rest of that loyal group of Yale class 
 mates when he wrote: 
 
 "How perpetually true it is that we never 
 learn anything new about anybody when we 
 have summered and wintered him in college! I 
 guess that s the chief good of a college course 
 - to know a few types right down to bedrock. 
 (It s a good sign as to the complex value of a 
 college education, that we are always finding 
 some new thing that is the chief good of a 
 college course. ) 
 
 "Have I remarked to you a few hundred 
 times that I have discovered that no one has a 
 friend except college people? Business men 
 who never went to college never have such a 
 thing as an intimate friend. Don t know what 
 the word means." 
 
 Partly as a result of writing his opinions of 
 French literature, - and then questioning 
 them, he began reading French furiously 
 and would have his friends do the like. 
 
 "Really you ll have to get up your French 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 243 
 
 and read George Sand s Autobiography. . . . 
 The only refuge for you from the whizzing of 
 the brain along one track, is in reading French. 
 Really I don t know how I could have tided 
 over certain days and nights I have had, ... if 
 I had n t had a French story to read. You see 
 there are n t any more good English stories, 
 and you have to read the French ones. There 
 never were many of the kind I mean where 
 the plot, and a certain snap about the dialogue, 
 lead you along page after page. The French 
 stories keep a mature mind going, just as Eng 
 lish ones do a child s mind. George Sand, or 
 Dumas pere, takes my mind along just as 
 Dickens used to when I was a boy. I confess 
 that in the case of Dumas there is not so much 
 residuum as in the case of Dickens it all 
 goes in at one ear and out of the other but 
 who cares? The thing is to drag the mind 
 away from its pizens, and keep it away long 
 enough to recuperate a little. ... If I spell 
 
 * favour it s perhaps because I have been read 
 ing French lately. Though I always did prefer 
 those u spellings, a little while despising 
 such questions too much for thinking much 
 about it. I have a vague sense that words have 
 a family pride in their true origin, that may 
 as well be respected. As if a word should say to 
 a person who spells it in its derivative entirety : 
 
 * Oh, who is this that knows the way I came? 
 
244 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Somehow, there are several of the Websterisms, 
 or Americanisms, that jar on me as indicative 
 of not knowing the way they came or much 
 else." 
 
 The publicity which attends most writing, 
 especially that of the magazine writer of 
 poems and occasional articles, continued to 
 annoy and vex him. It crops up in various 
 letters, first in a casual manner : 
 
 "More and more I wish all literary work 
 was anonymous. These people who are madly 
 tearing around after a reputation, and these 
 people (worst of all) who assume that we are - 
 that is the really appalling thing. ... I wish 
 they wouldn t always say something if a 
 body send some printed thing. . . . 
 
 "Don t tell any such thing about what I 
 write anonymously to any one with a penchant 
 or opportunity for newspaper personals, ever. 
 I dread them exceedingly. I had an offer 
 lately to be personalized, which really scared 
 me. The safest way is not to tell anybody, till 
 things are a year or two old and no longer of 
 interest. . . . 
 
 "... Her interest in things outside of rela 
 tion to her seemed rather fictitious. It is a 
 horrible penalty to pay for fame and flattery. 
 I more and more believe the only way for 
 ordinary mortals is to keep out of sight, and 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 245 
 
 write anonymously. Why not? It seems to me 
 I should like a man very much, who, having 
 gained a good reputation, went on doing better 
 and better work, smiling unbeknownst. He 
 would like to succeed first and then do it to 
 make it clear to himself it was no fear of failure 
 or timidity." 
 
 And then he utters it more fully to a friend in 
 California and in more than one letter to 
 Aldrich:- 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Nov. 1, MONDAY. 
 
 The trouble about signing one s name to 
 poems is that stupid people (and we are all 
 pretty stupid sometimes) persist in thinking 
 every word literally autobiographical. I have 
 had enough annoyance from that to sicken any 
 one of ever writing verse again, or anything else 
 but arithmetics and geographies. Even then 
 somebody would hate you for your view of the 
 Indian Ocean, or fear the worst about your 
 character because of your treatment of the 
 Least Common Multiple. People are getting to 
 write anonymously now and then. (You did n t 
 write "The Bread winners," did you? Perhaps 
 the Janitor at the University did or Bacon 
 the printer, or Henry Ward Beecher.) 
 
 As to French poetry, I know there s an 
 other side. I believe as I used to, about the 
 
246 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 mass of French writers. It s only here and 
 there a George Sand or a delicate poet. As to 
 German Heine was a Jew of the Jews. You 
 might as well instance Job as a German. A 
 friend of mine calls certain graceful verse 
 "unsubstantial." It s true much of the French 
 is so. 
 
 Your test is the best one: which sticks in 
 the mind. Or as some one puts it, as a test of 
 great writers, whose work has most entered 
 into the world s intellectual life? 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. S. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., April 10, 1885. 
 BUT, MY DEAR MB. ALDRICH, Don t you 
 see the difficulty in the way of my printing such 
 poems as that "Tempted" over my own name, 
 - 1 a staid citizen, the husband of one wife, as 
 saith the Scripture, the model for ingenuous 
 youth, the sometime professor of coeducated 
 young men and maidens, and all that. I tell 
 you there is no comfort for a man the minute 
 he begins to write anything that is an intimite 
 or that sounds (whether it is or not) like the 
 voice of any personal feeling or experience 
 beyond the humdrum no comfort but be 
 hind a mask. Print me over a nom de goose 
 quill (I have one that pleases me a shade better 
 than the one I suggested before) and I will 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 247 
 
 send you some remarkable poems. I cannot be 
 sure what they will be most remarkable for 
 they may make your hair stand on end and set 
 your teeth on edge by their "sincerity," but at 
 any rate I would like to try the experiment. 
 
 (I have another reason about which I 
 should have to write seriously, if at all, so I 
 will not go into it.) 
 
 I like my own name very well, you under 
 stand, and have no reason for anything but 
 modest pride in it, and yet for one reason and 
 another I don t care to see it in print; and 
 especially under any sort of genuine poetry. 
 For once, then, let me coax you to put your 
 objection to the pen-name in your pocket 
 and go write under that brief poem "Haden 
 Dana," and we will see if we will not fool 
 the world into believing he is a poet before 
 the magazine is many years older. 
 
 Please treat this name as confidential, whether 
 you consent to be god-father to it or not. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., April 18, 1885. 
 DEAR MR. ALDRICH, I know that such 
 poems are "dramatic" and that no one has a 
 right to pin a feeling or thought down to a par 
 ticular origin in fact yet some one will al 
 ways do it, and that some one the very one you 
 
248 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 would prefer not. It is n t the great public one 
 fears, it is the some ones. 
 
 Browning with his "fifty men and women" 
 has a right to step out of any personal account 
 ability for their utterances, yet don t we know 
 after all, that most that is good for anything is 
 autobiographic in one sense or another? If you 
 ever do write the Reflections of the To-be- 
 hanged, I, for one, shall never be able to avoid 
 the dim suspicion that you have murdered 
 some one in your dreams, or been mad enough 
 to do it. 
 
 You need not fear my being too "candid" 
 for your taste, unless my own taste should 
 suffer some change, or give way before some 
 strain at present unforeseen. I am pretty 
 deeply impressed, myself, with the truth that 
 there are plenty of things "worthy of sacred 
 silence." The indecent exposures of the small 
 poets and poetesses are frightful. The poetesses 
 are the worst, I believe. I hardly know a maga 
 zine at home or abroad, except the "Atlantic," 
 that has not printed things that offend a nice 
 instinct of silence. 
 
 As to names, "Haden " had not struck me as 
 an "album word." It was familiar to me from 
 the noted etcher, and suggests rather Haddam 
 and haddock, etc. But I trust your sense and 
 abandon it gladly. Wilson Dana somehow has 
 long spindling legs in my imagination, and an 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 249 
 
 unkempt beard, and has something to do with 
 patent medicine, or pills; I can t tell where he 
 gets the association. If "Andrew Hedbrook" 
 seems to you a good sort of fellow, will you 
 take him? 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 % Andrew did seem to Aldrich a good fellow 
 and under this cloak Sill wrote with increasing 
 ease and freedom. He was soon apologizing for 
 his too frequent appearance in the "Atlantic," 
 where, however, neither editor nor readers ever 
 found him unwelcome. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., May 11, 1885. 
 EDITOR ATLANTIC, - 
 
 DEAR SIR, My friend Andrew omitted 
 to enclose stamps with a bit of dramatic dia 
 logue sent to-day. He takes the opportunity to 
 slip in another small poem not expecting 
 you to keep all he sends, but wishing you to 
 have the best of what he writes, and believing 
 you are the best judge of that. 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 Surely it can have happened only rarely in 
 the history of our fledgling literature that a 
 poet-contributor has been so fortunate as to 
 
250 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 have a poet-editor with whom, in the craftsman 
 spirit, free from thought of self-interest, he 
 could discuss details of rhythm and assonance, 
 and sense and sound: 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., May 27, 1885. 
 
 DEAR MR. A , Or is one of these 
 
 better? (In the " Dead Letter " near the end, it 
 should read: "Its white ghost in the ash" in 
 stead of "the w. g.," etc., as perhaps I wrote 
 it.) 
 
 I am sorry to make you read so much 
 manuscript. I hope you are a very patient 
 man. 
 
 A patient poet once received 
 So many manuscripts, he grieved, 
 And cried, O choke for me, I beg, 
 This goose that lays the daily egg! 
 
 A. HEDBROOK. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., June 9, 1885. 
 
 DEAR MR. A , It occurs to me after 
 
 mailing the proofs of the "Hermione" lyrics 
 and Shakspere : 
 
 1. The prose has too much title. Omit 
 "Interlude" and leave it "An Imag. Conver.," 
 etc. 
 
 2. I altered the couplet near the beginning 
 not wantonly to make more printers work, but 
 because I remembered that it might betray the 
 author, as it stood, to one person. If I am to be 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 251 
 
 "anon," I prefer not even to have my left 
 hand know what my right hand doeth. 
 
 3. In the first lyric I changed "blest" to 
 "dear" to avoid rhyming with the last word 
 of the stanza before. 
 
 4. Would it not be well for you to alter 
 spelling of "stepped" (3d stanza, 1st lyric) to 
 "stept," so as to rhyme to the eye as well as to 
 the ear? Or not. 
 
 In the last and least lyric I went back to 
 your suggestion for the last line of first stanza. 
 I am always glad to have suggestions from you. 
 
 I tried to get off in a corner to write this 
 note, but the ubiquitous Andrew found me out 
 and insists on my slipping in another thing 
 from him. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., May 31, 1885. 
 
 DEAR MR. A , By all means print 
 
 the Shakspere Interlude unsigned, as you sug 
 gest. It would suit me very well to have 
 everything printed unsigned, except those 
 things on which I nom-de-plume myself or 
 any of those, that you are willing to print that 
 way. 
 
 If you want a fine poem from Andrew along 
 in the summer or fall, a really effulgent 
 one, or perhaps some wonderful pyrotechnic 
 prose tale, you have only to furnish him 
 with a bit of information namely, this: 
 
252 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 where can be found in the United States short 
 of California, a spot in which to spend three 
 weeks (say, of August) where there is either, 
 
 1. Water to boat on, 
 
 2. A mountain to climb, 
 
 3. A forest to ride in, 
 
 4. Pound trout to catch. 
 And where there are not 
 
 1. Mosquitoes, 
 
 2. Empty preserved meat cans, and dis 
 carded paper collars strewing the scene. 
 
 In other words, a scrap of nature unpolluted 
 by Punch s Arry with his "alarums and excur 
 sions." In California I lived on the privilege 
 of spending every summer in perfectly wild 
 places, and I feel the ache for it coming on me 
 tremendously. If any man in Boston knows of 
 such a place and will impart the knowledge to 
 you and you will pass it on to Andrew, the 
 gorgeous literary work shall be forthcoming. 
 
 I should add that he is forced to count the 
 cost, even to quarters, else he would go to Cal 
 ifornia for what he wants. 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 Sill s acquaintance with Aldrich had advanced 
 to the footing where he was now writing him 
 on the most serious subjects in the world 
 Religion and Getting a Living. 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 253 
 
 His letter on the first of these subjects 
 should be placed beside one written a little later 
 to Holt, for the two together not only give a 
 fairly good account of the position he had 
 reached but, by recalling that intensely per 
 sonal and pathetic letter to Holt almost exactly 
 twenty years before when he was agonizing to 
 persuade himself that he did believe in the 
 orthodox creed of his forefathers, show how 
 long a journey he had taken. What a distance 
 he had come since he wrote, "Either Christ was 
 God or He was not. And if He was, we must 
 take what He said as actual truth, not to be 
 twisted or turned aside. . . . Through his name, 
 his sacrifice, and his intercession and thus alone, 
 can we inherit eternal life. I seem to see Him 
 standing there . . . with a solemn earnest face 
 looking at you and me ... and saying . . . 
 he that believeth shall be saved he that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned. " 
 
 From doubtful hope he had gone to hopeful 
 doubt and sturdy scepticism and content at 
 moments even aggressive agnosticism, thus 
 summing up in his own experience the religious 
 history of his generation. 
 
 June 9, 1885. 
 
 DEAE MR. A , Do you want to do 
 
 me a great favor? I don t know in the least 
 what your proclivities (or declivities) are in 
 the way of religious matters, but I am going 
 
254 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 to assume that yours are not far away from mine 
 enough to ask you, if you are naturally in 
 the way of seeing manuscripts, submitted to 
 the firm for publication, to look into an essay 
 I sent them (with some others) entitled "The 
 XlXth Century " along toward the end of 
 it and purloin certain pages treating of the 
 Christian Church as a nuisance and fraud if 
 it is likely, otherwise, to be read by some mem 
 bers of the firm (I don t in the least know who 
 or what they are) some very conservative, 
 elderly, religious, sensitive, choleric, old-fash 
 ioned gentleman with gold-spectacles and high 
 collar, and a pew in church and gold-headed 
 cane who hates George Sand and Herbert 
 Spencer (by reputation) and loves Joseph Cook. 
 Is there such a fearful catastrophe imminent 
 as that such a man should read my essay and 
 be made really ill by it? 
 
 // so (understand I know nothing at all 
 about it), will you do me the friendly act to 
 take out three or four pages that may seem 
 very flagrant? There are only a few pages that 
 speak of the church. (It is only the essay on 
 Morals that I really care to get printed, and 
 I believe that would not really hurt anybody s 
 feelings.) 
 
 It is asking a great deal to ask you to look 
 at any manuscripts outside of the ones your 
 own work bring upon you, I know. But I scent 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 255 
 
 orthodoxy in a note received yesterday from 
 the firm, and it would simply offend an ortho 
 dox man and uselessly, for he never would 
 print it to read the last part of that " 19th 
 Century" essay. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Nov. 18, 85. 
 
 MY DEAR HENRY [HOLT], I am glad of 
 what you say about the essays, etc. It is ex 
 tremely agreeable to know that one s old 
 friends still keep one in mind and have a 
 friendly interest in what he is doing. I would be 
 glad to hear from you oftener and to know more 
 in detail about your doings inner and outer. 
 
 As to the college presidency : I do not 
 feel sufficiently in mid-stream of educational 
 affairs at the East and do not know the younger 
 men likely to be candidates well enough to make 
 any comparative judgment of so much value as 
 that of others more in the midst of things; but 
 I should be very glad to say in any way pub 
 lic or private that of all the men I know Mr. 
 Oilman seems to me the best for the place. No 
 one can be more thoroughly convinced than I 
 am that the clerical element is a minor one to 
 Yale College. Whoever is chosen for the head, 
 I hope it will be no clergyman no * Doctor of 
 an exploded * Divinity. " In fact so thoroughly 
 
256 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 do I feel this that Mr. Oilman seems to me a 
 little too much addicted to the old mythology 
 and observances to be an ideal man for the 
 head of the future college. I should find him a 
 grain better suited to the position if we found 
 him a little more frank and courageous about 
 acknowledging that "it moves" and that it is 
 time for some of the old things to pass away. 
 But this view is perhaps not shared by the 
 rest of you. You know my feeling that the 
 Christian mythology and the Church grip on 
 society are very hurtful things. They are more 
 in the way of the progress of true ideas about 
 man and life than all other influences put to 
 gether. Yes, Mr. Oilman, by all means. I don t 
 know any man that compares with him for the 
 position. By the way, who are the "half-dozen 
 best men, anti-clericals "? I don t quite like 
 the idea of having this movement toward a 
 national government of Yale "University " and 
 Yale College from New York, as if it were from 
 a coterie or clique. That notion will get into 
 people s heads and damage the movement, if 
 you don t look out. This is a rather large coun 
 try you know. Harvard is controlled by a pro 
 vincial clique. It is a Boston concern. But Yale 
 belongs to the country in general. I don t think 
 it was a fortunate thing that an exclusively 
 New York Yale Club was formed just at this 
 time. But I may be wrong. Stanford s twenty 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 257 
 
 million California University may get Mr. Gil- 
 man! What then? 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 Like every other author Sill yielded to the 
 enchantment which distance lends to the edi 
 torial chair. Well for him and his poetry that 
 he never attained its doubtful dignity! 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., July 30, 1885. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. A , It was sufficiently 
 
 overwhelming to find three things of mine 
 in one number of the " Atlantic": and now 
 your friendly praise really scares me. It is a 
 rather delightful way of being scared, I admit, 
 to get such words from a man who holds the 
 place in my estimation that you do; but actu 
 ally I am afraid I never can do well enough to 
 deserve them. And I don t know whether I 
 shall dare send you any more things, without 
 writing them over forty or fifty times and soak 
 ing them down for a year. 
 
 Hedbrook here has a bunch of things, but 
 has no courage to send them, at present. And 
 there is a prose lingo about Humming Birds 
 here in my desk. When I get over blushing 
 I will mail some of them, or something else. 
 But I beg of you to treat whatever I send with 
 unrelenting justice of judgment, and send them 
 
258 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 back (if you will continue to be so kind as to 
 take that trouble) without thinking it neces 
 sary to give any reason but their "unavailabil 
 ity," and that, too, in printed form whenever 
 the spirit does not move you or time does 
 not allow you to write. 
 
 I wonder if you would not like to have me 
 help in the preliminary sifting of your piles 
 of manuscripts. I seem to lack suitable em 
 ployment at present, and one cannot be writing 
 either polemics or poetry all the time. I can 
 read manuscript very fast, and I could say very 
 unkind things to the contributors of the worst 
 material. (I should wish to leave it to your 
 peaceful pen to say the kind things.) I Ve a no 
 tion that with proper training from you I could 
 bear a hand somewhere about that work of 
 yours; in its lower regions, at least, as a getter- 
 through of preliminary drudgery. 
 
 I thank you most heartily for your en 
 couraging and friendly words to me. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 During the summer of 1885 wide interest 
 was excited in the project of Senator Leland 
 Stanford, a California millionaire, to found a 
 university as a memorial to his son, then lately 
 dead. Sill was concerned that the university 
 should deserve the name of a university. He 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 259 
 
 writes to President Gilman, of Johns Hop 
 kins : 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, June 15, 85. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, Mr. Stanford has been 
 so long shut up to the association with men 
 whose talk is of horses that I think we should 
 be prepared for some pretty low views I 
 mean shallow, short-sighted, sordid views of 
 life and things; but I should think a man of 
 your persuasive speech and tact in meeting the 
 particular mind in hand on a given occasion, 
 might easily make him see (for I think he has 
 a sound enough judgment, so far as his percep 
 tions and opportunities give him data) that the 
 only great things, so far in the world with 
 great and enduring reputations and great 
 power in the world and therefore great 
 glory for the doers or founders of them have 
 been those that have based themselves on deep 
 and permanent needs of man. No fiddlesticks 
 of an industrial college, or mechanics training 
 school, or Dr. Newman affair meeting only 
 a newspaper demand, or demagogue demand. 
 
 I wish he could realize the tremendous re 
 nown and power of Oxford and Cambridge - 
 or of the big German universities, and figure 
 himself as begetting such another. Can t we 
 raise Bishop Berkeley s spirit (where is the 
 witch of Endor?) to inflame him? 
 
 What a thing it might be, out there in Call- 
 
260 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 fornia if he only would! To start, you see, free 
 of the old load of accumulated rubbish, and 
 with the advantage of all that has been learned 
 by means of or in spite of this rubbish - - It is 
 great. 
 
 But you don t need that I should say any 
 thing to you on this topic. 
 
 I only wish you good speed if you have any 
 opportunities to bring it about. 
 
 As ever yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 PEES. GILMAN, BALTIMORE. 
 
 This letter to Holt recalls Sill s essay, 
 "Should a College Educate," which appeared 
 in the "Atlantic" the same month, and doubt 
 less provoked the correspondence: - 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Aug. 11, 85. 
 
 DEAR H , I ll tell you just how far it 
 
 goes (the argument for "studying what one dis 
 likes "). It goes so far as great regions of study 
 are concerned; like mathematics, philosophy, 
 literature. Any man who has taught ten years 
 in any large college knows that mere heredity 
 (and early surroundings) produces acres of 
 students who will not only dislike but hate and 
 despise certain regions of effort and attainment; 
 effeminate weaklings who have a wonderful 
 scorn of all athletics; big brawny fellows who 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 261 
 
 contemn clean linen and delicate manners; 
 musical temperaments that loathe any kind of 
 hard work whatever; and hard workers who 
 despise all music as effeminate; sons of West 
 Pointers who think all scholarship is worthless ; 
 and sons of scholars who hate a military man; 
 sons of civil engineers who can hardly be brought 
 to read and write easy words; and sons of liter 
 ary men who think mathematics simply devil 
 ish torture. You ve no idea of the extent of 
 this till you teach a lot of youngsters. 
 
 The awfullest fact in creation is this thing 
 of heredity. I ve no doubt you know plenty of 
 splendid men who have come through scienti 
 fic training. The question is how much less 
 or more splendid would they be for knowing 
 the Zeitgeist of the ancient time as well as that of 
 the present time? Would they be any the less 
 efficient with a wider grasp on literature and 
 the thought of the world outside their special 
 ties? The way to judge how much of the ad 
 mirable product came from the scientific and 
 illiberal training, is to see how many perfect 
 asses that training produces. Judge by the 
 average product. And study it as I have 
 done in the universities where they have 
 both making side by side the same raw ma 
 terial, the same length of time, but the two con 
 trasted curricula. 
 
 Ask yourself this question fairly : How many 
 
262 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 people do I know who have learned German 
 and French without being in any sense " edu 
 cated" persons; how many, on the other hand, 
 who have learned Latin or Greek without be 
 ing in some sense "educated" persons? Why, 
 nurse-girls and dancing-masters and hack- 
 drivers know French and German better than 
 the Ollendorff college classes do. Does it edu 
 cate them much? 
 
 Then ask the same question as to the natural 
 sciences, and compare with the humane stu 
 dies, literoB humaniores. Which would do 
 most for a young fellow, an hour with Spencer s 
 "Data of Ethics " or an hour with a clam? Well, 
 the one is philosophy, the other science. And 
 a clam in a book is n t even half so efficacious 
 as a clam in the mud. But our shield has two 
 sides, no doubt. 
 
 But I began this only to thank you for your 
 friendly invitation. I am afraid we shall not be 
 able to accept it, for health is the one thing we 
 are after, and we must flee to the mountains 
 after a little sniff of the ocean breeze, somewhere 
 down East where it is cool and bracing. Thank 
 you, too, for the information. Very likely we 
 will try one of the places you recommend. 
 
 Pardon my saying so many words on the 
 educational question. I presume you and I 
 would train a boy very much alike after all. I 11 
 confide to you a comical fact (considering which 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 263 
 
 side I am arguing on). I ve spent more effort, 
 ten to one, on getting people interested in the 
 sciences I m interested in, than in the other 
 studies (always excepting modern literature). 
 I never met a boy or girl without setting them 
 at my binocular microscope and getting them 
 to hatch out tadpoles, and dissect chickens 
 brains, and all that. And I have always worked 
 intensely to get young and old to read Spencer, 
 Darwin, etc. My own private bent is toward 
 natural history. 
 
 The late summer saw the Sills at Gloucester, 
 where their visit was long remembered by a few, 
 at least. The cottage where they "camped 
 out" was beside the sea, and faced the beauti 
 ful lava gorge where the tide rose almost to the 
 piazza. They were both enthusiastic walkers 
 and found the Gloucester Downs a constant 
 delight: 
 
 "We are having a run on to the seaside for 
 * health. ... I wish you could see the Atlantic 
 as it comes in on the rocks here on Cape Ann. 
 I think the Pacific is never quite so fine, at 
 least on any shore I have seen out there. . . . 
 I wish you could see (and share) the queerness 
 and prettiness of the place. We watch the 
 fishing boats sails of all sizes and shapes - 
 flitting out to sea and in again. It is a much 
 livelier harbor than San Francisco Bay, and 
 
264 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 has so much more life color, though not so fine 
 sky and earth colors." 
 
 On his return to the West, Sill saw Mr. 
 Aldrich in Boston. Unfortunately he was 
 very unwell, in consequence of an accident in 
 Gloucester, so that the meeting to which he had 
 looked forward eagerly was marred. Appar 
 ently the chance for a longer talk never came. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Oct. 13, 1885. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. A., Can you not tell Mr. 
 Stedman (if his book is not yet beyond proof - 
 correcting) that one, at least, of the "twilight" 
 poets, namely, " Sill," would much prefer to be 
 left out of his enumeration? He had me in his 
 " Century " article. I am not a publishing author 
 (the booklet of verses of which I think I sent 
 you a copy "The Venus of Milo," etc., was 
 never published, and never will be), and so 
 might escape being stuck in his catalogue, like 
 a fly on a pin. Don t you think? 
 
 I enclose a few things. I am embarrassed 
 sometimes to know whether I have sent you 
 something before or not. If I ever send a poem 
 again that you have sent back to me, I beg you 
 to forgive me and lay it to a mere mischance. 
 I certainly mean not to. But I hate to burn 
 the confounded little things up, sometimes, 
 and they are liable to get misplaced. 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 265 
 
 It was a great pleasure to me to see you a 
 few minutes. I had some things I wanted very 
 much to talk to you about, and get your ad 
 vice on (not manuscript), but I was too unwell 
 to do it then. 
 
 Yours, E. R. SILL. 
 
 The "sanctum mottoes" mentioned below 
 have disappeared, but "the following" -a 
 scrap of verse seems worth preserving: 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Oct. 15, 1885. 
 DEAR MR. A , Andrew thinks it is neces 
 sary for me to add (but of course it is n t) that 
 the sanctum mottoes are not for the magazine 
 but for the editor, in reminiscence of a too-too 
 brief visit. And as I am writing he must needs 
 put in the following. 
 
 Yours, E. R. SILL. 
 
 To a Face Contradictory 
 
 Two soft blue, warring eyes : one looks at me 
 With lid a little drooping, wistfully. 
 
 The other, wider open, does not fear, 
 
 And will not hope, but watches to see clear. 
 
 One hints of love; the other does not hate: 
 
 One tells me "come"! the other warns me, "Wait!" 
 
 The voice, at least, is single. That I trust, 
 Because, because I do, because I must. 
 
56 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Shut, riddling eyes! or in the dark I ll woo, 
 And my one voice shall speak and tell me true. 
 
 ANDREW HEDBROOK. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Nov. 28, 1885. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. ALDRICH, The Lord send 
 you patience and a forgiving spirit if I trouble 
 you too much about my things; but I want 
 anything you use to be as good as possible, 
 and so : 
 
 In the last stanza but one of the Sister of 
 Mercy, "For touch of human company." 
 Should it be " sympathy" instead of " com 
 pany"? 
 
 And should this stanza be inserted next? 
 (referring to the old people) 
 
 "I know the thoughts they never speak, 
 When children bring the birthday flowers. 
 The (scanty) silent tears that burn the cheek, 
 While night-bells strike the dragging hours." 
 
 And should "his" be changed to "thy" in 
 the first stanza? (I thought, in writing it 
 "his," she might be supposed to turn from 
 thoughts of him to addressing him.) 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 Always feel free to substitute for any ac 
 cepted thing any later thing if you like it better, 
 and reject the other. 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 267 
 
 His casual letters at the period are full 
 of flashes of comment about books and writ 
 ers: 
 
 "George Eliot says, "Henry Esmond" is 
 a disagreeable story at the end because he 
 was in love with the daughter all through the 
 book and then married the mother at the last 
 yet I think it seems all right, as one reads 
 it. Who would have had him marry the other, 
 knowing her? 
 
 "The orthodox people will not like things 
 George Eliot says in her letters, and they will 
 try to frown her down. But they will not suc 
 ceed. She was great, and good too. Let them 
 cast stones who are better. She was clear 
 headed and rational, that s all; and had that 
 faith in the Divine Wisdom that makes one feel 
 sure the true is in the long run the safe 
 and good. . . . 
 
 "... I m making acquaintance with an 
 other Frenchman I like: Balzac. He sticks 
 some sharp and deep probes into the human 
 heart. Like Thackeray, he makes one wonder 
 if he means me. 
 
 "I go with you entirely about St. Matthew s 
 poetry, and the Greek of it. How he does it 
 is by being that way, I suppose. But perhaps 
 he is an example of the educational effect of 
 keeping one s mind constantly in contact with 
 the choicest of everything. Think what a 
 
268 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 hodge-podge of influences most of us tumble 
 around in, all our lives. 
 
 "... This getting up in the morning wrong 
 foot foremost is one of the chief ills of life. More 
 fun overnight is what would keep us from it. 
 But the prescription is like port wine and pea 
 cocks tongues to the beggar. Going to bed 
 early is sometimes a safeguard. I wish you d 
 write a magazine essay about the woes and 
 wants of children, such as you speak of in that 
 connection. It would do good. Parents don t 
 mean to be mean; they need light. . . . 
 
 "I have come to feel a good deal your dis 
 relish of poetry. A friend of mine writes to 
 me that he lately said, *I always despised it; I 
 believe I am coming to hate it. He was think 
 ing of the value of hard facts. But every now 
 and then, at an odd moment, I feel that all the 
 old charm of it: Das ew ge, alte Lied - - (re 
 member that poem of Anastasius Griin in Gol 
 den Treasury of German Song ?). 
 
 "... Almost thou persuadest me to be a 
 pessimist. . . . And we shall not be very bad 
 pessimists (not pessimi pessimistorum) while 
 we admit that after all it is worth living, for 
 us, and worth trying for, for the future comers. 
 
 "This world is not out of the woods yet by 
 any means. Meantime I hope you are keep 
 ing your soul as tranquil as circumstances will 
 permit: taking the bird s-eye view, as medi- 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 269 
 
 cine, before each meal and hearing, when 
 ever you wake up in the night, that sentinel 
 who goes his rounds whispering to the worlds of 
 space peace. --One must not expect to do 
 very much more than the average. ... It s 
 a kind of greediness that circumstances always 
 conspire to cure us of." 
 
 Sill s own soul was not tranquil, particularly 
 when he thought of college and of Yale espe 
 cially. He writes with becoming candor to 
 Holt, who, however he may have felt then, it is 
 plain from a reading of the passages on Sill s 
 college life, came to have very much the same 
 opinion as Sill about their alma mater: - 
 
 CTJYAHOGA FALLS, Dec., 85. 
 
 DEAR H , I might add as postscript 
 
 that I consider it perfectly impossible to get 
 Oilman made president of Yale. They would 
 not do it even if there were no theological 
 animus involved. And with that it is as if you 
 should propose Bismarck or Herbert Spencer. 
 Dwight will be president, and a pretty presi 
 dent he will be! Oilman may be an ordained 
 "minister," but they know well enough that he 
 would not consider the religious test in getting 
 his faculty, and that is the unum necessarium 
 in New Haven. The only possible hope would 
 be to scare them into the idea that a big rival 
 
270 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 university was being projected, on advanced 
 ideas. And why should n t it be for a fact? 
 Probably you do not share my contempt for 
 Yale College as an apparatus of liberal educa 
 tion. I have but a very feeble interest in it, 
 or hope of its ever being anything but a sort 
 of old woman s college, a nunnery of the 
 church. 
 
 Christmas found Sill in a rather sombre 
 frame of mind from which he tried with but 
 imperfect success to rouse himself by jocular 
 communication to his California friends : 
 
 "Don t you rather reluct at writing these 
 last dates of the year? The illusion is strong 
 upon us that it really is a dying away, bit by 
 bit, of one more set of opportunities possi 
 bilities liveabilities a sort of annual mys 
 tery, or Passion Play, of the End of Life. Then 
 we slip over the ridge-pole into Jan. 1, 2, etc., 
 and begin to go down faster and faster 
 and forget the old days behind. We wish 
 each other * merry Xmas; how merry do we 
 succeed in being? Somebody has been editorial- 
 ing that we have no business to wish people, 
 or be (except children) * merry. I deny his 
 overwise assertion. We d ought o be merry. 
 I can conceive a considerable number or sets 
 of circumstances that could slide into this 
 moment and make me merry. Could n t you 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 271 
 
 as to your self? I was merry for two minutes 
 
 and a half this morning, when related the 
 
 anecdote of the boy whose mother caught him 
 in a lie, and tried to impress the story of Ana 
 nias on him. He had an idiot brother named 
 Melchisedek. How that story would have 
 scared Melchisedek! quoth the boy, It don t 
 scare me a bit ! 
 
 [On the back of a Christmas card, represent 
 ing a woodland stream] : 
 
 "This is the bank whereon the wild Time blows 
 Where poor professors might forget their woes 
 Where they their wiser faculties might find 
 By leaving their unwiser Faculties behind. 
 Thither, O Dean, oh! thither let us flee, 
 And build no more a U-ni-vers-i-tee; 
 We ll lie at ease, all quiet, calm, and cool, 
 And yes we ll have to have our little school, 
 Line upon line O, it will be too utter! 
 Our little schools of fishes fried in butter!" 
 
 Would it have been better if Sill had had 
 his wish and become an editorial worker? 
 Probably not. He was too much an individual 
 and too finely organized for the endless routine 
 of the desk : 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Dec. 27, 1885. 
 
 DEAR MR. A , Put this sheet away 
 
 till a moment of (comparative) leisure; for it is 
 not regular business pertaining to manuscript. 
 
272 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 Take it with a cigar - - It often occurs to me 
 after reading the " Atlantic," to comment on 
 some article; to make an inquiry of a writer; 
 to criticize some statement, or opinion; or to 
 further it by an additional fact or suggestion. 
 I am moved to write a note to the writer. In 
 such a case I think of the Contributors Club; 
 but reject the idea, thinking the matter too 
 small; or across the line toward "newspaper" 
 matter, rather than "magazine" matter; or 
 too brief. 
 
 Many other readers must occasionally have 
 the same experience. Why not, therefore, have 
 a weekly supplementary "Contributors Club," 
 or " Bric-A-Brackish " issue published in 
 "Atlantic " color and shape a kind of supple 
 mentor "Party call " or " Staircase Wit " 
 or " Mother Carey s Chicken," hovering around 
 the stern of the big ship. A place to put choice 
 odds and ends : the broken food that is too good 
 to be thrown away, but not good enough (or 
 large enough, rather) to put on the table next 
 time. A place where the most elephantine con 
 tributor might gambol a little. Where Miss 
 Thomas s sprites might "tread a light cinque" 
 if that s what they did. 
 
 Everybody must feel (at least I do do 
 not you?) the crying need of a weekly literary 
 publication that shall be recherche instead of 
 promiscuous. As good as the " Nation " in that 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 273 
 
 respect, only purely literary. See what we 
 have: The "Literary World," sort o Philis 
 tine, heavy, "more geniality than light" in its 
 atmosphere. (What a devilish literally - 
 good thing that was of the "Nation" critic s 
 on Howells s Harper debut! Who did it?) 
 Praising everybody and everything a " mush 
 of concession"; the "Critic," very bright but 
 Bohemianish and what? 
 
 What a good place to train an editor under 
 your eye and hand in this " Sub-Atlantic "! 
 Could you not find goodish raw material in 
 Andrew Hedbrook for such a place? But this 
 is truly only an afterthought. The opportun 
 ity for the thing was my first idea. 
 
 Wishing you a most happy New Year, 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 The scraps to Aldrich and the unnamed cor 
 respondents do not merely disclose Sill s mod 
 esty, which was genuine and deep, but hint at 
 the spiritual unrest which seized him at times 
 and was due in no small measure to a feeling of 
 isolation : 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Feb. 5, 1886. 
 
 DEAR MR. A , I have no idea I am 
 
 always able to just "hit it," but I send pretty 
 freely, hoping you will never try to make your- 
 
274 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 self think a thing of mine is good, but will throw 
 out whatever "strikes" you as dubious. 
 
 Thank you for the friendly suggestions as 
 to "collected poems." I shall certainly take ad 
 vantage of your kind offer and advise with 
 you if the time comes. But I must try to have 
 something better worth while, first. 
 
 I am glad you are going to Europe and wish 
 I were going too. Go early and stay late! 
 The opposite of Charles Lamb s procedure. 
 But I shall miss your occasional notes unless 
 some rainy day you will send me one from over 
 there, which I should greatly like. But I m 
 afraid the very address would recall only manu 
 scripts and the daily task. 
 
 It does not cease to make me abashed and 
 blushful to find so many things of mine in the 
 magazine. I only wish I could send things of a 
 quality up to the level of my aspiration. 
 
 You have my heartiest wishes for a merry 
 vacation and safe return. 
 
 With the summer of 1886, Sill added a new 
 correspondent to his list, to whom he had been 
 drawn sympathetically by some distresses of 
 mind or body from which she was suffering and 
 he wrote her a series of letters full of good cheer 
 and gayety some of it, especially the last let- 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 275 
 
 ter, written four days before his death, touched 
 with true heroism. 
 
 The drama draws toward its close, all un 
 suspected by Sill or his friends, but none the 
 less endowing these last letters with a peculiar 
 interest, because they are the last and because 
 they stop so suddenly and untimely : 
 
 CUY. FALLS, July 21, 86 MONDAY. 
 What color are your eyes? Are they witch- 
 hazel? In [that] they seem to have some touch 
 of the divining rod. If I should tell you I wrote 
 "Individual Continuity," then you could not 
 tell anybody you didn t know and how can 
 anybody keep anything from anybody unless 
 he can tell them "I don t know." Or do you 
 make metaphysical distinctions as to certain- 
 sure knowledge, and are you capable of saying 
 you don t know, with the agnostic mental reser 
 vation that there don t nobuddy know nothing? 
 If I should say I did n t write it, then you surely 
 could n t say you did n t know whether I did 
 or not. Now the tree of knowledge is well 
 known to be the tree of sorrow. Blessed be 
 them as knows nothing. Besides, I don t know 
 as anybody can know for sartin sure whether 
 (interrupted at this point and the blots mean 
 that somebody left my fountain pen wrong end 
 up, and so . Do you use an "Ideal Fountain 
 Pen " ? They can furnish you one that will just 
 
276 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 exactly suit you) whether he did or did not 
 write any given thing. Often when I have 
 written a sentence, I say to myself who said 
 that? In what book did I read that? There s 
 a sentence or two, by the way, in this " Contin 
 uity" article (whoever wrote it) that it seems 
 to me I have seen in print before. About na 
 ture s police that has (?) our faces in a rogue s 
 gallery. Where have I seen that? I wrote a bit 
 of verse once, "Lend me thy fillet, Love, etc." 
 (you never saw it, I guess), which for a year 
 bothered me because I felt certain I had seen it 
 somewhere. But it has gone around in print 
 and neither I nor anybody else has discovered 
 any predecessor, so far as I can learn. (I would 
 quote some more of it, but I can t recall it.) 
 - So you (no more of that kind of paper) are 
 a great talker? How well we should get on, for 
 I am a great keeper-still. Yet I don t believe 
 in keeping still. I can t agree with George 
 Sand (in " Isidora ") that " Quand Fechange de la 
 parole n est pas necessaire, il est rarement utile." 
 Unless one add to it that a considerable amount 
 of it is always necessary. But I never could talk, 
 myself. I am like poor Josef in George Sand s 
 "Maitres Sonneurs," who couldn t woo in 
 words, but give him his musette. If I could play 
 the cello about seventeen hundred times as well 
 as I now play it ill, I might talk with that. As 
 to letters they seem to take so confoundedly 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 277 
 
 long to write. It is really no longer than one 
 would be in talking, but being only one end 
 of the telephone in continuous activity, it 
 seems forever. If I could get a fountain pen 
 that held ideas instead of ink, so that I could 
 blow it full in a wink of the eye, and then let 
 somebody else skit it along over the paper, - 
 or if we had that machine which the coming 
 man will have, he never can be a come man 
 until he does have it, which shall write as 
 fast as we can think ! 
 
 I like what you tell me about your experi 
 ence with the mind during music. I have never 
 exchanged views on that topic with any one - 
 never heard it mentioned, in fact, and have 
 wondered how it is with others. Some day we 
 will go to a Symphony concert together and 
 I will turn on you in the middle of something 
 and make you tell me what you are thinking 
 about. 
 
 Expectant attention won t explain the word 
 difficulty when you have come plump upon it 
 unexpectedly and still find it goes wrong. Will 
 it? It is an interesting phenomenon. I won 
 der if we don t all of us have certain pet mis 
 spellings that we never have happened to get 
 eradicated? I spelt " melancholy" with twoZZ s 
 all my life till about five years ago. Happened 
 to. I think friends ought to be able to pick up 
 such things for us. But they won t. They re all 
 
278 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 cowards. Yes, in fact all the club things in Aug 
 ust "Atlantic" are of my brewing, except the 
 44 Threshold Flower" and I wish I had written 
 that. But don t tell. And as to Hedbrook, say 
 you don t know. That answer always sounds 
 modest, about anything. Besides, you don t, 
 you know. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Oct. 
 
 . . . Have been for a week across the border 
 into Northwestern Pennsylvania, among some 
 wildish baby-mountains with some good woods. 
 . . . Had some good walks in fine dark rugged 
 forest places, and almost could imagine it was 
 California. It makes us sentimental and home 
 sick when that occurs. 
 
 After an hour spent in straightening out 
 papers cleaning up two tables (how they 
 get rattled, these writing-tables, if one does not 
 exercise eternal vigilance!) I sat down to do 
 some "literary" writing but the spirits refuse 
 to communicate and it must be letterary, 
 instead. In the process of clearing up I put away 
 a volume of George Sand s correspondence, 
 which reminds me to quote (and translate) a bit 
 of one I was reading last night. "You believe 
 in the greatness of women, and you hold them 
 for better than men. For my part, I don t 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 279 
 
 think so. Having been degraded, it is impos 
 sible that they have not taken the [moeurs] 
 morals and manners of slaves, and it will take 
 more time to lift them out of it than it would 
 have been necessary for men to raise themselves. 
 When I think of it I have the spleen; but I 
 mean not to live too much in the present mo 
 ment. We must not be too much beaten down 
 by the general ill. Have we not affections, pro 
 found, certain, durable?" 
 
 I might quote also the end of the letter: 
 "Does my laziness about writing discourage 
 you? But you know very well how this fright 
 ful trade of the scribbler makes you take a 
 scunner to the very view of ink and paper." 
 
 It is the beautifullest early-fall weather to 
 day. Ah me and ochhone, what a days-that- 
 are-no-more-ishness there is about it. You don t 
 exactly have it in California the leaves on 
 all the vines have been crying all night and 
 hang all kind o 5 shamed of it and wilticated - 
 and the sunshine is yellow and still no more 
 dance in it, though the crickets have piped unto 
 it all the morning. Melons are ripe and grapes, 
 and the coal is being got in black reminder 
 of the frost bite to come. . . .This weather or 
 sumpthin or other makes me kind o ? wishful for 
 a ticket to California. 
 
 I am coming to feel that the one sole and 
 only mark and test of a plebeian (where "all 
 
280 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 the little soul is dirt ") is this sticking them 
 selves forward. And that the only thing neces 
 sary to prove a person, to me, a natural noble 
 man, is the willingness nay, desire to 
 stay out of sight and be unannounced. I have a 
 perfect loathing . . . for these people that do 
 this newspaper-puff business about themselves. 
 And, by the way, I don t like this thing of 
 small poets writing sonnets (signed duly with 
 their small names) to bigger ones. Do you? 
 It s getting common and unclean. And the 
 mutual sonnetteering of the small ones to each 
 other. 
 
 Boo ful autumn days. "The flying gold of 
 the autumn woodlands drift." Soon it will be 
 "rotten woodlands drip and the leaf is stamped 
 in clay." But we won t borrow trouble. . . . 
 It s always pleasant to look forward to winter 
 and think one may do some bit of worth-while 
 writing. 
 
 Cur. FALLS, Oct. 9, 86. 
 
 How am I going to impart, or intimate, or 
 break gently to you the gorgonian fact that I 
 don t more than half like " Diana " ? Now why 
 you should like it and I not is the puzzling 
 psychological conundrum. I can throw but 
 two glimmers on it : one, that it is written by a 
 woman; for the man must be a woman in dis 
 guise, it seems to me. The other, that you have 
 got used to a certain sort of straining at effect in 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 281 
 
 language a kind of visible effort to be original 
 and surprisingly fine in your Boston society. 
 
 What about Meredith? Is he really known 
 to be of the male sex? I have never heard a 
 thing about him (her). Perhaps it is only the 
 English (or Irish) view of woman that goes 
 agin me. You see, Diana is after all a kind of 
 quick-witted simpleton. Now I hate quick 
 witted simpletons. 
 
 I don t like the way the book has of blurt 
 ing out about things that are not meant to be 
 indiscriminately talked about. There is a kind 
 of animalism underlying it all. 
 
 What is the good of a novelist who says that 
 somebody went late to the theatre and just 
 in time "to meet the vomit"! Good Lord! 
 And I think the scene between Dacier and 
 Diana in the parlor, where there is the long- 
 drawn-out fuss about kissing and pressing 
 hands and other performances, is silly and 
 sensual, both. If one is going to out with the 
 animal matters, I like them said out frankly 
 and briefly not sort of dallied with, and 
 slunk away from, and touch and goed for a 
 half-dozen paragraphs. Oh, I m dead sure it is 
 a woman wrote it. No man would have sillied 
 so about the kissing the other lover s (the 
 positively the last lover s) coat sleeve, and 
 forgetting she was tampering with such a 
 fierce and fiery and ferocious and fiddlesticky 
 
282 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 brute and tiger and monster of volcanic pas 
 sions roused even through a thickness of 
 best Scotch all-wool coat sleeve, plus silesia 
 lining, plus a cotton shirt, plus an originally 
 heavy and fine but somewhat worn and shrunk 
 (owing to incautious washing with soapsuds 
 and being ironed the wrong way of the goods) 
 undershirt. 
 
 Now you must admit that it takes a woman 
 novelist to do these things. And I ll tell you 
 why. (Going back on my high views of women? 
 Not a bit of it.) It s because women are so 
 plaguey smart, they can write novels bright 
 ones, too, with power in em without having 
 ever had a vestige of education. A mere man 
 can t do that. And the education saves him 
 from writing such stuff when he does write. 
 
 Oh, come now I 11 admit I read this story 
 with a good deal of interest and that there 
 are memorable things in it. And I m going to 
 read another of hers. Which shall it be? 
 
 I haven t ventured to write before, be 
 cause I inferred you were so busy (for I can t 
 but conceive you as pitching in head over heels 
 into the first of a year s work) that I did n t 
 think you d more than glance at any letter I 
 should write. I, too, have been busy lately. 
 But not so much so but that I shall read every 
 word of any epistle I may get from you. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. S. 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 283 
 
 C. FALLS, MONDAY NIGHT, Oct. 11, 86. 
 
 What kind of a woman was Diana to be capa 
 ble of going off and betraying Dacier s confiden 
 tial politics to the " Times "? Igit? The reader 
 feels like Dacier he does n t want to know any 
 more about her. And don t you get tired of hear 
 ing that a character was always so brilliant in 
 speech, so dazzlingly witty, all sparkle and 
 miraculous repartee, and then when any 
 specimens are quoted (passim, along in the 
 book) to find them pretty flat and very 
 labored? Nascitur ridiculus mus. 
 
 What kind of a style is this: "He must be 
 mad," she said, "compelled to disburden her 
 self in a congenial atmosphere; which, however, 
 she inf rigidated by her overflow of exclamatory 
 wonderment a curtain that shook volumin 
 ous folds, leaving Redworth to dreams of the 
 treasure forfeited." 
 
 The book has your name on it still, in sign 
 I was to send it back, so I shall not quote, but 
 refer to, the last column and a half of p. 51 and 
 first 1/27 52, to ask if that is witty and viva 
 cious and charming, or awfully flat and 
 trashy. Do they do that in just that way at 
 Boston parties? If so I d rather smash my 
 china in the solitude of my chamber. 
 
 But how "rammed with" ideas the man is 
 such as they are. A kind of seething brain 
 kept feverishly seething, with far-fetched allu- 
 
284 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 sions all-jumbled-together comparisons as if 
 soaked in green tea and genius and stupidity 
 and brandy and tobacco. If I seem to be 
 swearing at things, remember the pen is 
 mightier when he swored. 
 
 I would give a dollar and fifteen cents to 
 spend the rest of the evening talking with you 
 about novels and people and a 5 that. 
 " Lonesome "? You can t be can you? in 
 such a crowd of brains and hearts. Or do you 
 " loathe the squares and streets, and the faces 
 that one meets "? 
 
 I wish you could have gone to the woods 
 with me this afternoon. Dark with thick oaks 
 -still unchanged of leaf with clumps of 
 hickory bright masses of solid yellow as if 
 great wedges of sunshine cleaving the woods. 
 Some western tints that you don t have 
 Peppridge lieblich red and the maples that 
 you do have but all the trees a size or two 
 bigger and taller than in any New England 
 woods I have seen. Still, still, so that one hears 
 a leaf drop here, or another there, and then a 
 nut fall, and then a squirrel leap from one tree- 
 top to another. But I would gladly have con 
 fided to you "how sweet" the "solitude." 
 Can you get any real companionship out of 
 the beautiful young people ? or do you find, as 
 I, that the telephone wire crosses an abysm of 
 inexperience on their part, and won t carry. 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 285 
 
 " Hello ! What is life? " (Ans.) " lo brrrrr 
 m-m-m-m zh-zh-zh brrmmzzzz bang ! " 
 How many times a week do you " go out "? 
 
 (" Demanding thus to bring relief 
 What kind of life is this I lead? ") 
 
 What is that quotation? I can t place it, or 
 be sure it s right. 
 
 Read "Tartarin sur les Alpes," Daudet. 
 
 What a staggering lot of books the publish 
 ers turn out on a weary world ! What gabblers 
 we are ! Gabblers that write, and gabblers that 
 read for no doubt it s the demand that cre 
 ates the supply. But oh, for an hour, or a 
 dozen, of good, honest, unrestrained talk 
 about hens, or buttons, or anything. 
 Yours heartily, 
 
 E. R. S. 
 
 CUT. FALLS, Oct. 26, 86. 
 
 " What, silent still, and silent all? " You never 
 get mad, do you? And retire to your tent like 
 Achilles? I must Hector you then till you come 
 out and fight. (Absit omen! I don t want to be 
 hauled round Boston by the heels.) 
 
 What would you rather study if you had no 
 thing to do but study, and a serene and com 
 fortable mind to study with? If you were like 
 the old Boy who was always going to retire 
 and "read the authors"? Or to enlarge 
 
286 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 the question what would you do if you could 
 do just as you were a mind to? - 
 
 Questions suggested by my having just struck 
 on a new branch of a favorite line of study with 
 me. Grimm s "Teutonic Mythology." (Late 
 edition by somebody who keeps referring to 
 " Appendix " and then there is nt any Appen 
 dix.) You ve read Max Miiller, maybe, and 
 some of his Indian translations? This com 
 parison of Religions especially the Ancient 
 
 - when one goes at it with his common sense 
 about him (not " leaving off his wit and going 
 in his what was it? doublet and hose "?) 
 
 - not expecting to find any occult new light, 
 but only new exhibitions of man s perrennial 
 cravings, and guessings, and embodyings, and 
 human-life projectings! 
 
 Save all your earnings and compel an easier 
 set of circumstances another year: Five pupils 
 somewhere, with three good teachers to each 
 reporting to you once a fortnight. And I 
 will live next door and keep a Tennis Court. 
 Oh, Yes! 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. S. ! ! ! 
 
 C. FALLS, Dec. 7, 86 TUBS. NIGHT. 
 I am having this oddish experience with re 
 gard to you: that the more I know of you the 
 less I know you. But I suppose nobody ever 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 287 
 
 made anybody out through letters. (And per 
 haps not in any other way either!) 
 
 We have steam up at last, and the mercury 
 may go down outside to zero (as it has done 
 lately). We keep warm in the house. I wish 
 I knew what you know. I suppose you know 
 Browning (I have not got hold of your notes 
 yet, to see), but what else? Have you gone into 
 the late-years explorations of old Egypt and 
 Assyria? Have you read the translations in the 
 "Records of the Past, " and Bunsen and Birch 
 and Rawlinson, etc.? There is a fascinating 
 difficulty in getting at any facts about the real 
 men and women and their lives, for all the 
 inscriptions and records. It interests me espe 
 cially as comparative religion and comparative 
 ethics. I want to talk with you about ethics. 
 How do you govern your life, anyway? By two 
 or three amiable feelings, as Sanctissima does, 
 and will have it that we all must or go to perdi 
 tion? When you have a girl that does n t care 
 what she does, or whether she and things in 
 general go to smash or not, what "why" do 
 you bring to bear on her? 
 
 The trouble about the books is the rhetori 
 cal flourish of them. Here is Samuel Johnson s 
 new book about the Persian Religion every 
 thing buried under rubbishy rhetoric and fine 
 Bostonese. Lovely to me is the style of the man 
 who just says yea and nay and there leaves 
 
288 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 it. Because I have reached an age when I want 
 to know what is the plain truth about things. 
 Which leads me to say I should like (or as an 
 old Yankee friend of mine used always to say 
 - 1 should admire) to look into that crystal- 
 backed watch of yours. I hear it tick in 
 your letters. I want to shee wheels go wound. 
 Neither have I read Bagehot s Milton. Must do 
 it. Have read a good deal of Masson s tremen 
 dous "Life," have you? For Milton is great, 
 to me. And Bagehot reminds me of Jevons. 
 His memoirs (mostly letters) worth reading, 
 or skimming from one good thing to another. 
 Dry but human. He had a scheme (and tried 
 it for a while) of hiring himself out for two 
 shillings an hour to explore things for people in 
 the British Museum. I wish I had known it! 
 Did you never feel that you d like to employ a 
 dozen or two people to look up things for you 
 in libraries? 
 
 Hochheimer. I don t believe in stimulants 
 for you and me. They are only spurs to the 
 Arabian who needs only the touch of the 
 naked heel. If you spur to-night, you ll lag 
 to-morrow to pay for it. We ll do more in the 
 long run for keeping the steadier gait. 
 
 But friends of "the other sex " good Lord! 
 why not? People take this matter of sex too 
 seriously. It is only a convenient appliance for 
 regulating posterity. Aside from that (and 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 289 
 
 pretty much everything is aside from that), 
 why should we have it always in mind? Ah, 
 we shall do all that better, one of these fine 
 days! 
 
 The dream of the symphony has impressed 
 me a good deal. I am thankful to you for mak 
 ing the effort to put it down in words. I wonder 
 if it is on the surface that we all differ and 
 whether if we get in among the intricacies of 
 the mind we are all the same. As if we all lived 
 round a mountain and we take each other 
 in through labyrinthine passages dim vaults 
 hollow spaces of shadow and suddenly, 
 the open heart of the mountains, lighted up and 
 full of music " this is my heart ! " " Why, - 
 this too is mine " for the centre was common 
 to all. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 This series of letters may be interrupted for 
 two fragmentary notes to old friends in Califor 
 nia, the second to Mr. Palmer gathering a 
 certain solemnity from being the last message 
 to the Pacific Slope: - 
 
 "I think of you as walking alone like the 
 rhinoceros, more and more as the years go on. 
 For in face of the almanac, the years do seem to 
 go on hold back as we may. When I think 
 how long I have been away from Berkeley I 
 
290 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 am driven to wonder that I ever hear from any 
 friend there. For Time carries not only a 
 scythe and mows, but a hatchet and splits. A 
 good ordinary quality of love seems to last in 
 this world about a year and a half or two years 
 of absence a prime quality of friendship from 
 five to seven ! Hail, O Time ! thou splitter apart 
 of mortals. Splititandi salutamusl" 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., January 1, 1887. 
 
 I don t like the years to go so. I was not 
 half done with 86. . . . 
 
 I read this in Turgenieff s "Raufbold" last 
 night: " Er hatte viel gelesen; und so bildete er 
 sich ein er besitze Erfahrung und Klugheit; er 
 legte nicht den leisesten Zweifel dass alle seine 
 Voraussetzungen richtig seien; er ahnte nicht 
 dass das Leben unendlich mannigf altig ist, und 
 sich niemals wiederholt." 
 
 So, to live is more than to read, and one 
 might know all things and miss of everything. 
 And so, if life is endlessly manifold, we may 
 hope for good and great things, here or here 
 after. 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, Feb. 16, 87. 
 
 Do you mean to say you have the bobolink 
 
 already? No bobby would be fool enough to 
 
 come here yet awhile. It is midwinter; except 
 
 that we have less sunshine, even, now and 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 291 
 
 mud instead of snow. When the bobolinks have 
 come and the bluebirds and the song sparrows 
 oh my ! For my part I am meditating flight 
 to Colorado Springs for the months of March 
 and April Mrs. Sill and me. Join us? Know- 
 est anything about Colorado in spring? I don t; 
 but it can t be worse than Ohio. Gastritis? I 
 don t know it by name; but I guess I must 
 have had it for some two months now. Does 
 it stand for indigestion (or un-digestion), mys 
 terious sorenesses and aches all over one s cor- 
 porality; symptoms of all the horrid diseases 
 one has ever read about; fathomless depression 
 of spirits; wide-awake nightmares from day 
 light to breakfast time, planning out the details 
 of all the woes that are imminent to body and 
 mind? 
 
 If such as these thy spirit move, then come 
 with me and be my fellow patient. 
 
 It s a hard thing to find out any exact fact 
 in this world. No man, woman or book can tell 
 the least about what degree of the thermometer 
 one can expect in Colorado in March. Do you 
 not need to cut and run somewhere? Could n t 
 you leave for a month or six weeks? " He that 
 fights and runs away shall live to fight another 
 day," you know. I think we shall start in about 
 a week. Write me quickly how you do. Who is 
 your doctor? I saw Dr. A. L. Loomis in New 
 York. He is first-class. 
 
292 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 We are coming to last things. The note below 
 to Aldrich was his last communication with an 
 editor, as the note that follows was probably 
 the last he wrote to anybody, and the visit to 
 New York was his last journey from home ex 
 cept that to the hospital where he died. Of 
 this farewell visit to Gotham Mr. Holt wrote 
 in a letter sometime later : 
 
 "The odi prqfanum vulgus et arceo 9 of an 
 other poet, used to be, to a marked degree, his 
 feeling. When he was in New York, a few 
 weeks before his death, all this had become 
 wonderfully changed. He was at a hotel on 
 Fifth Avenue, and astonished me by appear 
 ing in a high hat. He told me that he had 
 come for needed rest after caring for sick 
 friends. 
 
 "I said, still more astonished: Why, some 
 years ago, you told me that the rush of life in 
 New York actually made you physically ill; 
 and you gave that as your reason for hurrying 
 through here once without even coming to see 
 me. 
 
 "He answered: Yes, it used to be so. I was 
 thoroughly morbid. I understand it all now. 
 But I ve outgrown it. I don t want any better 
 recreation now than to sit here and watch the 
 stream of life go by. 
 
 "Many other things united with this to 
 satisfy me that he had at last become a citizen 
 
THE CRAFTSMAN 293 
 
 of the real world, instead of trying to live in 
 worlds that he tried to make for himself." 
 
 CUYAHOGA FALLS, O., Feb. 9, 1887. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. A , Thank you for 
 
 the Club manuscript. I am sorry to have 
 troubled you about it. 
 
 Thank you, too, for your friendly incite 
 ment as to writing. I shall be glad to pay heed 
 thereto as soon as I can get into working order 
 again. For two months I have been quite out 
 of sorts. I am just back from a fortnight in 
 New York, where some medical advice and 
 some Wagner operas, and eke some symphon 
 ies, did me good; and I hope to be bombarding 
 you with proses and verses before long. 
 Heartily yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 The Devil was well; the 
 
 Devil a poet would be: 
 The Devil fell sick, and 
 
 Devil a poet was he! 
 
 CUT. FALLS, Feb. 23, 87. 
 
 I find we are to be delayed about going 
 to Colorado Springs for two weeks probably. 
 This interval I shall spend in Cleveland, at 
 tending to some necessary business there. I 
 hope to hear from you there address P. O. 
 Do you think you re well enough yet to be 
 
294 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 trotting around the country lecturing? Yet 
 it has compensations of good mental effect on 
 body. Probably all you need is outdoor air 
 and fun. A bluebird heard here yesterday and 
 a peewee! Frosty for their poor little toes! 
 What do you know of Colorado in April and 
 May? Florida is damp, malarious, and noth 
 ing to do, I hear. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 E. R. SILL. 
 
 The end was unexpected and shocking. Sill 
 had gone up to Cleveland to the hospital, there 
 to undergo a minor operation which was per 
 formed about February 24. It was apparently 
 a success and he seemed to be recovering, 
 when, whether as a result of oversight on the 
 part of the nurse in charge, or of some unex 
 pected weakness in his constitution, he suffered 
 a relapse and died on the 27th. 
 
IX 
 
 AVE ATQUE VALE 
 
 SILL S death left his friends inconsolable; so 
 incomplete his life, so needless seemed his end. 
 They were so confident, so happily expectant, 
 of his future, and now, cut off in the full exer 
 cise of his growing power, he was gone, "and 
 hath not left his peer." So it seemed to them in 
 1887, he was to them the fittest to carry 
 forward the torch of poetry. Not that he had 
 achieved his fame: that has been growing 
 since, he might in fact have described himself 
 without bitterness, in the words Hawthorne 
 had used forty years earlier, as "the most ob 
 scure man of letters in America." He had cared 
 little for fame: fame had cared as little for him; 
 and outside a small group of discerning lovers 
 of poetry the name of Sill was unknown in the 
 world of letters. 
 
 It is perhaps an idle question to ask why to 
 his friends the sense of loss was so poignant. 
 Was it not enough that he was gone and they 
 were the poorer? But the quick, eager spirit 
 was so untimely taken off, before its full fruit 
 age and expression. All the unfulfilled promise 
 of his nature loomed before them as a tangible 
 
296 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 loss. They knew he had not beat his music out; 
 nor fully conquered his old inhibitions and the 
 checks and hamperings of doubt. It was plain 
 that he had not gained serenity, and had 
 never resolved into moral unity that duality 
 and conflict of temperament which prevented 
 full-throated song. The unrest and barren 
 ness of the time, the chill of doubt, the ag 
 gressive agnosticism of his generation had 
 often laid constraint upon him. But they had 
 seen him emerging into fuller power; they felt 
 the growing sweep of mind, the firmer hold on 
 life and its meanings; they looked in confidence 
 for fuller tones, for a more sustained and loftier 
 song. 
 
 Were they deceived? I think not. The 
 figure that emerges in the letters and autobio 
 graphical jottings is that of a finely tempered, 
 aspiring spirit, attuned to all ideals loving 
 truth and emulous of perfection, continuing the 
 struggle from year to year to gain mastery of 
 his resources and his art. 
 
 It is a very engaging figure. In his prime as 
 in his youth he was a handsome man, slender, 
 straight, and alert. He had abundant brown 
 hair, large, melancholy gray eyes, and a face 
 rather pale. He gave the impression always 
 of a refined, delicate, even somewhat fragile, 
 creature, so that Howells, who saw him but 
 once, remembers him as "a still, shy, delicate 
 
AVE ATQUE VALE 297 
 
 presence. " By the time he was forty he had had 
 several break-downs from overwork, and had 
 established habits of cautious regard for his 
 health which of course reacted upon his atti 
 tude toward life. His movements were quick 
 and precise, all his nerves and muscles being 
 apparently most accurate in their adjustments. 
 His laugh was spontaneous and contagious, his 
 face was mobile, and his talk was illustrated 
 with inconspicuous but frequent gesture. For 
 all his fragile health he was an outdoors man, 
 fond of trees and fields, keenly observant of 
 leaf and flower; bird and beast. He has himself 
 given us some hints of his personal peculiarities 
 in one of his little essays originally printed in 
 the "Atlantic." 
 
 "For my own part, at least, I like to know 
 that I am not so eccentric as I may have feared 
 in various little tricks and manners of my 
 body or my mind. I am always pleased to meet 
 people who wear their thumbs inside their shut 
 hand; and who have square-toed shoes; and 
 who like the taste of some cates when a little 
 burnt; and who reluct at shaking hands; and 
 who never sharpen the lead of a pencil; and 
 who say good-morning to the servants; and 
 who reject the use of a spoon as being a thing to 
 take powders in, or the milder nourishments 
 of helpless infancy." 
 
 But singularly enough the most striking 
 
298 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 portrait of Sill I have found is in a brief descrip 
 tion of an English poet who died in the same 
 year that Sill graduated from college. I mean 
 that remarkable prototype of the American 
 poet Arthur Hugh Clough whose biog 
 rapher writes of him : 
 
 "His was a character not easy to describe, 
 whose charm was so personal that it seems to 
 evaporate when translated into words. He 
 was a singular combination of enthusiasm and 
 calmness, of thoughtfulness and imagination, 
 of speech and silence, of seriousness and 
 humor. . . . 
 
 "On special occasions he would pour out 
 the accumulation of his mind, but most often 
 the stream remained hid, and only came to the 
 surface in his poetry, or in little incisive 
 phrases, most apt to engrave themselves 
 sharply on the minds of his hearers. . . . His 
 poems tell us of his perplexities, his divided 
 thoughts, his uncertainties; those who remem 
 ber him will think rather of his simple direct 
 ness of speech and action, the clearness of his 
 judgment on any moot point; above all, it is 
 remarkable how unanimous all those who knew 
 him are in expressing their feeling of his entire 
 nobleness, his utter purity of character." 
 
 This was the man to whom Sill might have 
 addressed a poem that tells so much of him 
 self: 
 
AVE ATQUE VALE 299 
 
 To the Unknown Soul 
 
 soul, that somewhere art my very kin, 
 From dusk and silence unto thee I call: 
 
 1 know not where thou dwellest: if within 
 A palace or a hut; if great or small 
 
 Thy state and store of fortune; if thou rt sad 
 This moment, or most glad; 
 
 The lordliest monarch or the lowest thrall. 
 
 But well I know since thou rt my counterpart 
 Thou bear st a clouded spirit; full of doubt 
 
 And old misgiving, heaviness of heart 
 And loneliness of mind; long wearied out 
 
 With climbing stairs that lead to nothing sure, 
 
 With chasing lights that lure, 
 
 In the thick murk that wraps us all about. 
 
 As across many instruments a flute 
 
 Breathes low, and only thrills its selfsame tone, 
 That wakes in music while the rest are mute, 
 
 So send thy voice to me: Then I alone 
 Shall hear and answer; and we two will fare 
 Together, and each bear 
 
 Twin burdens, lighter now than either one. 
 
 The longing for perfect companionship 
 the verses just quoted were originally a pend 
 ant to a brief essay entitled "Wanted A 
 Friend" - was a phase of his wistful idealism. 
 Not that he was without friends. Never man 
 had warmer, more loyal, or more steadfast 
 friends. Besides that first intimate, Damon 
 and Pythias relation, closer than a brother s, 
 with his classmate Shearer, which beginning in 
 college lasted throughout Shearer s life, there 
 
300 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 were his friendships with Williams and Dexter 
 and Baldwin and Holt, of the Yale group, with 
 Palmer and Kellogg and Royce and McLean, 
 of California, not one of which was broken till 
 death severed the tie. His capacity for friend 
 ship lay partly in a flashing responsiveness, a 
 lightning readiness to catch another s thought 
 and join in sympathetic understanding. Says 
 his friend Williams: "I never knew anybody 
 else who caught one s idea so promptly as he. 
 In all our talks on innumerable topics, I never 
 had in a single instance to explain my mean 
 ing to Sill. He anticipated my idea before it 
 was half expressed. And it was so in the case 
 of everybody with whom he came in contact." 
 Holt says: " Sill and Shearer did more for the 
 culture and character of the class than did all 
 the rest of the college, faculty included." 
 
 Deeper than this lay what was the central 
 and dominant motive of his life the desire 
 to serve. Just as his mind ran to meet another s 
 thought, his whole nature ran to meet an 
 other s need. He longed to help. The desire 
 runs like a refrain through his poems 
 
 "I would be satisfied if I might tell 
 
 Before I go, 
 That one warm word, how I have loved them well, 
 
 Could they but know! 
 
 And would have gained for them some gleam of good: 
 Have sought it long; still seek, if but I could! 
 
 Before I go." 
 
AVE ATQUE VALE 301 
 
 It runs no less plain and strong through his 
 life. "I often think," he writes from Cuyahoga 
 Falls, "when I fidget after doing more work 
 and more good Oh, well. One must n t hope 
 for the chance to do too much more than the 
 average man. Now the average man does n t 
 do anything." And again, "I am busy getting 
 up a village aid society awful weather for 
 poor people without even potatoes and no 
 blankets. Also making a new campaign for my 
 struggling village library. ... It s a hard world 
 to really do anything in but Lord, how easy 
 to talk!" 
 
 This was the spirit that led him to send 
 out his poems unsigned and made him shrink 
 from any collection of them into a book. 
 He feared and hated mere publicity. I shall 
 not attempt to appraise his work. Most of it 
 is lyric and stamped with the mood of the 
 singer: no single work ample in plan, of large 
 design and sustained power of execution ar 
 rests the attention. Yet the "Collected 
 Poems," together with the volume of selected 
 "Prose," form no inconsiderable achieve 
 ment in authorship. And it is of a definite 
 type; the seal of New England is upon it 
 all the mark of restraint, clarity and 
 moral elevation. Already time is sifting 
 it, and some, perhaps much, of it will dis 
 appear; but much bids fair to last. Certain 
 
302 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL 
 
 of his shorter poems like " Truth at Last," 
 "Life," "Sibylline Bartering," "The Things 
 that will not Die," " The Secret," have been 
 widely quoted and reprinted in a score of 
 forms, often without any reference to their 
 authorship; in many cases it is likely with no 
 idea of their author s name or history. His 
 two most generally known poems those we 
 mentioned at the beginning of this record 
 "Opportunity" and "The Fool s Prayer," are. 
 known by thousands of people who have been 
 chastened by them and had their hearts lifted 
 up and their spirits purified by them, yet have 
 never heard of their author. That is as he 
 would have wished. He would have accepted 
 his own doctrine : 
 
 "Let the great forces, wise of old, 
 Have their whole way with thee, 
 Crumble thy heart from its hold, 
 Drown thy life in the sea. 
 And eeons hence, some day, 
 The love thou gavest a child, 
 The dream in a midnight wild, 
 The word thou wouldst not say 
 Or in a whisper no one dared to hear, 
 Shall gladden the earth and bring the golden year." 
 
 Sill came of Puritan stock; he was of the best 
 New England strain; he was trained, as his 
 father before him, at Yale. It is enough to say 
 that he was bred true to type. He came from 
 the proud little town of Windsor. She may 
 
AVE ATQUE VALE 303 
 
 gladly record his name among her sons: for he 
 is fit to hold a place with her best with the 
 Wolcotts, the Allyns, the Rowlands, the Ed- 
 wardses, the Grants, and the Ellsworths. They 
 would not deny him a place in their company, 
 not the procession of the Wolcotts, gracious 
 gentlemen all, nor Jonathan Edwards the great 
 theologian who towered in intellect above his 
 contemporaries like a mountain peak, nor even 
 the Chief Justice who stood worthily beside 
 Washington himself. They all served their day 
 and generation, and their descendant and fellow 
 townsman bore himself like one of them. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 13, 95, 
 190; letters to, 227, 229, 231, 
 235, 236, 246, 247, 249, 250, 
 251, 253, 257, 264, 265, 266, 
 271, 273, 293. 
 
 "Alice in Wonderland," 125. 
 
 Anonymity, advantages of, 231 
 235, 244, 246. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 6, 175. 
 
 "Atlantic Monthly," the, 6, 13, 
 95, 181, 190, 191, 192, 193, 
 194, 215, 235, 249, 272, 278. 
 
 Baldwin, Simeon E., 12; letters 
 
 to, 86, 200. 
 Berkeley, Cal., Sill s life there, 
 
 158-89. 
 "Bohemian Glass," 105, 108, 
 
 112. 
 Boston Music Hall, 97, 98. 
 
 Carlyle, Jane Welch, 208. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, Sill s indebt 
 edness to, 25, 32, 153. 
 
 "Cheerfulness of Birds, The," 
 215-18. 
 
 Christianity, 56, 77 el seq. 
 
 Civil War, the, 82. 
 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 298. 
 
 Cuyahoga, Falls, 9. 88, 215, 
 220. 
 
 Dexter, F. B., letters to, 55, 58, 
 
 71, 120, 182, 199. 
 "Diana of the Crossways," 
 
 280, 283. 
 
 Eliot, George, 181, 267. 
 Emerson, R. W., 143, 152, 209, 
 230. 
 
 Folsom, Cal., 52; Sill s life 
 
 there, 59, 60, 61. 
 Fuller, William H., 230. 
 
 Germans, the, and their schools, 
 
 175; compared with the 
 
 French, 224. 
 Gilman, Daniel C., 169, 269; 
 
 letters to, 170, 171, 173, 176. 
 
 187, 259. 
 Greek letter societies, 19, 22. 
 
 Harvard Divinity School, 80, 
 
 88. 
 "Hedbrook, Andrew," 249, 250, 
 
 252, 257, 265, 273, 278. 
 "Hermitage, The," Sill s first 
 
 book, 80, 90, 91, 100, 178. 
 Holt, Henry, letters to, 67, 69, 
 
 75, 80, 88, 90, 92, 95, 99, 101, 
 
 102, 118, 123, 168, 178, 179, 
 
 181, 230, 238, 240, 255, 260, 
 
 269. 
 Howells, W. D., 196, 296. 
 
 Immortality, 36, 76, 212. 
 "In Memoriam" 77, 239. 
 
 Kant, Emanuel, his poetry, 211. 
 Kellogg, Martin, letter to, 206. 
 Kernochan, Francis E., 230. 
 Kingsley, Charles, 56. 
 
306 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Le Conte, Professor John, 233. 
 Leland Stanford University, 
 258. 
 
 "Man the Spirit," 133, 148. 
 McLean, Rev. J. K., 162. 
 Memorial of Edward Rowland 
 
 Sill, 149. 
 
 Meredith, George, 281. 
 "Midnight," 33. 
 "Morning," how it was written, 
 
 17, 30. 
 
 "Nation," the, 100. 
 "News Girl, The" 114. 
 
 Oakland, Cal, 128; Sill s life 
 
 there, 133, 134, 147. 
 "Overland Monthly," the, 190, 
 
 228. 
 
 Palmer, C. T. H., 60, 61. 122, 
 
 128, 289. 
 
 Phillips Exeter Academy, 9, 
 10. 
 
 Rowland, Rev. David S., 3. 
 Rowland, Elizabeth Newberry, 
 
 4. 
 Royce, Josiah, 137, 170, 173, 
 
 176. 
 
 Sacramento, Cal., 51, 53. 
 
 Sand, George, 226, 243, 254, 
 276, 278. 
 
 Shearer, Sextus, 21, 22, 27, 63, 
 70, 80, 86, 299; his illness and 
 death, 122, 123. 
 
 Shinn, Millicent, reminiscences 
 of Sill, 134, 158, 160; letters 
 to, 145, 183, 184, 195, 221. 
 
 Sill, Edward Rowland, his an 
 cestry, 1; his birthplace, 1; 
 his parents, 5; his school days, 
 
 9, 10; his life at Yale College, 
 12-34; his appearance, 24-28, 
 29, 84, 296; his undergradu 
 ate writing, 29; his self-criti 
 cism, 39; his voyage round 
 the Horn, 37-50; his scien 
 tific tendencies, 40; his first 
 sojourn in California, 51 et 
 seq.; studies law, 57, 83; 
 studies medicine, 59; reads 
 theology, 65; his early love 
 affair, 66; his religious views, 
 75-80, 177, 239, 241, 253, 
 255; as abolitionist, 83; con 
 siders going on the stage, 84; 
 his marriage, 93; at Cam 
 bridge, 94; as translator, 99, 
 101; gives up theology, 102; 
 tries journalism, 103 et seq.\ 
 as teacher, 116, 120, 124, 125, 
 126, 134, 138, 149-58, 164, 
 180; as writer, 130, 191, 220, 
 222; his second sojourn in 
 California, 131 et seq.; memo 
 rial of, 149; resigns professor 
 ship, 178, 189; visits Europe, 
 183 et seq.; his last visit to 
 New York, 292; his person 
 ality, 296. 
 
 Sill, Dr. Elisha Noyes, 4. 
 
 Sill, Elizabeth, 9, 93. 
 
 Sill, Dr. Theodore, 4. 
 
 " Song of the Horse, The" 111. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 180, 192, 
 254, 262, 269. 
 
 Stearns, R. E. C., verses to, 189. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund, 264. 
 
 "Summer Afternoon," 107. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 143. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 36, 72, 77, 
 
 81, 100. 
 "Timothy Grass," 105, 108. 
 
 To the Unknown Soul" 299. 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 University of California, 116, 
 131, 148, 170. 
 
 "Venus ofMilo, The" 190. 
 
 Ware, Sir Thomas, 1. 
 Williams, Ralph O., memories 
 of Sill, 27, 300. 
 
 Windsor, Conn., 1, 3, 5, 8, 36, 
 
 202, 204. 
 Woolsey, President, of Yale, 17. 
 
 Yale College in 1857, 13-21; 
 compared with Harvard, 23, 
 34; conditions in 1885, 238, 
 255, 269. 
 
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