THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

(‡ decoration)THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.PATRIOT AND MAN OF LETTERS.THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the group of men of whom their countrymen should be most proud. He has taken a noble part in the battles on behalf of freedom, which the last half-century has seen, and everywhere has borne himself with a nobility, a devotion and a courage worthy of all praise. The man who was driven from his church because he preached the freedom of the slaves, who sat with Parker and Phillips under indictment for murder for their part in attempting to rescue a fugitive slave, who was colonel of the first regiment of freed slaves mustered into the army of the United States, who bravely fought and patiently suffered for the cause of the Union; surely this man, if he had no other claims upon our respect and attention, should hold a high place in the hearts of his fellows.Colonel Higginson is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1847, when he was twenty-four years old, became pastor of a Congregational Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here his anti-slavery preaching allowed him to remain but three years. From 1852 until 1858 he was pastor of a free church in Worcester, after which he left the ministry and devoted himself to literature. During all this time his activity in the anti-slavery agitation was frequently getting him into trouble, and, with his friends who participated in the attempted rescue of Anthony Burns, he was discharged from custody only through a flaw in the indictment. He took part in the organization of the bands of free-state, emigrants to Kansas, and was personally acquainted with John Brown. With his regiment of colored troops, he took possession of Jacksonville, Florida; but was wounded in 1863 and was compelled to resign from the army. He has been an earnest advocate of equal suffrage for men and women and of the higher education for both sexes. He has served in his State Legislature and as a member of the State Board of Education.Colonel Higginson’s contributions to literature consist largely of volumes of essays that originally appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly” or other periodicals, and historical and biographical work. Some of his best known books are “Atlantic Essays;” “Young Folk’s History of the United States;” “Young Folk’s Book of American Explorers;” “Short Stories of American Authors;” “A Larger History of the United States;” “The Monarch of Dreams;” and “Brief Biographies of European Statesmen.” Besides these, he has translated his “Young Folk’s History of the United States” into German and French for publication in those languages, andhas also published a number of English translations of modern and ancient classics. Colonel Higginson is one of our most popular writers, particularly upon American history, and his service to the cause of American letters has been no less distinguished than his share in the great victory which made our country in truth the land of the free.“A PURITAN SUNDAYMORNING.”¹FROM “ATLANTIC ESSAYS.”¹Copyright,Geo.R. Shepard.IT is nine o’clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into an ever remoter distance—not yet so far removed but a stout wooden gate at the end of the village street indicates that there is danger outside. It would look very busy and thriving in this little place to-day but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the smoke ascends more faintly than usual from the chimneys of the numerous log-huts and these few framed houses, and since three o’clock yesterday afternoon not a stroke of this world’s work has been done. Last night a Preparatory Lecture was held, and now comes the consummation of the whole week’s life, in the solemn act of worship. In which settlement of the great Massachusetts Colony is the great ceremonial to pass before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, a drum is sounding its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village, a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the auction-flag of later periods. If it be Haverhill village, then Abraham Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an hour—a service for which Abraham, each year, receives a half pound of pork from every family in town.Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, we will draw near to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public edifice: meeting-house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than half a mile from it. And yet the people ride to “meeting,” short though the distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind her husband; and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a fine of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not modern ones, young gentlemen.We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is the pillory, yonder are the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their horses, provided it be not done too near the passageway. For at that opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings by the bill. He bears also a heavy match-lock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes.O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets in! “People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies,” says one writer triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The warning caution, “Be short,” which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four persons will sometimes pray an hour each—one with confession, one with private petitions, a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom, and a fourth with thanksgiving—each theme being conscientiously treated by itself. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his hour-glass, may say—but that he cannot foresee the levity to be born in a later century with Mather Byles—“Now, my hearers, we will take another glass.”

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PATRIOT AND MAN OF LETTERS.

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the group of men of whom their countrymen should be most proud. He has taken a noble part in the battles on behalf of freedom, which the last half-century has seen, and everywhere has borne himself with a nobility, a devotion and a courage worthy of all praise. The man who was driven from his church because he preached the freedom of the slaves, who sat with Parker and Phillips under indictment for murder for their part in attempting to rescue a fugitive slave, who was colonel of the first regiment of freed slaves mustered into the army of the United States, who bravely fought and patiently suffered for the cause of the Union; surely this man, if he had no other claims upon our respect and attention, should hold a high place in the hearts of his fellows.

Colonel Higginson is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1847, when he was twenty-four years old, became pastor of a Congregational Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here his anti-slavery preaching allowed him to remain but three years. From 1852 until 1858 he was pastor of a free church in Worcester, after which he left the ministry and devoted himself to literature. During all this time his activity in the anti-slavery agitation was frequently getting him into trouble, and, with his friends who participated in the attempted rescue of Anthony Burns, he was discharged from custody only through a flaw in the indictment. He took part in the organization of the bands of free-state, emigrants to Kansas, and was personally acquainted with John Brown. With his regiment of colored troops, he took possession of Jacksonville, Florida; but was wounded in 1863 and was compelled to resign from the army. He has been an earnest advocate of equal suffrage for men and women and of the higher education for both sexes. He has served in his State Legislature and as a member of the State Board of Education.

Colonel Higginson’s contributions to literature consist largely of volumes of essays that originally appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly” or other periodicals, and historical and biographical work. Some of his best known books are “Atlantic Essays;” “Young Folk’s History of the United States;” “Young Folk’s Book of American Explorers;” “Short Stories of American Authors;” “A Larger History of the United States;” “The Monarch of Dreams;” and “Brief Biographies of European Statesmen.” Besides these, he has translated his “Young Folk’s History of the United States” into German and French for publication in those languages, andhas also published a number of English translations of modern and ancient classics. Colonel Higginson is one of our most popular writers, particularly upon American history, and his service to the cause of American letters has been no less distinguished than his share in the great victory which made our country in truth the land of the free.

“A PURITAN SUNDAYMORNING.”¹

FROM “ATLANTIC ESSAYS.”

¹Copyright,Geo.R. Shepard.

IT is nine o’clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into an ever remoter distance—not yet so far removed but a stout wooden gate at the end of the village street indicates that there is danger outside. It would look very busy and thriving in this little place to-day but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the smoke ascends more faintly than usual from the chimneys of the numerous log-huts and these few framed houses, and since three o’clock yesterday afternoon not a stroke of this world’s work has been done. Last night a Preparatory Lecture was held, and now comes the consummation of the whole week’s life, in the solemn act of worship. In which settlement of the great Massachusetts Colony is the great ceremonial to pass before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, a drum is sounding its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village, a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the auction-flag of later periods. If it be Haverhill village, then Abraham Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an hour—a service for which Abraham, each year, receives a half pound of pork from every family in town.Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, we will draw near to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public edifice: meeting-house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than half a mile from it. And yet the people ride to “meeting,” short though the distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind her husband; and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a fine of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not modern ones, young gentlemen.We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is the pillory, yonder are the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their horses, provided it be not done too near the passageway. For at that opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings by the bill. He bears also a heavy match-lock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes.O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets in! “People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies,” says one writer triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The warning caution, “Be short,” which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four persons will sometimes pray an hour each—one with confession, one with private petitions, a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom, and a fourth with thanksgiving—each theme being conscientiously treated by itself. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his hour-glass, may say—but that he cannot foresee the levity to be born in a later century with Mather Byles—“Now, my hearers, we will take another glass.”

Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, we will draw near to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public edifice: meeting-house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than half a mile from it. And yet the people ride to “meeting,” short though the distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind her husband; and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a fine of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not modern ones, young gentlemen.

We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is the pillory, yonder are the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their horses, provided it be not done too near the passageway. For at that opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings by the bill. He bears also a heavy match-lock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes.

O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets in! “People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies,” says one writer triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The warning caution, “Be short,” which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four persons will sometimes pray an hour each—one with confession, one with private petitions, a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom, and a fourth with thanksgiving—each theme being conscientiously treated by itself. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his hour-glass, may say—but that he cannot foresee the levity to be born in a later century with Mather Byles—“Now, my hearers, we will take another glass.”

(‡ decoration)HAMILTON W. MABIE.THE MODERN CRITIC.IN the modern school of literary critics, whose best representatives are Coleridge, Carlyle, Arnold, Lowell and Stedman, Hamilton W. Mabie has a prominent place. His aim has been, as is the aim of all great criticism, not only to give an estimate of a man’s work, but to show the man’s soul. He was born at Cold Springs, on the banks of the Hudson, of a family of culture. He was prepared for college under a private tutor, and graduated at Williams College in the Class of ’67—a class which numbered many men of fame.From boyhood♦Mabie has been a great reader, and he is familiar with the classics of all literatures, as well as a student of contemporaneous literature.♦‘Maybie’ replaced with ‘Mabie’After a course of law at Columbia University his literary tendencies drew him into his natural field and away from a profession uncongenial to him. In 1879 he took a position on the staff of the “Christian Union,” which under its new name, the “Outlook,” under the joint editorship of Mabie and Lyman Abbott, has taken a prominent place among the foremost religious journals of the world. “My Study Fire,” which expresses our author’s ideas of the function of literature, and the attitude and spirit of the literary man, first appeared as a series of articles in this religious journal.In the last few yearsMr.Mabie has taken a prominent place on the platform on literary and educational subjects, though he scrupulously keeps his public speaking subordinate to his writing. His addresses are marked with elegance, grace, and all the fruits of culture, and they show a profound study of the problems of life and spirit. He has a beautiful home at Summit, New Jersey, an enviable site for a writer, with the multitudinous charms of nature without and the gathered wisdom of the world’s great thinkers within.He is a man of robust life, of clear, healthy mind and of high faith. He has declared that “Skepticism is the root of all evil in us and in our arts. We do not believe enough in God, in ourselves, and in the divine laws under which we live. Great art involves great faith—a clear, resolute, victorious insight into and grasp of things, a belief real enough in‘The mighty hopes which make us men’to inspire and sustain heroic tasks,” a declaration quite typical of all his thought.COUNTRY SIGHTS AND SOUNDSBy Hamilton W. MabieIllustrated from original photographs by Conrad Baer.AT the end of February the observer begins to see the faint forerunners of spring. The willow shows signs of renewing its freshness, and the long stretch of cold, with brilliant or steely skies, is interrupted by days full of an indescribable softness. It is almost pathetic to note with what joy the spirit of man takes cognizance of these first hints of the color, the bloom and the warmth slowly creeping up to the southern horizon-line. For we are children of the sun, and, much as we love our hearthstones, we are never quite at home unless we have the freedom of the out-of-door world. Winter finds its great charm in the ingathering of the memories of the summer that is gone and in the anticipation of the summer that is at hand. Half the cheer of the blazing log lies in the air of the woods which it brings into the narrow room.ON THE FARM IN CANADATo be out of doors is the normal condition of the natural man. At some period of our ancestral life, so dim in our thought but so potential in our temper, disposition and physique, we have all lived, so to speak, in the open air; and although city-born and city-bred, we turn to the country with an instinctive feeling that we belong there. There are a few cockneys to whom the sound of Bow Bells issweeter than the note of the bluebird, the resonant clarion of chanticleer or the far-off bleating of sheep; but to the immense majority of men these noises are like sounds that were familiar in childhood. I have sometimes thought that the deepest charm of the country lies in the fact that it was the home and play-ground of the childhood of the race, and, however long some of us have been departed from it, it stirs within us rare memories and associations which are imperishable. The lowing of cattle coming home at nightfall; the bleating of sheep on the hillside pastures; the crowing of the cock, are older than any human speech which now exists. They were ancient sounds before our oldest histories were written. I know of nothing sweeter to the man who comes out of the heat and noise and dust of the city in midsummer than to be awakened on the first morning by that irregular tinkle of bells which accompanies the early processions of the cows. One may never have come nearer a farm than his great-grandfather, but that sound makes him feel as if he were at home after some long and arduous absence.THE OLD WELL-CURBAnd one has but to put into his pocket a few of those clever newspapers which satirize society people in spirited and well-drawn lines, and carry them into the country, to discover that the picturesque flees the city and loves the country; so far, that is, as people are concerned. There is certainly something wrong withour modern dress; it is impossible to discover anything suggestive or poetic in it, or to make any thing artistic out of it. Well-dressed individual men and women are often attractive to the eye; but when this is true it is because the charm of the person survives the monotonous uniformity of good clothes. Nothing can make the evening dress in which man extinguishes his personality either significant or artistic; but the man in overalls and shirt-sleeves is often a strikingly picturesque figure. Country life as a whole is steeped in the picturesque, in spite of the machines which so largely take the place of the old-time hand labor. One must go to the fields to find the poetry of human occupation; the man in the street is often interesting but he rarely stirs the imagination; the man in the fields constantly sets the imagination loose. What elemental strength and meaning are expressed in those peasant-figures of Millet? They belong to the world in which they toil; they disclose their identity with it; they express something of its meaning in their vigorous or bent forms.IMMIGRANT WOMEN HOEING POTATOESWAITING FOR MILKING-TIMEThe entire life of the field is poetic in the true sense; from the hour when the last snow begins to melt to the hour when the last sheaf of grain goes creaking through the bars. The sower, moving across the open furrows, has a kind of antique picturesqueness; he seems to have stepped out of that ancient frieze with which the earliest habits encircled the oldest days. He expresses freedom, virility, personality in every movement; the eye follows him with a deepening impression that here is something native and original: a man in first-hand relations with his world. The reaper who follows himwhen sun and cloud have done their share, is not less striking and effective; and when the sheaves lie in rows or piles on the freshly cut stubble, the slow-moving, noisily creaking wagon, constantly pausing to take on its ripe load, seems a fit accessory in the staging of this pastoral drama. The fact that this poetry of motion is bound to toil so arduous and exacting that it often becomes a kind of relentless drudgery, is full of significance to those who believe that beauty is not esoteric, but the affluence of universal life in its normal relations and occupations.AFTER WORKThe sights and sounds of the farm are not only full of interest, but that interest is deepened by their constant recurrence. The horses at the trough; the sheep beside the stream as placid as themselves, or on the green uplands; the cows stolidly biding the coming of afternoon under the trees, or standing knee-deep in the cool brooks; the clucking of hens and their bustling leisure; the going out of the workers, with implements, seed, machines, wagons, and their return at sunset; the stir of the morning, the hush of the evening; what a world of homely, wholesome life is revealed in these old-time doings and happenings of the seasons and the life on the farm.A WINTER EVENING ON THE FARMBut the farm is often only a unit of measurement, a term of individual possession; there is something greater; there is the country. Beyond the fields there is the landscape, and above them there is the sky; and every farm fits into these wider relations and is part of the larger whole. The woods, cool and silent; the spring hidden from the sun by overhanging trees and from strange feetby moss-grown rocks; the brook where it runs noiselessly in a shadow so deep at noon that one bathes his eyes in it after the glare of the world; the old mill, deserted by man but loyally served by the stream that flows through the decaying sluice and over the wheel that turns no more; the quiet hilltop, above which the whole country sleeps on summer afternoons;—these are all simply extensions of the farm.SUNDAY AFTERNOONThe boys know them on holidays; the older people are drawn to them in those infrequent hours when the pressure of work is lightened; the man who is getting city sights and sounds out of head and heart knows and loves them. The very thought of them brings refreshment and repose; for they are, one and all, places of silence and solitude.A SUNNY PLAY-GROUNDThe fever of this our life, and the tumult of it, vanish on the invisible boundaries of these ancient sanctuaries of nature. It is not difficult to understand the charm of these places for tired and worn souls; for it is to such places that exhausted men and women invariably turn. No one with a rich intellectual and spiritual nature, can keep in perfect health without a good deal ofsolitude and silence.CHURNING IN THE BARNWe come to know ourselves and the world in the deeper ways only when we are apart from the rush of things. It is only when traffic ceases and the dust is laid that the landscape becomes clear and complete to the pedestrian. The quiet of the woods, the cool note of the mountain streams, the silence of the summits, represent, not the luxuries and pleasures of a rich life, but its necessities. To the townsman these outlying provinces of the farm are even more important than are the well-tilled acres.THE OLD MILLSome day some man or woman will write a luminous book on the education of country life; the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the unconscious enrichment of the senses and of the mind which are effected by its sights and sounds. There has never been in the long history of education, a better school for the open-minded, imaginative boy or girl than the farm. Every day sets its tasks, every task teaches its lessons; and nature stands looking over the student’s shoulder and quietly whispering some of her deepest secrets to her fortunate child.AFTER A WET SNOW-STORMFor surely it is a great piece of good fortune to grow up in a wise, generous home in the country; to be young with all manner of four-footed beasts and fowls of the air, and grow up with them; to stumble over the roots of trees when one is beginning to walk; to hear the brooks chatter before one knows how to chatter himself; to awake in the stir of the morning, when the whole world seems to be going to work, and to fall asleep when the world comes trooping home, dusty and tired.MAPLE-SUGAR TIMETo see and hear these outdoor sights and sounds is to be born into vital relations with man’s natural background and to come unconsciously into possession ofsome of the greatest truths which life has to teach. It is also to be born on intimate terms with bluebirds and cherries!THE BLACK SHEEP“If you want to know where the biggest cherries are to be found,” said Goethe, “consult the boys and the blackbirds.” There is a natural affinity between the two, and the boy who does not grow up in natural relationship with birds and trees suffers a loss of privilege which can never be entirely made up. For it is a great deal easier to make the acquaintance of nature in childhood than in those later years which bring “the philosophic mind,” but which leave the senses untrained for that instinctive observation which enables the boy to see without knowing that he sees.THE MILL-PONDJohn Burroughs has given us a charming description of the joys of boyhood on a farm, and has perhaps unconsciously betrayed the secret of his own extraordinary familiarity with the out-of-doors world. No knowledge is quite so much a part of ourselves as that which we gain without conscious effort; which we breathe in with the morning air of life.NOON IN THE SHEEP-LOTThe Hindoos have an idiomatic word or phrase for a walk before breakfast, which may be translated, “eating the morning air.”The boy on the farm sees nature before breakfast, when senses and mind and heart are on the alert, when experience has not brought sophistication with it, and when sensation still keeps its pristine freshness.FEEDING THE CHICKENSThe healthy boy is one great appetite for sights and sounds, and nothing escapes him. He knows every paththrough the woods, every pool in the brook, every cavern in the hills, every sequestered hollow where the noise of the world is softened into the silence of rustling leaves and murmuring streams. One of the most erudite of American scholars, whose large learning has not smothered the instincts of his youth, declares that he is never entirely happy until he stands barefooted in the old fields.PICKING DAISIESNature’s true lovers perceive this, and demand that the companion whom he takes into the wilderness with him shall be of the right sort; one who, as Burroughs says, will not “stand between you and that which you seek.”“I want for companion,” he continues, “a dog or a boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs and boys—transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees, and growths, and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you are alone and yet you have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences of nature stream through and around him; he is a good conductor of the subtle fluid.“The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to most persons who spend their lives in the open air—to soldiers, hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets of the right sort.”MAKING FRIENDSThere is something incommunicable in such a fellowship with nature, which dates back to the time when the boy found in her his chosen playmate, and which still keeps up the old game of hide and seek even when his methods have become scientific and the result of his search is a contribution to knowledge.

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THE MODERN CRITIC.

IN the modern school of literary critics, whose best representatives are Coleridge, Carlyle, Arnold, Lowell and Stedman, Hamilton W. Mabie has a prominent place. His aim has been, as is the aim of all great criticism, not only to give an estimate of a man’s work, but to show the man’s soul. He was born at Cold Springs, on the banks of the Hudson, of a family of culture. He was prepared for college under a private tutor, and graduated at Williams College in the Class of ’67—a class which numbered many men of fame.

From boyhood♦Mabie has been a great reader, and he is familiar with the classics of all literatures, as well as a student of contemporaneous literature.

♦‘Maybie’ replaced with ‘Mabie’

After a course of law at Columbia University his literary tendencies drew him into his natural field and away from a profession uncongenial to him. In 1879 he took a position on the staff of the “Christian Union,” which under its new name, the “Outlook,” under the joint editorship of Mabie and Lyman Abbott, has taken a prominent place among the foremost religious journals of the world. “My Study Fire,” which expresses our author’s ideas of the function of literature, and the attitude and spirit of the literary man, first appeared as a series of articles in this religious journal.

In the last few yearsMr.Mabie has taken a prominent place on the platform on literary and educational subjects, though he scrupulously keeps his public speaking subordinate to his writing. His addresses are marked with elegance, grace, and all the fruits of culture, and they show a profound study of the problems of life and spirit. He has a beautiful home at Summit, New Jersey, an enviable site for a writer, with the multitudinous charms of nature without and the gathered wisdom of the world’s great thinkers within.

He is a man of robust life, of clear, healthy mind and of high faith. He has declared that “Skepticism is the root of all evil in us and in our arts. We do not believe enough in God, in ourselves, and in the divine laws under which we live. Great art involves great faith—a clear, resolute, victorious insight into and grasp of things, a belief real enough in

‘The mighty hopes which make us men’

to inspire and sustain heroic tasks,” a declaration quite typical of all his thought.

COUNTRY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS

By Hamilton W. Mabie

Illustrated from original photographs by Conrad Baer.

AT the end of February the observer begins to see the faint forerunners of spring. The willow shows signs of renewing its freshness, and the long stretch of cold, with brilliant or steely skies, is interrupted by days full of an indescribable softness. It is almost pathetic to note with what joy the spirit of man takes cognizance of these first hints of the color, the bloom and the warmth slowly creeping up to the southern horizon-line. For we are children of the sun, and, much as we love our hearthstones, we are never quite at home unless we have the freedom of the out-of-door world. Winter finds its great charm in the ingathering of the memories of the summer that is gone and in the anticipation of the summer that is at hand. Half the cheer of the blazing log lies in the air of the woods which it brings into the narrow room.ON THE FARM IN CANADATo be out of doors is the normal condition of the natural man. At some period of our ancestral life, so dim in our thought but so potential in our temper, disposition and physique, we have all lived, so to speak, in the open air; and although city-born and city-bred, we turn to the country with an instinctive feeling that we belong there. There are a few cockneys to whom the sound of Bow Bells issweeter than the note of the bluebird, the resonant clarion of chanticleer or the far-off bleating of sheep; but to the immense majority of men these noises are like sounds that were familiar in childhood. I have sometimes thought that the deepest charm of the country lies in the fact that it was the home and play-ground of the childhood of the race, and, however long some of us have been departed from it, it stirs within us rare memories and associations which are imperishable. The lowing of cattle coming home at nightfall; the bleating of sheep on the hillside pastures; the crowing of the cock, are older than any human speech which now exists. They were ancient sounds before our oldest histories were written. I know of nothing sweeter to the man who comes out of the heat and noise and dust of the city in midsummer than to be awakened on the first morning by that irregular tinkle of bells which accompanies the early processions of the cows. One may never have come nearer a farm than his great-grandfather, but that sound makes him feel as if he were at home after some long and arduous absence.THE OLD WELL-CURBAnd one has but to put into his pocket a few of those clever newspapers which satirize society people in spirited and well-drawn lines, and carry them into the country, to discover that the picturesque flees the city and loves the country; so far, that is, as people are concerned. There is certainly something wrong withour modern dress; it is impossible to discover anything suggestive or poetic in it, or to make any thing artistic out of it. Well-dressed individual men and women are often attractive to the eye; but when this is true it is because the charm of the person survives the monotonous uniformity of good clothes. Nothing can make the evening dress in which man extinguishes his personality either significant or artistic; but the man in overalls and shirt-sleeves is often a strikingly picturesque figure. Country life as a whole is steeped in the picturesque, in spite of the machines which so largely take the place of the old-time hand labor. One must go to the fields to find the poetry of human occupation; the man in the street is often interesting but he rarely stirs the imagination; the man in the fields constantly sets the imagination loose. What elemental strength and meaning are expressed in those peasant-figures of Millet? They belong to the world in which they toil; they disclose their identity with it; they express something of its meaning in their vigorous or bent forms.IMMIGRANT WOMEN HOEING POTATOESWAITING FOR MILKING-TIMEThe entire life of the field is poetic in the true sense; from the hour when the last snow begins to melt to the hour when the last sheaf of grain goes creaking through the bars. The sower, moving across the open furrows, has a kind of antique picturesqueness; he seems to have stepped out of that ancient frieze with which the earliest habits encircled the oldest days. He expresses freedom, virility, personality in every movement; the eye follows him with a deepening impression that here is something native and original: a man in first-hand relations with his world. The reaper who follows himwhen sun and cloud have done their share, is not less striking and effective; and when the sheaves lie in rows or piles on the freshly cut stubble, the slow-moving, noisily creaking wagon, constantly pausing to take on its ripe load, seems a fit accessory in the staging of this pastoral drama. The fact that this poetry of motion is bound to toil so arduous and exacting that it often becomes a kind of relentless drudgery, is full of significance to those who believe that beauty is not esoteric, but the affluence of universal life in its normal relations and occupations.AFTER WORKThe sights and sounds of the farm are not only full of interest, but that interest is deepened by their constant recurrence. The horses at the trough; the sheep beside the stream as placid as themselves, or on the green uplands; the cows stolidly biding the coming of afternoon under the trees, or standing knee-deep in the cool brooks; the clucking of hens and their bustling leisure; the going out of the workers, with implements, seed, machines, wagons, and their return at sunset; the stir of the morning, the hush of the evening; what a world of homely, wholesome life is revealed in these old-time doings and happenings of the seasons and the life on the farm.A WINTER EVENING ON THE FARMBut the farm is often only a unit of measurement, a term of individual possession; there is something greater; there is the country. Beyond the fields there is the landscape, and above them there is the sky; and every farm fits into these wider relations and is part of the larger whole. The woods, cool and silent; the spring hidden from the sun by overhanging trees and from strange feetby moss-grown rocks; the brook where it runs noiselessly in a shadow so deep at noon that one bathes his eyes in it after the glare of the world; the old mill, deserted by man but loyally served by the stream that flows through the decaying sluice and over the wheel that turns no more; the quiet hilltop, above which the whole country sleeps on summer afternoons;—these are all simply extensions of the farm.SUNDAY AFTERNOONThe boys know them on holidays; the older people are drawn to them in those infrequent hours when the pressure of work is lightened; the man who is getting city sights and sounds out of head and heart knows and loves them. The very thought of them brings refreshment and repose; for they are, one and all, places of silence and solitude.A SUNNY PLAY-GROUNDThe fever of this our life, and the tumult of it, vanish on the invisible boundaries of these ancient sanctuaries of nature. It is not difficult to understand the charm of these places for tired and worn souls; for it is to such places that exhausted men and women invariably turn. No one with a rich intellectual and spiritual nature, can keep in perfect health without a good deal ofsolitude and silence.CHURNING IN THE BARNWe come to know ourselves and the world in the deeper ways only when we are apart from the rush of things. It is only when traffic ceases and the dust is laid that the landscape becomes clear and complete to the pedestrian. The quiet of the woods, the cool note of the mountain streams, the silence of the summits, represent, not the luxuries and pleasures of a rich life, but its necessities. To the townsman these outlying provinces of the farm are even more important than are the well-tilled acres.THE OLD MILLSome day some man or woman will write a luminous book on the education of country life; the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the unconscious enrichment of the senses and of the mind which are effected by its sights and sounds. There has never been in the long history of education, a better school for the open-minded, imaginative boy or girl than the farm. Every day sets its tasks, every task teaches its lessons; and nature stands looking over the student’s shoulder and quietly whispering some of her deepest secrets to her fortunate child.AFTER A WET SNOW-STORMFor surely it is a great piece of good fortune to grow up in a wise, generous home in the country; to be young with all manner of four-footed beasts and fowls of the air, and grow up with them; to stumble over the roots of trees when one is beginning to walk; to hear the brooks chatter before one knows how to chatter himself; to awake in the stir of the morning, when the whole world seems to be going to work, and to fall asleep when the world comes trooping home, dusty and tired.MAPLE-SUGAR TIMETo see and hear these outdoor sights and sounds is to be born into vital relations with man’s natural background and to come unconsciously into possession ofsome of the greatest truths which life has to teach. It is also to be born on intimate terms with bluebirds and cherries!THE BLACK SHEEP“If you want to know where the biggest cherries are to be found,” said Goethe, “consult the boys and the blackbirds.” There is a natural affinity between the two, and the boy who does not grow up in natural relationship with birds and trees suffers a loss of privilege which can never be entirely made up. For it is a great deal easier to make the acquaintance of nature in childhood than in those later years which bring “the philosophic mind,” but which leave the senses untrained for that instinctive observation which enables the boy to see without knowing that he sees.THE MILL-PONDJohn Burroughs has given us a charming description of the joys of boyhood on a farm, and has perhaps unconsciously betrayed the secret of his own extraordinary familiarity with the out-of-doors world. No knowledge is quite so much a part of ourselves as that which we gain without conscious effort; which we breathe in with the morning air of life.NOON IN THE SHEEP-LOTThe Hindoos have an idiomatic word or phrase for a walk before breakfast, which may be translated, “eating the morning air.”The boy on the farm sees nature before breakfast, when senses and mind and heart are on the alert, when experience has not brought sophistication with it, and when sensation still keeps its pristine freshness.FEEDING THE CHICKENSThe healthy boy is one great appetite for sights and sounds, and nothing escapes him. He knows every paththrough the woods, every pool in the brook, every cavern in the hills, every sequestered hollow where the noise of the world is softened into the silence of rustling leaves and murmuring streams. One of the most erudite of American scholars, whose large learning has not smothered the instincts of his youth, declares that he is never entirely happy until he stands barefooted in the old fields.PICKING DAISIESNature’s true lovers perceive this, and demand that the companion whom he takes into the wilderness with him shall be of the right sort; one who, as Burroughs says, will not “stand between you and that which you seek.”“I want for companion,” he continues, “a dog or a boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs and boys—transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees, and growths, and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you are alone and yet you have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences of nature stream through and around him; he is a good conductor of the subtle fluid.“The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to most persons who spend their lives in the open air—to soldiers, hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets of the right sort.”MAKING FRIENDSThere is something incommunicable in such a fellowship with nature, which dates back to the time when the boy found in her his chosen playmate, and which still keeps up the old game of hide and seek even when his methods have become scientific and the result of his search is a contribution to knowledge.

ON THE FARM IN CANADA

To be out of doors is the normal condition of the natural man. At some period of our ancestral life, so dim in our thought but so potential in our temper, disposition and physique, we have all lived, so to speak, in the open air; and although city-born and city-bred, we turn to the country with an instinctive feeling that we belong there. There are a few cockneys to whom the sound of Bow Bells issweeter than the note of the bluebird, the resonant clarion of chanticleer or the far-off bleating of sheep; but to the immense majority of men these noises are like sounds that were familiar in childhood. I have sometimes thought that the deepest charm of the country lies in the fact that it was the home and play-ground of the childhood of the race, and, however long some of us have been departed from it, it stirs within us rare memories and associations which are imperishable. The lowing of cattle coming home at nightfall; the bleating of sheep on the hillside pastures; the crowing of the cock, are older than any human speech which now exists. They were ancient sounds before our oldest histories were written. I know of nothing sweeter to the man who comes out of the heat and noise and dust of the city in midsummer than to be awakened on the first morning by that irregular tinkle of bells which accompanies the early processions of the cows. One may never have come nearer a farm than his great-grandfather, but that sound makes him feel as if he were at home after some long and arduous absence.

THE OLD WELL-CURB

And one has but to put into his pocket a few of those clever newspapers which satirize society people in spirited and well-drawn lines, and carry them into the country, to discover that the picturesque flees the city and loves the country; so far, that is, as people are concerned. There is certainly something wrong withour modern dress; it is impossible to discover anything suggestive or poetic in it, or to make any thing artistic out of it. Well-dressed individual men and women are often attractive to the eye; but when this is true it is because the charm of the person survives the monotonous uniformity of good clothes. Nothing can make the evening dress in which man extinguishes his personality either significant or artistic; but the man in overalls and shirt-sleeves is often a strikingly picturesque figure. Country life as a whole is steeped in the picturesque, in spite of the machines which so largely take the place of the old-time hand labor. One must go to the fields to find the poetry of human occupation; the man in the street is often interesting but he rarely stirs the imagination; the man in the fields constantly sets the imagination loose. What elemental strength and meaning are expressed in those peasant-figures of Millet? They belong to the world in which they toil; they disclose their identity with it; they express something of its meaning in their vigorous or bent forms.

IMMIGRANT WOMEN HOEING POTATOES

WAITING FOR MILKING-TIME

The entire life of the field is poetic in the true sense; from the hour when the last snow begins to melt to the hour when the last sheaf of grain goes creaking through the bars. The sower, moving across the open furrows, has a kind of antique picturesqueness; he seems to have stepped out of that ancient frieze with which the earliest habits encircled the oldest days. He expresses freedom, virility, personality in every movement; the eye follows him with a deepening impression that here is something native and original: a man in first-hand relations with his world. The reaper who follows himwhen sun and cloud have done their share, is not less striking and effective; and when the sheaves lie in rows or piles on the freshly cut stubble, the slow-moving, noisily creaking wagon, constantly pausing to take on its ripe load, seems a fit accessory in the staging of this pastoral drama. The fact that this poetry of motion is bound to toil so arduous and exacting that it often becomes a kind of relentless drudgery, is full of significance to those who believe that beauty is not esoteric, but the affluence of universal life in its normal relations and occupations.

AFTER WORK

The sights and sounds of the farm are not only full of interest, but that interest is deepened by their constant recurrence. The horses at the trough; the sheep beside the stream as placid as themselves, or on the green uplands; the cows stolidly biding the coming of afternoon under the trees, or standing knee-deep in the cool brooks; the clucking of hens and their bustling leisure; the going out of the workers, with implements, seed, machines, wagons, and their return at sunset; the stir of the morning, the hush of the evening; what a world of homely, wholesome life is revealed in these old-time doings and happenings of the seasons and the life on the farm.

A WINTER EVENING ON THE FARM

But the farm is often only a unit of measurement, a term of individual possession; there is something greater; there is the country. Beyond the fields there is the landscape, and above them there is the sky; and every farm fits into these wider relations and is part of the larger whole. The woods, cool and silent; the spring hidden from the sun by overhanging trees and from strange feetby moss-grown rocks; the brook where it runs noiselessly in a shadow so deep at noon that one bathes his eyes in it after the glare of the world; the old mill, deserted by man but loyally served by the stream that flows through the decaying sluice and over the wheel that turns no more; the quiet hilltop, above which the whole country sleeps on summer afternoons;—these are all simply extensions of the farm.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

The boys know them on holidays; the older people are drawn to them in those infrequent hours when the pressure of work is lightened; the man who is getting city sights and sounds out of head and heart knows and loves them. The very thought of them brings refreshment and repose; for they are, one and all, places of silence and solitude.

A SUNNY PLAY-GROUND

The fever of this our life, and the tumult of it, vanish on the invisible boundaries of these ancient sanctuaries of nature. It is not difficult to understand the charm of these places for tired and worn souls; for it is to such places that exhausted men and women invariably turn. No one with a rich intellectual and spiritual nature, can keep in perfect health without a good deal ofsolitude and silence.

CHURNING IN THE BARN

We come to know ourselves and the world in the deeper ways only when we are apart from the rush of things. It is only when traffic ceases and the dust is laid that the landscape becomes clear and complete to the pedestrian. The quiet of the woods, the cool note of the mountain streams, the silence of the summits, represent, not the luxuries and pleasures of a rich life, but its necessities. To the townsman these outlying provinces of the farm are even more important than are the well-tilled acres.

THE OLD MILL

Some day some man or woman will write a luminous book on the education of country life; the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the unconscious enrichment of the senses and of the mind which are effected by its sights and sounds. There has never been in the long history of education, a better school for the open-minded, imaginative boy or girl than the farm. Every day sets its tasks, every task teaches its lessons; and nature stands looking over the student’s shoulder and quietly whispering some of her deepest secrets to her fortunate child.

AFTER A WET SNOW-STORM

For surely it is a great piece of good fortune to grow up in a wise, generous home in the country; to be young with all manner of four-footed beasts and fowls of the air, and grow up with them; to stumble over the roots of trees when one is beginning to walk; to hear the brooks chatter before one knows how to chatter himself; to awake in the stir of the morning, when the whole world seems to be going to work, and to fall asleep when the world comes trooping home, dusty and tired.

MAPLE-SUGAR TIME

To see and hear these outdoor sights and sounds is to be born into vital relations with man’s natural background and to come unconsciously into possession ofsome of the greatest truths which life has to teach. It is also to be born on intimate terms with bluebirds and cherries!

THE BLACK SHEEP

“If you want to know where the biggest cherries are to be found,” said Goethe, “consult the boys and the blackbirds.” There is a natural affinity between the two, and the boy who does not grow up in natural relationship with birds and trees suffers a loss of privilege which can never be entirely made up. For it is a great deal easier to make the acquaintance of nature in childhood than in those later years which bring “the philosophic mind,” but which leave the senses untrained for that instinctive observation which enables the boy to see without knowing that he sees.

THE MILL-POND

John Burroughs has given us a charming description of the joys of boyhood on a farm, and has perhaps unconsciously betrayed the secret of his own extraordinary familiarity with the out-of-doors world. No knowledge is quite so much a part of ourselves as that which we gain without conscious effort; which we breathe in with the morning air of life.

NOON IN THE SHEEP-LOT

The Hindoos have an idiomatic word or phrase for a walk before breakfast, which may be translated, “eating the morning air.”

The boy on the farm sees nature before breakfast, when senses and mind and heart are on the alert, when experience has not brought sophistication with it, and when sensation still keeps its pristine freshness.

FEEDING THE CHICKENS

The healthy boy is one great appetite for sights and sounds, and nothing escapes him. He knows every paththrough the woods, every pool in the brook, every cavern in the hills, every sequestered hollow where the noise of the world is softened into the silence of rustling leaves and murmuring streams. One of the most erudite of American scholars, whose large learning has not smothered the instincts of his youth, declares that he is never entirely happy until he stands barefooted in the old fields.

PICKING DAISIES

Nature’s true lovers perceive this, and demand that the companion whom he takes into the wilderness with him shall be of the right sort; one who, as Burroughs says, will not “stand between you and that which you seek.”

“I want for companion,” he continues, “a dog or a boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs and boys—transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees, and growths, and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you are alone and yet you have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences of nature stream through and around him; he is a good conductor of the subtle fluid.

“The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to most persons who spend their lives in the open air—to soldiers, hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets of the right sort.”

MAKING FRIENDS

There is something incommunicable in such a fellowship with nature, which dates back to the time when the boy found in her his chosen playmate, and which still keeps up the old game of hide and seek even when his methods have become scientific and the result of his search is a contribution to knowledge.

(‡ decoration)EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.POET AND CRITIC; AUTHOR OF “THE♦VICTORIAN POETS.”♦‘VICRTORIAN’ replaced with ‘VICTORIAN’DURING the year 1859, two poems were published in the New YorkTribunewhich made genuine sensations. They were so unlike in subject and treatment that no one would have guessed they emanated from the same brain and were penned by the same hand. The first, entitled “The Diamond Wedding,” was a humorous thrust of ridicule at the “parade” made in the papers over the lavish and expensive jewels and other gifts presented by a wealthy Cuban to his bride—a young lady of New York. This poem, when published, called forth a challenge from the irate father of the lady; but, fortunately, a duel was somehow averted.The other poem, “How Old Brown Took Harper’s Ferry,” recounted the incident of that stern old abolitionist boldly marching with a few men into Virginia and capturing the town of Harper’s Ferry. There was no American poet who might not have felt proud of this production. Bayard Taylor was so pleased with the genius manifested in both these poems that he sought the author’s acquaintance and introduced him to R. H. Stoddard, who in turn, after examining a collection of his verses, recommended them for publication to Charles Scribner, who issued them the next year (1860) under the title of “Poems, Lyric and Idylic.”—Thus wasMr.Stedman introduced into the literary world.Edmund Clarence Stedman is a native of Connecticut. He was born in the city of Hartford on the eighth day of October, 1833,—and comes of a good family of some poetic reputation.Rev.Aaron Cleveland, one of his ancestors, is said to have been a poet. Arthur Cleveland Cox, well known as a religious writer of verse, was his cousin. His mother was herself a poet, and also the author of the tragedy “Bianco Caprello.” When Stedman was two years of age he was sent to live with his grand-uncle, James Stedman, a jurist and scholar, who looked carefully after the early education of his nephew. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to Yale College, where he was among the foremost in English composition and Greek. But it is said that for some disobedience of the discipline of the institution, he fell under the censure of the college management and left without graduating. The University afterward, however, enrolled him among the alumni of 1853 with the degree of Master of Arts.Upon leaving Yale, at the age of nineteen, Stedman took the management of a newspaper at Norwich, and the next year married a Connecticut girl and became owner of the WinstedHerald, when he was only twenty-one. Under his management,this paper soon rose to be one of the most important of the political papers of the State. Three years later we find him writing on the “New York Tribune,” where he obtained a foot-hold in literature, as we have already indicated by the publication of the two poems above mentioned.When the “World” was started, in the winter of 1860,Mr.Stedman engaged with that journal and was editor of it when the news came over the wires that Fort Sumter had been fired upon. He wrote a poem on the occasion which was, perhaps, the first poem inspired by the war between the states. Soon after thisMr.Stedman went to Washington as the army correspondent of the “World.” He was at the first battle of Bull’s Run and published a long and graphic letter in the “World” about the defeat of the Union troops which he witnessed. This letter was the talk of the town for days and altogether has been pronounced the best single letter written during the whole war.Before the close of the war,Mr.Stedman resigned his position as editor and entered the office of Attorney General Bates at Washington; but in January, 1864, he returned with his family to New York and published his second volume of poems entitled, “Alice of Monmouth, An Idyl of the Great War, and Other Poems,” which may be described as a little poetic novel. The opening scene is laid in Monmouth County, New Jersey; the later ones on the battle fields of Virginia.The titles and dates ofMr.Stedman’s other books are as follows: “The Blameless Prince, and other Poems” (1869); “Poetical Works” (1873); “Victorian Poets” (1875); “Hawthorne and Other Poems” (1877); “Lyrics and Idyls, with Other Poems” (1879); the “Poems of Austin Dobson,” with an introduction (1880); “Poets of America” (1886), and with Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, he edited “A Library of American Literature” (11vols., 1888–1890).Many people entertain the notion that a man cannot be at one and the same time, a poet and a man of business. This is a mistake.♦Fitz-Green Halleck was for many years a competent clerk of John Jacob Astor; Charles Sprague was for forty years teller and cashier in a Boston bank; Samuel Rodgers, the English poet, was all his life a successful banker; Charles Follen Adams, the humorous and dialectic poet, is a prosperous merchant in Boston; and Edmund Clarence Stedman has been for many years the head of a firm of stock brokers with a♣suite of offices in Exchange Place, New York, dealing in government securities and railway stocks and bonds, and also petroleum, in which fortunes were at one time made and lost with great rapidity. Nevertheless,Mr.Stedman, the stock-broker and banker is stillMr.Stedman, the poet. The most of his splendid verses have been produced while he was depending for a living upon journalistic work or upon some business for support.Mr.Stedman also illustrates the fact, as Edgar Allen Poe had done before him, that a poet may be a practical critic. And why not? If poets are not the best critics of poetry, musicians are not the best critics of music, architects are not the best critics of architecture and painters of painting.Mr.Stedman’s “Victorian Poets” is, perhaps, the most important contribution of all our American writers to the critical literature on the English Poets.♦‘Fitz Green Hallack’ replaced with ‘Fitz-Green Halleck’♣‘suit’ replaced with ‘suite’The home-life ofMr.Stedman is described as being an ideally happy one. One of his poems entitled “Laura, My Darling,” addressed to his wife, gives us a delightful glimpse into the heart and home of the poet.BETROTHED ANEW.“The sunshine of the outer world beautifully illustrates the sunshine of the heart in the ‘Betrothed Anew’ of Edmund Clarence Stedman.”—Morris.THE sunlight fills the trembling air,And balmy days their guerdons bring;The Earth again is young and fair,And amorous with musky spring.The golden nurslings of the MayIn splendor strew the spangled green,And hues of tender beauty play,Entangled where the willows lean.Mark how the rippled currents flow;What lustres on the meadows lie!And, hark! the songsters come and go,And trill between the earth and sky.Who told us that the years had fled,Or borne afar our blissful youth?Such joys are all about us spread,We know the whisper was not truth.The birds that break from grass and groveSing every carol that they sungWhen first our veins were rich with loveAnd May her mantle round us flung.O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,With whose delights our souls are rife!And aye their vernal vows renew!Then, darling, walk with me this morn;Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;These violets, within them worn,Of floral fays shall make you queen.What though there comes a time of painWhen autumn winds forebode decay?The days of love are born again;That fabled time is far away!And never seemed the land so fairAs now, nor birds such notes to sing,Since first within your shining hairI wove the blossoms of the spring.THE DOOR-STEP.THE conference meeting through at last,We boys around the vestry waited,To see the girls come tripping pastLike snow-birds willing to be mated.Not braver he that leaps the wall,By level musket-flashes litten,Than I, who stepped before them allWho longed to see me get the mitten.But no, she blushed and took my arm!We let the old folks have the highway,And started toward the Maple Farm,Along a kind of lovers’ by-way.I can’t remember what we said,’Twas nothing worth a song or story,Yet that rude path by which we spedSeemed all transformed and in a glory.The snow was crisp beneath our feet,The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;By hood and tippet sheltered sweetHer face with youth and health was beaming.The little hand outside her muff—O sculptor, if you could but mould it!So slightly touched my jacket-cuff,To keep it warm I had to hold it.To have her with me there alone,’Twas love and fear and triumph blended:At last we reached the foot-worn stoneWhere that delicious journey ended.She shook her ringlets from her hood,And with a “Thank you Ned,” dissembled,But yet I knew she understoodWith what a daring wish I trembled.A cloud passed kindly overhead,The moon was slyly peeping through it,Yet hid its face, as if it said,“Come, now or never, do it, do it!”My lips till then had only knownThe kiss of mother and of sister,But somehow full upon her ownSweet, rosy, darling mouth—I kissed her!Perhaps ’twas boyish love, yet still,O listless woman! weary lover!To feel once more that fresh wild thrill,I’d give—But who can live youth over!

(‡ decoration)

POET AND CRITIC; AUTHOR OF “THE♦VICTORIAN POETS.”

♦‘VICRTORIAN’ replaced with ‘VICTORIAN’

DURING the year 1859, two poems were published in the New YorkTribunewhich made genuine sensations. They were so unlike in subject and treatment that no one would have guessed they emanated from the same brain and were penned by the same hand. The first, entitled “The Diamond Wedding,” was a humorous thrust of ridicule at the “parade” made in the papers over the lavish and expensive jewels and other gifts presented by a wealthy Cuban to his bride—a young lady of New York. This poem, when published, called forth a challenge from the irate father of the lady; but, fortunately, a duel was somehow averted.

The other poem, “How Old Brown Took Harper’s Ferry,” recounted the incident of that stern old abolitionist boldly marching with a few men into Virginia and capturing the town of Harper’s Ferry. There was no American poet who might not have felt proud of this production. Bayard Taylor was so pleased with the genius manifested in both these poems that he sought the author’s acquaintance and introduced him to R. H. Stoddard, who in turn, after examining a collection of his verses, recommended them for publication to Charles Scribner, who issued them the next year (1860) under the title of “Poems, Lyric and Idylic.”—Thus wasMr.Stedman introduced into the literary world.

Edmund Clarence Stedman is a native of Connecticut. He was born in the city of Hartford on the eighth day of October, 1833,—and comes of a good family of some poetic reputation.Rev.Aaron Cleveland, one of his ancestors, is said to have been a poet. Arthur Cleveland Cox, well known as a religious writer of verse, was his cousin. His mother was herself a poet, and also the author of the tragedy “Bianco Caprello.” When Stedman was two years of age he was sent to live with his grand-uncle, James Stedman, a jurist and scholar, who looked carefully after the early education of his nephew. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to Yale College, where he was among the foremost in English composition and Greek. But it is said that for some disobedience of the discipline of the institution, he fell under the censure of the college management and left without graduating. The University afterward, however, enrolled him among the alumni of 1853 with the degree of Master of Arts.

Upon leaving Yale, at the age of nineteen, Stedman took the management of a newspaper at Norwich, and the next year married a Connecticut girl and became owner of the WinstedHerald, when he was only twenty-one. Under his management,this paper soon rose to be one of the most important of the political papers of the State. Three years later we find him writing on the “New York Tribune,” where he obtained a foot-hold in literature, as we have already indicated by the publication of the two poems above mentioned.

When the “World” was started, in the winter of 1860,Mr.Stedman engaged with that journal and was editor of it when the news came over the wires that Fort Sumter had been fired upon. He wrote a poem on the occasion which was, perhaps, the first poem inspired by the war between the states. Soon after thisMr.Stedman went to Washington as the army correspondent of the “World.” He was at the first battle of Bull’s Run and published a long and graphic letter in the “World” about the defeat of the Union troops which he witnessed. This letter was the talk of the town for days and altogether has been pronounced the best single letter written during the whole war.

Before the close of the war,Mr.Stedman resigned his position as editor and entered the office of Attorney General Bates at Washington; but in January, 1864, he returned with his family to New York and published his second volume of poems entitled, “Alice of Monmouth, An Idyl of the Great War, and Other Poems,” which may be described as a little poetic novel. The opening scene is laid in Monmouth County, New Jersey; the later ones on the battle fields of Virginia.

The titles and dates ofMr.Stedman’s other books are as follows: “The Blameless Prince, and other Poems” (1869); “Poetical Works” (1873); “Victorian Poets” (1875); “Hawthorne and Other Poems” (1877); “Lyrics and Idyls, with Other Poems” (1879); the “Poems of Austin Dobson,” with an introduction (1880); “Poets of America” (1886), and with Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, he edited “A Library of American Literature” (11vols., 1888–1890).

Many people entertain the notion that a man cannot be at one and the same time, a poet and a man of business. This is a mistake.♦Fitz-Green Halleck was for many years a competent clerk of John Jacob Astor; Charles Sprague was for forty years teller and cashier in a Boston bank; Samuel Rodgers, the English poet, was all his life a successful banker; Charles Follen Adams, the humorous and dialectic poet, is a prosperous merchant in Boston; and Edmund Clarence Stedman has been for many years the head of a firm of stock brokers with a♣suite of offices in Exchange Place, New York, dealing in government securities and railway stocks and bonds, and also petroleum, in which fortunes were at one time made and lost with great rapidity. Nevertheless,Mr.Stedman, the stock-broker and banker is stillMr.Stedman, the poet. The most of his splendid verses have been produced while he was depending for a living upon journalistic work or upon some business for support.Mr.Stedman also illustrates the fact, as Edgar Allen Poe had done before him, that a poet may be a practical critic. And why not? If poets are not the best critics of poetry, musicians are not the best critics of music, architects are not the best critics of architecture and painters of painting.Mr.Stedman’s “Victorian Poets” is, perhaps, the most important contribution of all our American writers to the critical literature on the English Poets.

♦‘Fitz Green Hallack’ replaced with ‘Fitz-Green Halleck’♣‘suit’ replaced with ‘suite’

♦‘Fitz Green Hallack’ replaced with ‘Fitz-Green Halleck’

♣‘suit’ replaced with ‘suite’

The home-life ofMr.Stedman is described as being an ideally happy one. One of his poems entitled “Laura, My Darling,” addressed to his wife, gives us a delightful glimpse into the heart and home of the poet.

BETROTHED ANEW.

“The sunshine of the outer world beautifully illustrates the sunshine of the heart in the ‘Betrothed Anew’ of Edmund Clarence Stedman.”—Morris.

THE sunlight fills the trembling air,And balmy days their guerdons bring;The Earth again is young and fair,And amorous with musky spring.The golden nurslings of the MayIn splendor strew the spangled green,And hues of tender beauty play,Entangled where the willows lean.Mark how the rippled currents flow;What lustres on the meadows lie!And, hark! the songsters come and go,And trill between the earth and sky.Who told us that the years had fled,Or borne afar our blissful youth?Such joys are all about us spread,We know the whisper was not truth.The birds that break from grass and groveSing every carol that they sungWhen first our veins were rich with loveAnd May her mantle round us flung.O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,With whose delights our souls are rife!And aye their vernal vows renew!Then, darling, walk with me this morn;Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;These violets, within them worn,Of floral fays shall make you queen.What though there comes a time of painWhen autumn winds forebode decay?The days of love are born again;That fabled time is far away!And never seemed the land so fairAs now, nor birds such notes to sing,Since first within your shining hairI wove the blossoms of the spring.

HE sunlight fills the trembling air,

And balmy days their guerdons bring;

The Earth again is young and fair,

And amorous with musky spring.

The golden nurslings of the May

In splendor strew the spangled green,

And hues of tender beauty play,

Entangled where the willows lean.

Mark how the rippled currents flow;

What lustres on the meadows lie!

And, hark! the songsters come and go,

And trill between the earth and sky.

Who told us that the years had fled,

Or borne afar our blissful youth?

Such joys are all about us spread,

We know the whisper was not truth.

The birds that break from grass and grove

Sing every carol that they sung

When first our veins were rich with love

And May her mantle round us flung.

O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!

O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,

With whose delights our souls are rife!

And aye their vernal vows renew!

Then, darling, walk with me this morn;

Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;

These violets, within them worn,

Of floral fays shall make you queen.

What though there comes a time of pain

When autumn winds forebode decay?

The days of love are born again;

That fabled time is far away!

And never seemed the land so fair

As now, nor birds such notes to sing,

Since first within your shining hair

I wove the blossoms of the spring.

THE DOOR-STEP.

THE conference meeting through at last,We boys around the vestry waited,To see the girls come tripping pastLike snow-birds willing to be mated.Not braver he that leaps the wall,By level musket-flashes litten,Than I, who stepped before them allWho longed to see me get the mitten.But no, she blushed and took my arm!We let the old folks have the highway,And started toward the Maple Farm,Along a kind of lovers’ by-way.I can’t remember what we said,’Twas nothing worth a song or story,Yet that rude path by which we spedSeemed all transformed and in a glory.The snow was crisp beneath our feet,The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;By hood and tippet sheltered sweetHer face with youth and health was beaming.The little hand outside her muff—O sculptor, if you could but mould it!So slightly touched my jacket-cuff,To keep it warm I had to hold it.To have her with me there alone,’Twas love and fear and triumph blended:At last we reached the foot-worn stoneWhere that delicious journey ended.She shook her ringlets from her hood,And with a “Thank you Ned,” dissembled,But yet I knew she understoodWith what a daring wish I trembled.A cloud passed kindly overhead,The moon was slyly peeping through it,Yet hid its face, as if it said,“Come, now or never, do it, do it!”My lips till then had only knownThe kiss of mother and of sister,But somehow full upon her ownSweet, rosy, darling mouth—I kissed her!Perhaps ’twas boyish love, yet still,O listless woman! weary lover!To feel once more that fresh wild thrill,I’d give—But who can live youth over!

HE conference meeting through at last,

We boys around the vestry waited,

To see the girls come tripping past

Like snow-birds willing to be mated.

Not braver he that leaps the wall,

By level musket-flashes litten,

Than I, who stepped before them all

Who longed to see me get the mitten.

But no, she blushed and took my arm!

We let the old folks have the highway,

And started toward the Maple Farm,

Along a kind of lovers’ by-way.

I can’t remember what we said,

’Twas nothing worth a song or story,

Yet that rude path by which we sped

Seemed all transformed and in a glory.

The snow was crisp beneath our feet,

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;

By hood and tippet sheltered sweet

Her face with youth and health was beaming.

The little hand outside her muff—

O sculptor, if you could but mould it!

So slightly touched my jacket-cuff,

To keep it warm I had to hold it.

To have her with me there alone,

’Twas love and fear and triumph blended:

At last we reached the foot-worn stone

Where that delicious journey ended.

She shook her ringlets from her hood,

And with a “Thank you Ned,” dissembled,

But yet I knew she understood

With what a daring wish I trembled.

A cloud passed kindly overhead,

The moon was slyly peeping through it,

Yet hid its face, as if it said,

“Come, now or never, do it, do it!”

My lips till then had only known

The kiss of mother and of sister,

But somehow full upon her own

Sweet, rosy, darling mouth—I kissed her!

Perhaps ’twas boyish love, yet still,

O listless woman! weary lover!

To feel once more that fresh wild thrill,

I’d give—But who can live youth over!

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