Two thousand feet in air it standsBetwixt the bright and shaded lands,Above the regions it dividesAnd borders with its furrowed sides.The seaward valley laughs with lightTill the round sun o'erhangs this height;But then the shadow of the crestNo more the plains that lengthen westEnshrouds, yet slowly, surely creepsEastward, until the coolness steepsA darkling league of tilth and wold,And chills the flocks that seek their fold.Not like those ancient summits lone,Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,—The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,—The sunset portals landsmen seek,Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,—Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guidesThe mariner on tropic tides,And flames across the Gulf afar,A torch by day, by night a star,—Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,Does my serener mountain rise,Nor aye forget its gentle birthUpon the dewy, pastoral earth.But ever, in the noonday light,Are scenes whereof I love the sight,—Broad pictures of the lower worldBeneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.Irradiate distances revealFair nature wed to human weal;The rolling valley made a plain;Its checkered squares of grass and grain;The silvery rye, the golden wheat,The flowery elders where they meet,—Ay, even the springing corn I see,And garden haunts of bird and bee;And where, in daisied meadows, shinesThe wandering river through its vines,Move specks at random, which I knowAre herds a-grazing to and fro.Yet still a goodly height it seemsFrom which the mountain pours his streams,Or hinders, with caressing hands,The sunlight seeking other lands.Like some great giant, strong and proud,He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,And wrests its treasures, to bestowA guerdon on the realm below;Or, by the deluge roused from sleepWithin his bristling forest-keep,Shakes all his pines, and far and wideSends down a rich, imperious tide.At night the whistling tempests meetIn tryst upon his topmost seat,And all the phantoms of the skyFrolic and gibber, storming by.By day I see the ocean-mistsFloat with the current where it lists,And from my summit I can hailCloud-vessels passing on the gale,—The stately argosies of air,—And parley with the helmsmen there;Can probe their dim, mysterious source,Ask of their cargo and their course,—Whence come? where bound?—and wait reply,As, all sails spread, they hasten by.If foiled in what I fain would know,Again I turn my eyes belowAnd eastward, past the hither meadWhere all day long the cattle feed,A crescent gleam my sight alluresAnd clings about the hazy moors,—The great, encircling, radiant sea,Alone in its immensity.Even there, a queen upon its shore,I know the city evermoreHer palaces and temples rears,And wooes the nations to her piers;Yet the proud city seems a moleTo this horizon-bounded whole;And, from my station on the mount,The whole is little worth accountBeneath the overhanging sky,That seems so far and yet so nigh.Here breathe I inspiration rare,Unburdened by the grosser airThat hugs the lower land, and feelThrough all my finer senses stealThe life of what that life may be,Freed from this dull earth's density,When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,Shall thrid the ether at our will,Through widening corridors of mornAnd starry archways swiftly borne.Here, in the process of the night,The stars themselves a purer lightGive out, than reaches those who gazeEnshrouded with the valley's haze.October, entering Heaven's fane,Assumes her lucent, annual reign:Then what a dark and dismal clod,Forsaken by the Sons of God,Seems this sad world, to those which marchAcross the high, illumined arch,And with their brightness draw me forthTo scan the splendors of the North!I see the Dragon, as he toilsWith Ursa in his shining coils,And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,Confronting on the ancient fieldThe Bull, while in a mystic rowThe jewels of his girdle glowOr, haply, I may ponder longOn that remoter, sparkling throng,The orient sisterhood, aroundWhose chief our Galaxy is wound;Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,And brooding over Learning's gleams,I leave to gloom the under-land,And from my watch-tower, close at hand,Like him who led the favored race,I look on glory face to face!So, on the mountain-top, alone,I dwell, as one who holds a throne;Or prince, or peasant, him I countMy peer, who stands upon a mount,Sees farther than the tribes below,And knows the joys they cannot know;And, though beyond the sound of speechThey reign, my soul goes out to reach,Far on their noble heights elsewhere,My brother-monarchs of the air.
Two thousand feet in air it standsBetwixt the bright and shaded lands,Above the regions it dividesAnd borders with its furrowed sides.The seaward valley laughs with lightTill the round sun o'erhangs this height;But then the shadow of the crestNo more the plains that lengthen westEnshrouds, yet slowly, surely creepsEastward, until the coolness steepsA darkling league of tilth and wold,And chills the flocks that seek their fold.
Not like those ancient summits lone,Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,—The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,—The sunset portals landsmen seek,Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,—Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guidesThe mariner on tropic tides,And flames across the Gulf afar,A torch by day, by night a star,—Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,Does my serener mountain rise,Nor aye forget its gentle birthUpon the dewy, pastoral earth.
But ever, in the noonday light,Are scenes whereof I love the sight,—Broad pictures of the lower worldBeneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.Irradiate distances revealFair nature wed to human weal;The rolling valley made a plain;Its checkered squares of grass and grain;The silvery rye, the golden wheat,The flowery elders where they meet,—Ay, even the springing corn I see,And garden haunts of bird and bee;And where, in daisied meadows, shinesThe wandering river through its vines,Move specks at random, which I knowAre herds a-grazing to and fro.
Yet still a goodly height it seemsFrom which the mountain pours his streams,Or hinders, with caressing hands,The sunlight seeking other lands.Like some great giant, strong and proud,He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,And wrests its treasures, to bestowA guerdon on the realm below;Or, by the deluge roused from sleepWithin his bristling forest-keep,Shakes all his pines, and far and wideSends down a rich, imperious tide.At night the whistling tempests meetIn tryst upon his topmost seat,And all the phantoms of the skyFrolic and gibber, storming by.By day I see the ocean-mistsFloat with the current where it lists,And from my summit I can hailCloud-vessels passing on the gale,—The stately argosies of air,—And parley with the helmsmen there;Can probe their dim, mysterious source,Ask of their cargo and their course,—Whence come? where bound?—and wait reply,As, all sails spread, they hasten by.
If foiled in what I fain would know,Again I turn my eyes belowAnd eastward, past the hither meadWhere all day long the cattle feed,A crescent gleam my sight alluresAnd clings about the hazy moors,—The great, encircling, radiant sea,Alone in its immensity.
Even there, a queen upon its shore,I know the city evermoreHer palaces and temples rears,And wooes the nations to her piers;Yet the proud city seems a moleTo this horizon-bounded whole;And, from my station on the mount,The whole is little worth accountBeneath the overhanging sky,That seems so far and yet so nigh.Here breathe I inspiration rare,Unburdened by the grosser airThat hugs the lower land, and feelThrough all my finer senses stealThe life of what that life may be,Freed from this dull earth's density,When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,Shall thrid the ether at our will,Through widening corridors of mornAnd starry archways swiftly borne.
Here, in the process of the night,The stars themselves a purer lightGive out, than reaches those who gazeEnshrouded with the valley's haze.October, entering Heaven's fane,Assumes her lucent, annual reign:Then what a dark and dismal clod,Forsaken by the Sons of God,Seems this sad world, to those which marchAcross the high, illumined arch,And with their brightness draw me forthTo scan the splendors of the North!I see the Dragon, as he toilsWith Ursa in his shining coils,And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,Confronting on the ancient fieldThe Bull, while in a mystic rowThe jewels of his girdle glowOr, haply, I may ponder longOn that remoter, sparkling throng,The orient sisterhood, aroundWhose chief our Galaxy is wound;Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,And brooding over Learning's gleams,I leave to gloom the under-land,And from my watch-tower, close at hand,Like him who led the favored race,I look on glory face to face!
So, on the mountain-top, alone,I dwell, as one who holds a throne;Or prince, or peasant, him I countMy peer, who stands upon a mount,Sees farther than the tribes below,And knows the joys they cannot know;And, though beyond the sound of speechThey reign, my soul goes out to reach,Far on their noble heights elsewhere,My brother-monarchs of the air.
"I am going to build a cathedral one of these days," said I to my wife, as I sat looking at the slant line of light made by the afternoon sun on our picture of the Cathedral of Milan.
"That picture is one of the most poetic things you have among your house ornaments," said Rudolph. "Its original is the world's chief beauty,—a tribute to religion such as Art never gave before and never can again,—as much before the Pantheon, as the Alps, with their virgin snows and glittering pinnacles, are above all temples made with hands. Say what you will, those Middle Ages that you call Dark had a glory of faith that never will be seen in our days of cotton-mills and Manchester prints. Where will you marshal such an army of saints as stands in yonder white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified in that celestial Italian air? Saintship belonged to the mediæval Church; the heroism of religion has died with it."
"That's just like one of your assertions, Rudolph," said I. "You might as well say that Nature has never made any flowers since Linnæus shut up his herbarium. We have no statues and pictures of modern saints, but saints themselves, thank God, have never been wanting. 'As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be—'"
"But what about your cathedral?" said my wife.
"O yes!—my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in cloud-land rise, I'll build a cathedral larger than Milan's; and the men, but more particularly thewomen, thereon shall be those who have done even more than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who 'subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not now thinking of Florence Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints ofmore retired and private state,—domestic saints, who have tended children not their own through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of fretful invalids,—stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,—saints who wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,—saints for whom the mystical termsself-annihilationandself-crucifixionhad a real and tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even to their households, unknown even to their own souls; but when the Lord comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white stone with a new name thereon, and the record of deeds and words which only He that seeth in secret knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily life, has blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.
"When I build my cathedral,thatwoman," I said, pointing to a small painting by the fire, "shall be among the first of my saints. You see her there, in an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace border, and with a very ordinary worked collar, fastened by a visible and terrestrial breastpin. There is no nimbus around her head, no sign of the cross upon her breast; her hands are clasped on no crucifix or rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if it could sparkle with mirthfulness, as in fact it could; there are in it both the subtile flash of wit and the subdued light of humor; and though the whole face smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that speaks the soul immutable in good. That woman shall be the first saint in my cathedral, and her name shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of every-day life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization,—and this virtue was hers. New England Puritanism must be credited with the making of many such women. Severe as was her discipline, and harsh as seems now her rule, we have yet to see whether women will be born of modern systems of tolerance and indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden times whose places now know them no more. The inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which Puritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur of the themes which it made household words, the sublimity of the issues which it hung upon the commonest acts of our earthly existence, created characters of more than Roman strength and greatness; and the good men and women of Puritan training excelled the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully developed intellectually, educated to closest thought, and exercised in reasoning, is superior to a soul great merely through impulse and sentiment.
"My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so our saint was known, were of a bright-faced, cheerful, witty, quick-moving little middle-aged person, who came into our house like a good fairy whenever there was a call of sickness or trouble. If an accident happened in the great roistering family of eight or ten children, (and when was not something happening to some of us?) and we were shut up in a sick-room, then duly as daylight came the quick step and cheerful face of Aunt Esther,—notsolemn and lugubrious like so many sick-room nurses, but with a never-failing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the most doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I remember how a fit of the quinsy—most tedious of all sicknesses to an active child—was gilded and glorified into quite afêteby my having Aunt Esther all to myself for two whole days, with nothing to do but amuse me. She charmed me into smiling at the very pangs which had made me weep before, and of which she described her own experiences in a manner to make me think that, after all, the quinsy was something with an amusing side to it. Her knowledge of all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, her perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good nursing and tending, was something that could only have come from long experience in those good old New England days when there were no nurses recognized as a class in the land, but when watching and the care of the sick were among those offices of Christian life which the families of a neighborhood reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early youth she had obeyed a special vocation as sister of charity in many a sick-room, and, with the usual keen intelligence of New England, had widened her powers of doing good by the reading of medical and physiological works. Her legends of nursing in those days of long typhus-fever and other formidable and protracted forms of disease were to our ears quite wonderful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint of the sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so bright, and so devoted, that it never occurred to us youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above all things, being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us by night, telling us stories, and answering, in her lively and always amusing and instructive way, that incessant fire of questions with which a child persecutes a grown person.
"Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were allowed to visit her in her own room, a neat little parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an apple orchard, where daisies and clover and bobolinks always abounded in summer time, and, on the other, faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or two shady elms between them and the street. No nun's cell was ever neater, no bee's cell ever more compactly and carefully arranged; and to us, familiar with the confusion of a great family of little ones, there was something always inviting about its stillness, its perfect order, and the air of thoughtful repose that breathed over it. She lived there in perfect independence, doing, as it was her delight to do, every office of life for herself. She was her own cook, her own parlor and chamber maid, her own laundress; and very faultless the cooking, washing, ironing, and care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt Esther's gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther's cookies, had, we all believed, certain magical properties such as belonged to no other mortal mixture. Even a handful of walnuts that were brought from the depths of her mysterious closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach. The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords against her wall was sacred in our regard; the volumes were like no other books; and we supposed that she derived from them those stores of knowledge on all subjects which she unconsciously dispensed among us,—for she was always telling us something of metals, or minerals, or gems, or plants, or animals, which awakened our curiosity, stimulated our inquiries, and, above all, led us to wonder where she had learned it all. Even the slight restrictions which her neat habits imposed on our breezy and turbulent natures seemed all quite graceful and becoming. It was right, in our eyes, to cleanse our shoes on scraper and mat with extra diligence, and then to place a couple of chips under the heels of our boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless hearth. We marvelled to seeour own faces reflected in a thousand smiles and winks from her bright brass andirons,—such andirons we thought were seen on earth in no other place,—and a pair of radiant brass candlesticks, that illustrated the mantle-piece, were viewed with no less respect.
"Aunt Esther's cat was a model for all cats,—so sleek, so intelligent, so decorous and well-trained, always occupying exactly her own cushion by the fire, and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our affections with her mistress, and we were allowed as a great favor and privilege, now and then, to hold the favorite on our knees, and stroke her satin coat to a smoother gloss.
"But it was not for cats alone that she had attractions. She was in sympathy and fellowship with everything that moved and lived; knew every bird and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The squirrels that inhabited the trees in the front-yard were won in time by her blandishments to come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by trains of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining cherry tea-table that stood between the windows; and we youngsters used to sit entranced with delight as they gambolled and waved their feathery tails in frolicsome security, eating rations of gingerbread and bits of seed-cake with as good a relish as any child among us.
"The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and the sufferings of the animal creation formed the subject of many an interesting conversation with her; and we boys, with the natural male instinct of hunting, trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in our career, remembering her pleas for the dumb things which could not speak for themselves.
"Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of numerous friends. Many of the young girls who attended the village academy made her acquaintance, and nothing delighted her more than that they should come there and read to her the books they were studying, when her superior and wide information enabled her to light up and explain much that was not clear to the immature students.
"In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria to certain men of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics of the day,—through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet with a sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine.
"Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of books, but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which the quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were pictures of peculiar characters, legends of true events stranger than romance, all stored in the cabinets of her mind; and these came from her lips with the greater force because the precision of her memory enabled her to authenticate them with name, date, and circumstances of vivid reality. From that shadowy line of incidents which marks the twilight boundary between the spiritual world and the present life she drew legends of peculiar clearness, but invested with the mysterious charm which always dwells in that uncertain region; and the shrewd flash of her eye, and the keen, bright smile with which she answered the wondering question, 'Whatdoyou suppose it was?' or, 'What could it have been?' showed how evenly rationalism in her mind kept pace with romance.
"The retired room in which she thus read, studied, thought, and surveyed from afar the whole world of science and literature, and in which she received friends and entertained children, was perhaps the dearest and freshest spot to her in the world. There came a time, however, when the neat little independent establishment was given up, and she went to associate herself with two of her nieces in keeping house for a boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively manners and her gracious interest in the young made her auniversal favorite, though the cares she assumed broke in upon those habits of solitude and study which formed her delight. From the day that she surrendered this independency of hers, she had never, for more than a score of years, a home of her own, but filled the trying position of an accessory in the home of others. Leaving the boarding-school, she became the helper of an invalid wife and mother in the early nursing and rearing of a family of young children,—an office which leaves no privacy and no leisure. Her bed was always shared with some little one; her territories were exposed to the constant inroads of little pattering feet; and all the various sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made absorbing drafts upon her time.
"After a while she left New England with the brother to whose family she devoted herself. The failing health of the wife and mother left more and more the charge of all things in her hands; servants were poor, and all the appliances of living had the rawness and inconvenience which in those days attended Western life. It became her fate to supply all other people's defects and deficiencies. Wherever a hand failed, there must her hand be. Whenever a foot faltered, she must step into the ranks. She was the one who thought for and cared for and toiled for all, yet made never a claim that any one should care for her.
"It was not till late in my life that I became acquainted with the deep interior sacrifice, the constant self-abnegation, which all her life involved. She was born with a strong, vehement, impulsive nature,—a nature both proud and sensitive,—a nature whose tastes were passions, whose likings and whose aversions were of the most intense and positive character. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere practical and material, she had naturally a deep romance and enthusiasm of temperament which exceeded all that can be written in novels. It was chiefly owing to this that a home and a central affection of her own were never hers. In her early days of attractiveness, none who would have sought her could meet the high requirements of her ideality; she never saw her hero,—and so never married. Family cares, the tending of young children, she often confessed, were peculiarly irksome to her. She had the head of a student, a passionate love for the world of books. A Protestant convent, where she might devote herself without interruption to study, was her ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest appreciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of natural scenery. Her enjoyment in any of these things was intensely vivid whenever, by chance, a stray sunbeam of the kind darted across the dusty path of her life; yet in all these her life was a constant repression. The eagerness with which she would listen to any account from those more fortunate ones who had known these things, showed how ardent a passion was constantly held in check. A short time before her death, talking with a friend who had visited Switzerland, she said, with great feeling: 'All my life my desire to visit the beautiful places of this earth has been so intense, that I cannot but hope that after my death I shall be permitted to go and look at them.'
"The completeness of her self-discipline may be gathered from the fact, that no child could ever be brought to believe she had not a natural fondness for children, or that she found the care of them burdensome. It was easy to see that she had naturally all those particular habits, those minute pertinacities in respect to her daily movements and the arrangement of all her belongings, which would make the meddling, intrusive demands of infancy and childhood peculiarly hard for her to meet. Yet never was there a pair of toddling feet that did not make free with Aunt Esther's room, never a curly head that did not look up, in confiding assurance of a welcome smile, to her bright eyes. The inconsiderate and never-ceasing requirements of children and invalids never drew from her other than a cheerful response; and to mymind there is more saintship in this than in the private wearing of any number of hair-cloth shirts or belts lined with spikes.
"In a large family of careless, noisy children there will be constant losing of thimbles and needles and scissors; but Aunt Esther was always ready, without reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her things, so well kept and so treasured, she was willing to lend, with many a caution and injunction it is true, but also with a relish of right good-will. And, to do us justice, we generally felt the sacredness of the trust, and were more careful of her things than of our own. If a shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a choice button, or a bit of braid or tape, Aunt Esther cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in seeking the key, unlocking the drawer, and searching out in bag or parcel just the treasure demanded. Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect readiness to accommodate others.
"Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred dollars yearly, was disposed of with a generosity worthy a fortune. One tenth was sacredly devoted to charity, and a still further sum laid by every year for presents to friends. No Christmas or New Year ever came round that Aunt Esther, out of this very tiny fund, did not find something for children and servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but well timed,—a ball of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a pincushion,—something generally so well chosen as to show that she had been running over our needs, and noting what to give. She was no less gracious as receiver than as giver. The little articles that we made for her, or the small presents that we could buy out of our childish resources, she always declared were exactly what she needed; and she delighted us by the care she took of them and the value she set upon them.
"Her income was a source of the greatest pleasure to her, as maintaining an independence without which she could not have been happy. Though she constantly gave, to every family in which she lived, services which no money could repay, it would have been the greatest trial to her not to be able to provide for herself. Her dress, always that of a true gentlewoman,—refined, quiet, and neat,—was bought from this restricted sum, and her small travelling expenses were paid out of it. She abhorred anything false or flashy: her caps were trimmed withrealthread-lace, and her silk dresses were of the best quality, perfectly well made and kept; and, after all, a little sum always remained over in her hands for unforeseen exigencies.
"This love of independence was one of the strongest features of her life, and we often playfully told her that her only form of selfishness was the monopoly of saintship,—that she who gave so much was not willing to allow others to give to her,—that she who made herself servant of all was not willing to allow others to serve her.
"Among the trials of her life must be reckoned much ill-health; borne, however, with such heroic patience that it was not easy to say when the hand of pain was laid upon her. She inherited, too, a tendency to depression of spirits, which at times increased to a morbid and distressing gloom. Few knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely had she learned to suppress every outward manifestation that might interfere with the happiness of others. In her hours of depression she resolutely forbore to sadden the lives of those around her with her own melancholy, and often her darkest moods were so lighted up and adorned with an outside show of wit and humor, that those who had known her intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever been subject to depression.
"Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to superstition. From her promise once given she felt no change of purpose could absolve her; and therefore rarely would she give it absolutely, for shecould notalter the thing that had gone forth from her lips. Our beliefin the certainty of her fulfilling her word was like our belief in the immutability of the laws of nature. Whoever asked her got of her the absolute truth on every subject, and, when she had no good thing to say, her silence was often truly awful. When anything mean or ungenerous was brought to her knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely; but the flash in her eyes showed what she would speak were speech permitted. In her last days she spoke to a friend of what she had suffered from the strength of her personal antipathies. 'I thank God,' she said, 'that I believe at last I have overcome all that too, and that there has not been, for some years, any human being toward whom I have felt a movement of dislike.'
"The last year of her life was a constant discipline of unceasing pain, borne with that fortitude which could make her an entertaining and interesting companion even while the sweat of mortal agony was starting from her brow. Her own room she kept as a last asylum, to which she would silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in this final fastness; and she prayed only that she might go down to death with the full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help of no other hand.
"The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the hands of others. 'God requires that I should give up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have resignedthis, perhaps he will let me go home.'
"In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and opened the door of this mortal state, and a great soul, that had served a long apprenticeship to little things, went forth into the joy of its Lord; a life of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless rest."
"But," said Rudolph, "I rebel at this life of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. I do not think it the duty of noble women, who have beautiful natures and enlarged and cultivated tastes, to make themselves the slaves of the sick-room and nursery."
"Such was not the teaching of our New England faith," said I. "Absolute unselfishness,—the death of self,—such were its teachings, and such as Esther's the characters it made. 'Do the duty nearest thee,' was the only message it gave to 'women with a mission'; and from duty to duty, from one self-denial to another, they rose to a majesty of moral strength impossible to any form of mere self-indulgence. It is of souls thus sculptured and chiselled by self-denial and self-discipline that the living temple of the perfect hereafter is to be built. The pain of the discipline is short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal."
The historian who, without qualification of his statement, should date the commencement of our late civil war from the attack on Fort Sumter, instead of the first attempt by the slaveholders to render a single property interest paramount in the relations of the country, would prove himself unfit for his task. The battles fought in the press, pulpit, and forum, in ante-war days, were as much agencies in the great conflict as the deadlier ones fought since, on land and sea. Men strove in the former, as in the latter case, for the extension of the slave system on one side, and for its total suppression on theother; and it is the proud distinction of the early partisans of freedom to be recognized now as the pioneers—the advance-guard—of the armed hosts who at last won the victory for humanity.
This view of the actual beginning of the war makes the facts in the lives of those antislavery men who took the lead in the good fight, and especially of such as died with their armor on, of the utmost value to the historian. We therefore propose to offer a contribution to the record, by tracing the career of one who acted a distinguished part in the struggle, as an antislavery journalist.
Gamaliel Bailey was born in New Jersey,—a State where antislavery men, or, indeed, men of progress in any direction, are so far from being a staple growth, that they can barely be said to be indigenous to her soil. His birthday was December 3, 1807. He was the son of a Methodist preacher noted for his earnestness and devotion to the duties of his calling. His mother was a woman of active brain and sympathetic heart. It was from her, as is not unusual with men of marked traits, that the son derived his distinguishing mental characteristics. His education was such as was obtainable in the private schools of Philadelphia, which, whatever their advantages to others, were not particularly well calculated to prepare young Bailey for the study of the learned profession he subsequently chose; and he had to seek, without their aid, the classical knowledge necessary to a mastery of the technicalities of medical science. Nevertheless he graduated with credit in the Jefferson Medical College, and at so early an age—for he was then only twenty—that the restriction in its charter deprived him of the usual diploma for a year. The statutes of New Jersey, however, while forbidding him to prescribe for the physical ailments of her citizens, did not pronounce him too young to undertake the mental training of her children, and he eagerly availed himself of the pedagogue's privilege of bending the twigs of mind amid the pine forests of his native State. By the time he was entitled to his diploma, he was satisfied that the overdraught upon his vitality had been so great, during his college years, as utterly to unfit him for the field of action on which, but a twelvemonth before, he had been so desirous to enter. A sea voyage was chosen as the best means of resting his brain while strengthening his body and preparing it for the heavy demands which his profession would naturally make.
Having, with the scanty income from his year's teaching, equipped himself for his voyage, he obeyed at once the dictates of necessity and of judgment, and shipped on a vessel bound for China. Instead of a successful physician winning golden opinions from all, Dr. Bailey was now a common sailor before the mast, receiving from his superiors oaths or orders as the case might be. The ship's destination was Canton, and its arrival in port was attended by such an unusual amount of sickness among the crew, that it became necessary to assign young Bailey the office of surgeon. This he filled with promptness and skill, and when the vessel set sail for Philadelphia, the sailor was again found at his post, performing his duties as acceptably as could have been expected from a greenhorn on his first cruise. Once more on his native shore, and in some degree reinvigorated by travel, he opened his office for the practice of medicine. At the end of three months he found himself out of patients, and in a situation far from enjoyable to one of his active temperament.
But, luckily for Dr. Bailey, whatever it may have been for the church of his fathers, just at this time the so-called "Radicals" had begun their reform movement against Methodist Episcopacy, which resulted in the secession of a number of the clergy and laity, principally in the Middle States, and the organization of the Methodist Protestants. These "Radicals" had their head-quarters at Baltimore. There they started an organ under the title of "TheMethodist Protestant," and to the editorship of this journal Dr. Bailey was called. His youthful inexperience as a writer was not the only remarkable feature of this engagement; for he had not even the qualification of being at that time a professor of religion. His connection with "The Methodist Protestant" was a brief one; but it was terminated by lack of sufficient funds to sustain a regular editor, and not by lack of ability in the editor.
Dr. Bailey was again adrift, and we next find him concerned in "Kelley's Expedition to Oregon." This had been projected at St. Louis, which was to be its starting-point; and thither hastened our adventurous young physician—to learn that the expedition, having had little more to rest upon than that baseless fabric so often supplied by printers' ink, was an utter failure. Finding himself without funds to pay for the costly means of conveyance then used in the West, he made his way back as far as Cincinnati on foot. Soon after his arrival there the cholera broke out. This presented an aspect of affairs rather inviting to a courageous spirit. He gladly embraced the opening for practice; and, happening to be known to some of the faculty of the place, he was recommended for the appointment of Physician to the Cholera Hospital. Thus he was soon introduced to the general confidence of the profession and the public, and seemed to be on the highway to fame. Dr. Eberlie, a standard medical authority at that day, as he still is among many practitioners of the old school in the West, was then preparing his work on the Diseases of Children, and he availed himself of Dr. Bailey's aid. This opened an unexpected field to the latter for the exercise of his ability as a writer; and the work in question contains abundant evidence that he would have succeeded in the line of medical authorship. But circumstances proved unfavorable to his connection with Dr. Eberlie, and he again devoted himself to the practice of his profession, in which he continued for a time with great success.
At this date, however, an event of great interest occurred in connection with the agitation of the slavery question,—an event exercising a most decided influence on the career of Dr. Bailey,—in fact, changing entirely the current of his eventful life. We allude to the discussions of slavery at Lane Seminary, and the memorable expulsion of a number of the students for their persistence in promulging antislavery doctrines. Dr. Bailey was then engaged at the Seminary in the delivery of a course of lectures on Physiology. He became interested in the pending discussion, and espoused the proslavery side. For this his mind had probably been unconsciously prepared by the current of thought in Cincinnati, then under the mercantile control of her proslavery customers from Kentucky and other Southern States. But erelong he appeared as a convert to the antislavery side of the discussion. This he himself was wont to attribute, in great part, to the light which an honest comparison of views threw upon the subject; but it is evident that his conversion was somewhat accelerated by the expulsion of his antislavery antagonists in debate. Following the lead of these new sympathies, he became (in 1835) editorially associated with that great pioneer advocate of freedom, James G. Birney, whose venerated name has been so honorably connected with the recent triumph of the Union arms, through the courage of three of his sons. The paper was "The Cincinnati Philanthropist," so well remembered by the earlier espousers of antislavery truth. The association continued about a year. Dr. Bailey then became sole editor of the Philanthropist, and soon after sole proprietor. It was from the pages of this journal that a series of antislavery tracts were reprinted, which had not a little to do in giving fresh impulse to the discussions of that day. They were entitled "Facts for the People."
The relation of Dr. Bailey to a journal which was regarded by the slave-owners as the organ of their worst enemiesmade him a marked man, and called him to endure severe and unexpected ordeals. In 1836, his opponents incited against him the memorable mob, whose first act was the secret destruction of his press at midnight. Soon after the riot raged openly, and not only destroyed the remaining contents of his printing-office, but the building itself. Mr. Birney, being the older and more conspicuous of the offenders, was of course more emphatically the object of the mob's wrath than the junior associate. But the latter shared with him the personal perils of the day, while bearing the brunt of the pecuniary losses. As is usual in such outbreaks, after three days of fury, the lawless spirit of the people subsided. There was a repetition of violence in 1840, however, and during another three days' reign of terror two more presses were destroyed. But such was the indomitable energy of the man in whose person and property the constitutional liberty of the press was thus assailed, that in three weeks the Philanthropist was again before the public, sturdily defending the truth it was established to proclaim; and this, be it remembered, when the press-work of even weekly journals was not let out, in Cincinnati, as jobs for "lightning presses," but was done in the proprietors' own offices, on presses to be obtained only from distant manufactories.
It was in this year that the Liberty party, of which Dr. Bailey was a prominent leader, entered for the first time into the Presidential contest, with James G. Birney as its candidate.
Not yet satiated, the spirit of mob violence manifested itself a third time in 1843; but it was suppressed by the interference of the military power, and its demonstration was followed by a growth of liberal sentiment altogether unlooked for. Availing himself of this favorable change, Dr. Bailey started a daily paper to which the name of "The Herald" was given.
The unprecedented ordeal through which Dr. Bailey had passed, involving not only his family, but Mr. Birney, Mr. Clawson, and other friends of his enterprise, was, after all, but needful training for the subsequent work allotted to the reformer. He continued the publication of the Daily Herald, and the Philanthropist also, but under the name of "The Weekly Herald and Philanthropist," until 1847. With a growing family and a meagre income, the intervening years marked a season of self-denial to himself and his excellent wife such as few, even among reformers, have been called to pass through. And yet through all his poverty his cheerfulness was unfaltering, and inspired all who came in contact with him. There was a better day before him,—better in a pecuniary as well as a political sense. He had now fairly won a reputation throughout the country for courage and ability as an antislavery journalist. A project for establishing an antislavery organ at the seat of the national government had been successfully carried out by the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society, under the lead of that now venerable and esteemed pioneer of freedom, Lewis Tappan. The editorial charge of it was tendered, with great propriety, to Dr. Bailey, and was accepted. He entered upon his duties as editor in chief of "The National Era" in January, 1847, with the Reverend Amos A. Phelps, now deceased, and John G. Whittier, as corresponding editors, and L. P. Noble as publishing agent. "The Daily Herald" and "The Weekly Herald and Philanthropist" were transferred to Messrs. Sperry and Matthews, with Stanley Matthews as editor; but the political ambition of the latter prevented his continuing the paper in the steadfast antislavery tone of his predecessor, and it soon ceased to appear.[B]
The establishment of the National Era, while it furnished a most appropriate field for Dr. Bailey's talents, also marked an era in the antislavery history of the country. At the centres of all governments there is found a fulcrum whose value politicians have long since demonstrated by its use,—too frequently for the most unworthy purposes. There had always been organs for conservatism at Washington, but none for progress. There were numbers of bold thinkers throughout the country, who had found, here and there, a representative of their ideas in the government. But they had no newspaper to keep watch and ward over him, or to correctly report his acts to his constituents,—no vehicle through which they could bring their thoughts to bear upon him or others. This was furnished by the National Era. But this was not the only direction in which it proved useful. It enabled the friends of emancipation everywhere to communicate freely with those against whose gigantic system of wrong they felt it their duty to wage war, where such were found willing to read their antagonists' arguments, instead of taking them as perverted by proslavery journals.
The first effect of the Era upon the local antislavery journals which it found in existence was, unquestionably, to excite not a little apprehension and jealousy among their conductors. Naturally they felt that the national reputation of Dr. Bailey and his assistants, aided by a central position, was calculated to detract from their own importance in the estimation of their patrons. But, besides this, there was the actual fact of the Era's large supply of original and high-toned literary matter, added to the direct and reliable Congressional news it was expected to furnish, which stared them threateningly in the face. And we well remember now what pain these petty jealousies gave to the sensitive nature of our departed friend. But these gradually subsided, until there was hardly an antislavery editor of average discernment who did not come to see that a national organ like the Era, by legitimating discussion and keeping up the heat and blaze of a vigorous agitation, at the nation's very centre, against that nation's own giant crime, would prove a benefit, in the end, to all colaborers worthy of the name. And the increase of antislavery journals, as well as of vigor in conducting them, in the period subsequent to 1847, proved that this was the correct view.
Although now so favorably placed for contest with his great foe, Dr. Bailey was here subjected to a renewal of the assaults which had become painfully familiar in the West. His paper had not been in existence more than fifteen months when an event occurred which, although he had in it no agency whatever, brought down upon his devoted head a fourth discharge of the vials of popular wrath. Some seventy or eighty slaves attempted to escape from Washington in the steamer Pearl, and instantly the charge of complicity was laid at his door. His office and dwelling were surrounded by a furious crowd, including a large proportion of office-holding F.F.V.'s, and some "gentlemen of property and standing." These gentlemen threatened the entire destruction of the press and type of the Era, while the editor's personal safety, with that of his family, was again put in peril for the space of three terrific days. The Federal metropolis had never known such days since the torch applied by a foreign foe had wrapped the first Capitol in flames. The calm self-possession of Dr. Bailey, when he made his appearance unarmed before the swaying mob, and addressed them from the steps of his dwelling,—as described by the late Dr. Houston in a letter to the New York Tribune, from notes taken while he was concealed in the house,—was such that, while disarming the leaders with the simple majesty of the truth, it did notfail to produce a reaction even in the most exasperated members of the mob.
It would indeed be an interesting task to trace the public influence of this last demonstration, for it offered phases of interest to both parties. It is sufficient to say, that the Era's unmolested existence ever after was simply due to the instincts of self-preservation in the community. The issue was practically presented to the owners of real estate in the District, whether freedom of debate on all topics of public concern should be tolerated there, or the capital be removed to some Western centre. The bare possibility of this event was more than the slaveholding land-owners could face, and produced the desired effect. The continuance of the paper once acquiesced in, the tact of its editor, aided by that remarkable suavity of manners which made him a favorite in the private circles of Washington, was sufficient to forever forbid the probability of a second mob. And thenceforward the Era increased in influence as well as circulation. The latter, indeed, soon reached a figure which entitled it to a share of government patronage, while the former commanded the respect even of the enemies of the cause it defended.
But this is not all that is to be said of the Era. To that paper belongs the honor of introducing to the world the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Although reference has frequently been made to the origin of this wonderful fiction, the facts of its inception and growth have never been given to the public. These are so curious, that we are happy to be able to present what politicians would call the "secret history" of this book. The account was furnished to a friend by Dr. Bailey himself, when about to embark for Europe, on his first voyage for health, in 1853; the manuscript, now used for the first time, was hurriedly penned, without expectation of its appearance in print, and therefore has all the dashing freedom which might be looked for in a communication from one friend to another. We give itverbatim, that it may serve for asouvenir, as well as a contribution to the literary history of the time.
"New York, May 27, 1853.