—“Unhappy master, whom unmerciful disasterFollowed fast and followed faster.”
—“Unhappy master, whom unmerciful disasterFollowed fast and followed faster.”
—“Unhappy master, whom unmerciful disasterFollowed fast and followed faster.”
—“Unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster.”
And why did he not stop the war on the literati and pseudo-authors? Who can tell? He “wasn’t practical.” He lacked some of Falstaff’s “instinct.” He was not good and sweet. He wasn’t well-balanced; he was an Eccentric. Pity the Eccentric—the man who knows himself called and chosen to a cause, whether by the necessities of his own nature or by divine impulse—if, indeed, this and that be not the same. Whether that cause be warring upon high injustice, exposing hypocrisy in high places, reforming an art, lifting up the lowly—anything that sets a man apart to a purpose other than self-seeking, brings him ingratitude, misinterpretation, isolation and many sorrows. Hamlet called to set right the out-of-joint times would rather, if he had dared, have taken his quietus with a bare bodkin than face this life of heart-ache, oppressors’ wrongs, law’s delays to correct the wrongs, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. The greatest of Eccentrics became a stranger unto his brethren, was despised and rejected of man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; even His chosen disciples when He tried to purify the holy places from the profanation of greed misunderstood him; “the zeal of his house hath eaten him up,” sneered they.
Edgar A. Poe’s personal appearance matched his genius. Let those who saw him tell it: “He was the best realization of a poet in features, air and manner that I have ever seen, and the unusual paleness of his face added to its aspect of melancholy interest.” “Slight but erect of figure, of middle height, his head finely modeled, with a forehead and temples large and not unlike those of Bonaparte; his hands as fair as a woman’s; even in the garb of poverty ‘with gentleman written all over him.’ The handsome, intellectual face, the dark and clustering hair, the clear and sad gray-violet eyes—large, lustrous, glowing with expression.” “A man who never smiles.” “Those awful eyes,” exclaimed one woman. “The face tells of battling, of conquering external enemies, of many a defeat when the man was at war with his meaner self.” He was both much sinned against and much sinning. But he was not a monster, nor an ogre. He was only a poet and an Eccentric.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode.
[A]Davidson.
[A]Davidson.
[A]Davidson.
By R. A. PROCTOR.
There are many points in which English and American speakers and writers of culture differ from each other as to the use of certain words and as to certain modes of expression.
In America the word “clever” is commonly understood to mean pleasant and of good disposition, not (as in England) ingenious and skilful. Thus, though an American may speak of a person as a clever workman, using the word as we do, yet when he speaks of another as a clever man, he means, in nine cases out of ten, that the man is good company and well-natured. Sometimes, I am told, the word is used to signify generous or liberal. I can not recall any passages from early English literature in which the word is thus used, but I should not be surprised to learn that the usage is an old one. In like manner, the words “cunning” and “cute” are often used in America for “pretty” (Germanniedlich). As I write, an American lady, who has just played a very sweet passage from one of Mozart’s symphonies, turns from the piano to ask “whether that passage is not cute,” meaning pretty.
The word “mad” in America seems nearly always to mean “angry;” at least, I have seldom heard it used in our English sense. For “mad,” as we use the word, the Americans say “crazy.” Herein they have manifestly impaired the language. The words “mad” and “crazy” are quite distinct in their significance as used in England, and both meanings require to be expressed in ordinary parlance. It is obviously a mistake to make one word do duty for both, and to use the word “mad” to imply what is already expressed by other and more appropriate words.
I have just used the word “ordinary” in the English sense. In America the word is commonly used to imply inferiority. An “ordinary actor,” for instance, is a bad actor; a “very ordinary man” is a man very much below par. There is no authority for this usage in any English writer of repute, and the usage is manifestly inconsistent with the derivation of the word. On the other hand, the use of the word “homely” to imply ugliness, as is usual in America, is familiar at this day in parts of England, and could be justified by passages in some of the older English writers. That the word in Shakspere’s time implied inferiority is shown by the line—
Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.
Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.
Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.
Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.
In like manner, some authority may be found for the American use of the word “ugly” to signify bad-tempered.
Words are used in America which have ceased to be commonly used in England, and are, indeed, no longer regarded as admissible. Thus, the word “unbeknown” which no educated Englishman ever uses, either in speaking or in writing, is still used in America in common speech and by writers of repute.
Occasionally, writers from whom one would expect at least correct grammar make mistakes which in England would be regarded as very bad—mistakes which are not, indeed, passed over in America, but still attract less notice there than in England. Thus, Mr. Wilkie, who is so severe on English English in “Sketches beyond the Seas,” describes himself as saying (in reply to the question whether Chicago policemen have to use their pistols much), “I don’t knowasthey have to as a matter of law or necessity, but I know they do as a matter of fact;” and I have repeatedly heard this incorrect use of “as” for “that” in American conversation. I have also noted in works by educated Americans the use of the word “that” as an adverb, “that excitable,” “that head-strong,” and so forth. So the use of “lay” for “lie” seems to me to be much commoner in America than in England, though it is too frequently heard here also. In a well-written novelette called “The Man who was not a Colonel,” the words—“You was” and “Was you?” are repeatedly used, apparently without any idea that they are ungrammatical. They are much more frequently heard in America than in England (I refer, of course, to the conversation of the middle and better classes, not of the uneducated). In this respect it is noteworthy that the writers of the last century resemble Americans of to-day; for we often meet in their works the incorrect usage in question.
And here it may be well to consider the American expression “I guess,” which is often made the subject of ridicule by Englishmen, unaware of the fact that the expression is good old English. It is found in a few works written during the last century, and in many written during the seventeenth century. So careful a writer as Locke used the expression more than once in his treatise “On the Human Understanding.” In fact, the disuse of the expression in later times seems to have been due to a change in the meaning of the word “guess.” An Englishman who should say “I guess” now, would not mean what Locke did when he used the expression in former times, or what an American means when he uses it in our own day. We say, “I guess that riddle,” or “I guess what you mean,” signifying that we think the answer to the riddle, or the meaning of what we have heard, may be such and such. But when an American says, “I guess so,” he does not mean “I think it may be so,” but more nearly “I know it to be so.” The expression is closely akin to the old English saying, “I wis.” Indeed, the words “guess” and “wis” are simply different forms of the same word. Just as we have “guard” and “ward,” “guardian” and “warden,” “Guillaume” and “William,” “guichet” and “wicket,” etc., so we have the verbs to “guess” and to “wis.” (In the Biblewe have not “I wis,” but we have “he wist.”) “I wis” means nearly the same as “I know,” and that this is the root-meaning of the word is shown by such words as “wit,” “witness,” “wisdom,” the legal phrase “to-wit,” and so forth. “Guess” was originally used in the same sense; and Americans retain that meaning, whereas in our modern English the word has changed in significance.
It may be added, that in many parts of America we find the expression “I guess” replaced by “I reckon,” and “I calculate” (the “I cal’late” of theBiglow Papers). In the South, “I reckon” is generally used, and in parts of New England “I calculate,” though (I am told) less commonly than of yore. It is obvious from the use of such words as “reckon” and “calculate” as equivalents for “guess,” that the expression “I guess” is not, as many seem to imagine, equivalent to the English “I suppose” and “I fancy.” An American friend of mine, in response to the question by an Englishman (an exceedingly positive and dogmatic person, as it chanced), “Why do Englishmen never say ‘I guess?’” replied (more wittily than justly), “Because they are always so positive about everything.” But it is noteworthy that whereas the American says frequently, “I guess,” meaning “I know,” the Englishman as freely lards his discourse with the expression, “You know,” which is, perhaps, more modest. Yet, on the other side, it may be noted, that the “down east” American often uses the expression “I want to know,” in the same sense as our English expression of attentive interest, “Indeed?”
Among other familiar Americanisms may be mentioned the following:—
An American who is interested in a narrative or statement will say, “Is that so?” or simply “So!” The expression “Possible!” is sometimes, but not often, heard. Dickens misunderstood this exclamation as equivalent to “It is possible, but does not concern me;” whereas, in reality, it is equivalent to the expression, “Is it possible?” I have occasionally heard the exclamation “Do tell!” but it is less frequently heard now than of yore.
The word “right” is more frequently used than in England, and is used also in senses different from those understood in our English usage of the word. Thus, the American will say “right here” and “right there,” where an Englishman would say “just here” or “just there,” or simply, “here” or “there.” Americans say “right away,” where we say “directly.” On the other hand, I am inclined to think that the English expression “right well,” for “very well,” is not commonly used in America.
Americans say “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” with a sense different from that with which the words are used in England; but they mark the difference of sense by a difference of intonation. Thus, if a question is asked to which the reply in England would be simply “yes” or “no” (or, according to the rank or station of the querist, “yes, sir,” or “no, sir,”), the American reply would be “yes, sir,” or “no, sir,” intonated as with us in England. But if the reply is intended to be emphatic, then the intonation is such as to throw the emphasis on the word “sir”—the reply is “yes,sir” or “no,sir.” In passing, I may note that I have never heard an American waiter reply “yessir,” as our English waiters often do.
The American use of the word “quit” is peculiar. They do not limit the word, as we do, to the signification “take leave”—in fact, I have never heard an American use the word in that sense. They generally use it as equivalent to “leave off” or “stop.” (In passing, one may notice as rather strange the circumstance that the word “quit,” which properly means “to go away from,” and the word “stop,” which means to “stay,” should both have come to be used as signifying to “leave off.”) Thus, Americans say “quit fooling” for “leave off playing the fool,” “quit singing,” “quit laughing,” and so forth.
To English ears an American use of the word “some” sounds strange—viz., as an adverb. An American will say, “I think some of buying a new house,” or the like, for “I have some idea of buying,” etc. I have indeed heard the usage defended as perfectly correct, though assuredly there is not an instance in all the wide range of English literature which will justify it.
So also, many Americans defend as good English the use of the word “good” in such phrases as the following:—“I have written that note good,” for “well;” “it will make you feel good,” for “it will do you good;” and in other ways, all equally incorrect. Of course, there are instances in which adjectives are allowed by custom to be used as adverbs, as, for instance, “right” for “rightly,” etc.; but there can be no reason for substituting the adjective “good” in place of the adverb “well,” which is as short a word, and at least equally euphonious. The use of “real” for “really,” as “real angry,” “real nice,” is, of course, grammatically indefensible.
The word “sure” is often used for “surely” in a somewhat singular way, as in the following sentence from “Sketches beyond the Sea,” in which Mr. Wilkie is supposed to be quoting a remark made by an English policeman: “If policemen went to shooting in this country, there would be some hanging, sure; and not wholly among the classes that would be shot at, either.” (In passing, note that the word “either” is never pronouncedeyetherin America, but alwayseether, whereas in England we seem to use either pronunciation indifferently.)
An American seldom uses the word “stout” to signify “fat,” saying generally “fleshy.” Again, for our English word “hearty,” signifying “in very good health,” an American will sometimes employ the singularly inappropriate word “rugged.” (It corresponds pretty nearly with our word “rude”—equally inappropriate—in the expression “rude health.”)
The use of the word “elegant” for “fine” strikes English ears as strange. For instance, if you say to an American, “This is a fine morning,” he is likely to reply, “Itis; an elegant morning,” or perhaps oftener by using simply the word “elegant.” It is not a pleasing use of the word.
There are some Americanisms which seem more than defensible—in fact, grammatically more correct than our English usage. Thus, we seldom hear in America the redundant word “got” in such expressions as “I have got,” etc., etc. Where the word would not be redundant, it is generally replaced by the more euphonious word “gotten,” now scarcely ever heard in England. Yet again, we often hear in America such expressions as “I shall get me a new book,” “I have gotten me a dress,” “I must buy me that,” and the like. This use of “me” for “myself” is good old English, at any rate.
I have been struck by the circumstance that neither the conventional, but generally very absurd, American of our English novelists, nor the conventional, but at least equally absurd, Englishman of American novelists, is made to employ the more delicate Americanisms or Anglicisms. We generally find the American “guessing” or “calculating,” if not even more coarsely Yankee, like Reade’s Joshua Fullalove; while the Englishman of American novels is almost always very coarsely British, even if he is not represented as using what Americans persist in regarding as the true “Henglish haccent.” Where an American is less coarsely drawn, as Trollope’s “American Senator,” he uses expressions which no American ever uses, and none of those Americanisms which, while more delicate, are in reality more characteristic, because they are common, all Americans using them. And in like manner, when an American writer introduces an Englishman of the more natural sort, he never makes him speak as an Englishman would speak; before half a dozen sentences have been uttered, he uses some expression which is purely American. Thus, no Englishman ever uses, and an American may be recognized at once by using, such expressions as “I know it,” or “That’s so,” for “It is true;” by saying “Why, certainly,” for “Certainly;” and so forth. There are many of these slight but characteristic peculiarities of American and English English.—“Knowledge” Library.
By ELLEN O. PECK.
The fleeting years, the changing scenes,The light and shade that intervenes’Twixt now and youth’s rejoicing teensHave come and gone so silently.Tho’ much from out my life is drawnOf love and trust I leaned uponI never thought my youth was gone,But laughed at time defiantly,—Until I met with those I knewWhen life’s first romance burst to view,Whom long ago I bade adieu,And scanned their faces eagerly;Alas! I read the fatal truthThat time indeed with little ruthHad claimed the beauty of their youth,And dealt with them most meagerly.Amid the brown locks shone the gray,And lines of care on foreheads lay,And so, I read my fate to-day,From their faces cheerlessly—What I’d not read upon my own,That youth, with time, had surely flown,And I with them had older grown;The truth—I take it fearlessly.And with a sigh o’er vanished years,(I have no time to give to tears)I near life’s noontide without fears,Bearing its burdens silently;No happy song I leave unsung,A deeper life within has sprung,And so my heart forever young,Still laughs at time defiantly.
The fleeting years, the changing scenes,The light and shade that intervenes’Twixt now and youth’s rejoicing teensHave come and gone so silently.Tho’ much from out my life is drawnOf love and trust I leaned uponI never thought my youth was gone,But laughed at time defiantly,—Until I met with those I knewWhen life’s first romance burst to view,Whom long ago I bade adieu,And scanned their faces eagerly;Alas! I read the fatal truthThat time indeed with little ruthHad claimed the beauty of their youth,And dealt with them most meagerly.Amid the brown locks shone the gray,And lines of care on foreheads lay,And so, I read my fate to-day,From their faces cheerlessly—What I’d not read upon my own,That youth, with time, had surely flown,And I with them had older grown;The truth—I take it fearlessly.And with a sigh o’er vanished years,(I have no time to give to tears)I near life’s noontide without fears,Bearing its burdens silently;No happy song I leave unsung,A deeper life within has sprung,And so my heart forever young,Still laughs at time defiantly.
The fleeting years, the changing scenes,The light and shade that intervenes’Twixt now and youth’s rejoicing teensHave come and gone so silently.Tho’ much from out my life is drawnOf love and trust I leaned uponI never thought my youth was gone,But laughed at time defiantly,—
The fleeting years, the changing scenes,
The light and shade that intervenes
’Twixt now and youth’s rejoicing teens
Have come and gone so silently.
Tho’ much from out my life is drawn
Of love and trust I leaned upon
I never thought my youth was gone,
But laughed at time defiantly,—
Until I met with those I knewWhen life’s first romance burst to view,Whom long ago I bade adieu,And scanned their faces eagerly;Alas! I read the fatal truthThat time indeed with little ruthHad claimed the beauty of their youth,And dealt with them most meagerly.
Until I met with those I knew
When life’s first romance burst to view,
Whom long ago I bade adieu,
And scanned their faces eagerly;
Alas! I read the fatal truth
That time indeed with little ruth
Had claimed the beauty of their youth,
And dealt with them most meagerly.
Amid the brown locks shone the gray,And lines of care on foreheads lay,And so, I read my fate to-day,From their faces cheerlessly—What I’d not read upon my own,That youth, with time, had surely flown,And I with them had older grown;The truth—I take it fearlessly.
Amid the brown locks shone the gray,
And lines of care on foreheads lay,
And so, I read my fate to-day,
From their faces cheerlessly—
What I’d not read upon my own,
That youth, with time, had surely flown,
And I with them had older grown;
The truth—I take it fearlessly.
And with a sigh o’er vanished years,(I have no time to give to tears)I near life’s noontide without fears,Bearing its burdens silently;No happy song I leave unsung,A deeper life within has sprung,And so my heart forever young,Still laughs at time defiantly.
And with a sigh o’er vanished years,
(I have no time to give to tears)
I near life’s noontide without fears,
Bearing its burdens silently;
No happy song I leave unsung,
A deeper life within has sprung,
And so my heart forever young,
Still laughs at time defiantly.
Lecture by David H. Wheeler, LL.D., President of Allegheny College, delivered in the Amphitheater, Chautauqua, N. Y., August 23d, at 2 p. m.
Let me begin by saying that my subject is not theological, and it will save us trouble if we remember it. Let me say in the second place that my subject is not the stage, but a book. I shall not discuss the drama as it is related to the stage, but the drama as a form of literature. The theologian may find some comfort in the reflection that if God makes a book it must be the best book. By the drama we mean simply the best telling of a story. The gospels as God’s book may therefore be regarded as necessarily the best told story in the world. But a few things may be profitably said with regard to the relations of the drama with the stage. First, this general one, that the stage was a contrivance for ages and times when men could not read; and that ever since men learned to read, the stage has been passing into shadow. An illustration of that may be found in the fact that in the sixteenth century, the age of Shakspere, there were probably one thousand men who went to the theater to one man who could read a book; whereas, in our time, there are a hundred thousand men who read books to one man who frequents the theater. The stage, in other words, is an effete institution. It is therefore an institution whose death does not carry with it the death of the drama; for, along with the death of the stage, there has come an enlargement of the scope of the drama. No important story was ever put upon the stage, or could be. The stage is too narrow for a great theme; therefore all the themes of all the plays are necessarily narrow themes—a few incidents grouped about a character, or grouped about a single characteristic of human nature. We have need in the world to tell stories that are larger, that require an ampler stage for their development; that deal not only with single principles, and single men, but with many principles and vast masses of men—that concern not for a moment, or an hour, and a single epoch of human life, but concern vast reaches of time and vaster interests of humanity. And so it has come to pass that in our modern times, our poetry—our epic poetry and our dramatic poetry—the two highest forms of literary art, have undergone a great transformation. The poem has become a novel. The epic has passed into this form; and the drama has become history. Carlyle says that it is the business of the poet to write history.
We make distinction between prose and poetry, but we ought to remember that with regard to epic poetry, and dramatic poetry, both are to be expressed either in verse or prose, and that versification is an accident. There may be epic poems in prose; and, as the freest form, prose has become the prevailing form, and poetry is, more and more, as the world grows older, confined to the lyric jingle. Poetry, in the old sense, soon will pass, and the drama has passed into unversified poetry. Milton made a great change by adopting blank verse, and Shakspere had started us on the same road. In our age the great works of poetic language may be expected to be produced in what is technically prose. The epic poem may also be dramatically constructed, so that we may have the prose epic under form of the drama.
Let me call attention to the fact that we are fortunate in speaking a tongue, the imperial language, in which Shakspere practically killed the old Aristotelian unities. He wanted a dramatic form in which to tell the story of the fall of Julius Cæsar, and the story of English history. He had to discard the old unities of time and place. The only Aristotelian unity that remains in our English literature is that of subject. The subject of a dramatic action, or an epic story, must have unity. There must be one action having a beginning, a middle, and an end; and there must be a constant, regular, orderly, striking, impressive advance from the beginning to the end.
Now we come to consider whether the gospels ought to be regarded as a drama. In the first place, we are familiar with the custom of commenting on and praising the literary merits of the gospel. We say how sweet and fluent and intelligible is the language in which it is written. We understand that portions of it reach the heights of sublimity, particularly the seventeenth chapter of John. We are familiar with the fact that its English is so beautiful that there are men among us to rise and complain if we interfere with a word in it. We are familiar with the idea that the gospels have literary merits of a very high order. But we have been accustomed, as a rule, to regard these things in detail rather than as a whole. Now, when I say that they may be regarded as dramatic, I mean the highest literary merit crowns them as a whole. Their story is told in a dramatic form. No story ever told under the sun was so well told as is this story of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. I must treat this topic illustratingly, for my sole purpose is to get an idea before you. Look, then, at the idea of dramatizing history. It is said that Lord Marlborough read only Shakspere for English history. He found that the dramatist had put his conceptions of the actions and characteristics of leading men in English history in such an effective way, that, whether he was right or wrong, he had fixed the national estimate of these characters—had typed them forever. What Shakspere says a man was, the English people will go on thinking him to have been. These characters give us, on a small scale, the purpose and effect of the dramatization of history. When Shakspere did his work, little historical study had been done. English critical history dates from after his time. But without the help of critics he conceived and typed groups of characters, and he had such power of placing himself in the center of things and working out thecharacteristics, that he really constructed English history by the dramatic method. He had pitifully few materials, but historians who have come after him have found his types very faithful, and have been content to work out the details, accepting the pictures Shakspere had hung up before the eyes of the nation. Shaksperean English characters can not be much changed by ever so much study. This is only an illustration of the triumph which the dramatic form may win. Another most important distinction is the one between the theatrical and the dramatic. We can best understand it by looking at the common significance of the words. By “theatrical” we mean something false, fictitious, showy, with no reality behind it.
When a human action is theatrical it is insincere and false to the facts. On the other hand, when you use the word “dramatic,” you mean something entirely different. You mean to praise the thing and not condemn it. When the two Senators from New York suddenly resigned their position in 1881—you remember it—the friends of these men spoke of their action as dramatic, and their enemies characterized their action as theatrical; one to praise, the other to blame. An incident like that draws the line better than a definition. The word “drama” has won a place outside of the stage—and it more and more separates itself from the stage, and becomes a word descriptive of the best told story. In such a story there must be reality. It must be a story so put together that the meaning leaps out as the story goes on, and the mind takes hold of the meaning easily and fully—so that the whole meaning flashes on the understanding. You all know the power of a good story teller. You all know that every neighborhood has some man who can grasp an incident and tell it so that it comes strikingly before the mind. This power of narrative is at once epic and dramatic. This village story teller is a miniature Milton and Shakspere. The arrangement of a drama is systematic; and moves to a climax with full force. In order to a dramatic arrangement it is not necessary that the characters should be combined, as in the form of a play; it is only necessary that the story should be told in the most effective way, so that its meaning will flash clear and strong on the understanding. The gospels are told in this way; and it is the only possible way in which their story could reach the understanding. If we consider the gospels from this point of view, there are several things to attract our attention. One of them is the universality of the human nature which is brought out in the gospel. If you take up a picture book, or a fashion book of a hundred years ago, you are interested in a certain way in studying the characters, and discovering that the people dressed in a way very different from the present mode. You study the strange dresses with interest, but at the same time with a kind of feeling that these people were not just like yourself. Your point of observation in the fashion-plate presents you with nothing but unlikeness to yourself and your contemporaries. It is a strange world to you.
Now, what the fashion-plate is, a great part of literature is. It is something which gets old, out of fashion, outworn, when it is a hundred years old. People live largely upon a contemporaneous literary diet. The most of the literature for each generation is produced by itself, and therefore the human nature of it, like the dresses of the fashion-plate, is in a little while out of date, and seems old. I am not as old as I look to be, but I have seen several kinds of literary fashions come and go. I have known men to be famous, producing a book nearly every month, whose name would now be strange, and there are few here who have thought of them for a long time. Other books have taken their places. They were novels, stories, histories, and even poems, but they have gone out of date, because the human nature they dealt with was a temporary and passing human nature—that of a fashion-plate. And the same effect must attend most of the novels being written in our day, because there is a passion upon us for this sort of living detail, this sort of temporary book.
There is so little of permanent universal human nature in an ordinary novel of the period, that when you are done with it you have learned but very little about man. The great defect with this class of books is that they do not deal with universal human nature, and it is the power of Shakspere that he deals largely with universal human nature. And here we discover the likeness that reigns there. We recognize ourselves and our neighbors. We have struck one of the old lines of humanity, and are acquainted with the people we meet. They wear togas, we wear trousers; but we know each other for brothers. The defect of Shaksperean human nature very soon appears when you lay it down along side of the gospels. You have a little universal human nature in Shakspere, in the gospels you have almost nothing else but universal human nature. If you ask yourselves why we are interested in certain incidents that occurred nearly two thousand years ago, in a foreign land, that occurred in connection with a people for whom we have nothing but antipathy, what will be the answer? Why are we interested in this old history lying back there in a world that had almost nothing like our world except men, and the eternal rocks, and the ever flowing streams? Why, belting the green earth, should we find men everywhere singing about this passage in human history? What is the charm of it that reaches human nature so widely? Undoubtedly there is much charm in the delightful truth which it contains; more in the delightful power behind it, but much also in the fact that when we open these gospels we find ourselves in the presence of men and women like ourselves, in the presence of human nature, undying, eternally the same. In any of these passages you find yourself suddenly reminded of yourself. You feel in every throb of a human heart in the gospels something which allies the old heart with yourself.
Another proof of the dramatic quality of the gospels lies in the fact that the details all work out into one picture, and each trait resembles the whole. What I mean here I shall try to make clear. The Righi is a mountain made up of pudding stones. It is a great egg-shaped mass that leaps up out of the plain, rising thousands of feet in the air, and is composed altogether of these pudding stones. At different points up its rugged sides, masses have been broken off by the action of the ice, and if you examine them you will find that the fragments resemble the whole. Break up one of them into the finest pieces, and each bit will still resemble the whole. In any fragment of the vast mass you have a picture of the whole mountain. Now this is true of the highest dramatic production, that every piece and every incident is a picture of the whole. This highest dramatic perfection is found only in the gospels. You find hints of it elsewhere. Many of you have read the story of “Middlemarch,” the most perfect piece of art produced in the way of a modern novel. The art lies first in the dramatic conception, for it has a theme, and the theme runs clear through, and the climax leaps out of the theme. This theme is worked out through a principal character. In her history the general lesson is impressively taught. But the art does not end there, each one of the characters is a picture of the heroine in little. The same story is repeated over and over again, in the different characters. It is a story of human failure, of the way in which a great human purpose, and high aspirations, growing in a youthful mind, may be dispersed and destroyed as human life goes on to its conclusion. It is a lesson of failure, and the failure of the principal character is repeated in the subordinate characters.
Take another illustration from Shakspere: “Julius Cæsar” is his best drama, not the best play, for it does not act well on the stage, as it lacks singleness and simplicity; nevertheless it is, I think, Shakspere’s most complete play, his most dramatic piece, and the reason is this: His subject is large and is developed on the principle I am laying down. The play is narrow, both in “Macbeth” and “Othello.” In “Julius Cæsar” it is large. The subject may be named the weaknesses of great men. The play is constructed so as to develop the weaknessesof Julius Cæsar, and of all the rest of the characters grouped about him. The story told in the death of Julius Cæsar is told also in the death of all the parties in the terrible failure of them all. But you must mark that in this case we have an extremely narrow purpose as compared with the gospels. In the gospels you can begin anywhere, and preach the whole gospel from any incident. Take the case of the Prodigal Son, and you have the whole story of the gospel in that short compass. Take up the case of the man described as the “father of the child,” crying, “I believe,” and you have it over again. It is over and over again, from the beginning to the end, the pieces all conspiring to the grand result. It is achieved not by ordinary art. The story teller has seen or heard or conceived something, and he goes through a mass of details. The gospels have nothing of that sort. They tell you in a few words what they have to say of the woman of Samaria, or the maniac of Gadara, or of her who loved much and was forgiven much. Names are dispensed with, details, places of residence, all the tricks by which the ordinary story teller succeeds. This story succeeds by pure force of an infinite truth behind it.
Another characteristic of drama is a kind of consistency between the beginning and the end, a kind of logical order in which it moves, and this is illustrated in the gospels by the fact which must always be borne in mind, that the task is one of supreme difficulty. The author of the gospels has to tell the story of the Incarnation of God’s son. A story in which there are human and divine actors, in which there is both nature and the supernatural. It requires vast dramatic power. I have suggested, yet I may more definitely repeat it, that the human earth on which you tread is not that of old Palestine, or Galilee, or Jerusalem. It is a real universal, a human earth. There is not a bit of purer realism than the gospels. Take up this story, walk with these men. Down by the lake you find the Gadarene crying among the tombs. You see the stranger landing and healing him. You stand down by the boat and hear the poor man begging Jesus to allow him to go with him. You see these human figures. Look into it a little, and there the man stands where he has stood almost two thousand years, listening to the words of the Master compelling him to go away. The meaning of it you understand, for the case is before you. On this solid human earth, this real human nature, this realistic character which makes you feel the heart beat, and smell the real earth, all is combined with something else, with the supernatural. There have been writers who have carried us into wonderland. We were glad to be there, and we traveled along delighted with the scenery and with the companions created by the imagination. The gospels do not do this. This solid earth beneath your feet is not more real than the heavens that bend over it. Human reality is combined with heavenly, and you are continually going to and fro between the earth and the sky. The natural and the supernatural are so run together that you feel no shock in passing from one to the other. You have men and angels, divine power and human power, associated together. The warp of earth is woven into the woof of heaven until it is one piece of cloth of gold. The gold of the skies is braided into the earthly so perfectly I defy any man to take them apart with consistency or success. This is the beauty and perfection of dramatic success. The divine and the human are blended in Christ so that you are puzzled to tell whether it is a man or a God who speaks and works. The blending of the human about him, in him, through him, all this is an effect utterly beyond human art. The story goes straight home to the human heart. The time will never come when it will not be a dear and sweet old story to the souls that hear it. Edward Eggleston once told me that when he was lecturing in some strange corner of the earth, where culture in the pulpit was comparatively rare, after the lecture one of the men said, “I wish you would come here and preach for us. Our minister preaches the funeral of Jesus Christ twice a Sunday, fifty-two Sundays in the year.” The case seemed to me to be an exceedingly sad one until I began to ask myself, of what man that ever lived could it be said they preached his funeral sermon twice a Sabbath for fifty-two Sundays in the year, and the story still had such freshness that the people would come out and hear it? What other thing was ever so well done that a fool might talk about it, and still a certain amount of interest attach to it despite the poor telling? Here lies one of the uses of the dramatic power of the gospel. When a man of humble attainments has it to tell, he has only to follow the book to make it an interesting story. The moment he strikes a real point of interest, the attentive soul feels that that is what it came for, and, what is better, that it is said to him. In short, the enduring power of this story lies in great part in this fact. The consistency between the beginning and the end and the logical order of things, comes out in a thousand powerful ways. For instance, the peculiar truth that reappears in the words which are sculptured on Shakspere’s tomb.
Take the same thought as it reappears—the same thought slightly turned over—as it is repeated in “Middlemarch,” or in that best human version of all, that of Watts:
“Princes, this clay must be your bed,In spite of all your towers;The tall, the wise, the reverend head,Must lie as low as ours.”
“Princes, this clay must be your bed,In spite of all your towers;The tall, the wise, the reverend head,Must lie as low as ours.”
“Princes, this clay must be your bed,In spite of all your towers;The tall, the wise, the reverend head,Must lie as low as ours.”
“Princes, this clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your towers;
The tall, the wise, the reverend head,
Must lie as low as ours.”
You will find the thought, in good and bad versions, everywhere. Do you wish to take this thought fresh from the fountain? Come to the temple, where the disciples, accustomed to nothing great in art, fresh from Galilee, stand gazing in admiration at the glory of the great edifice and one of them cries out: “Master, behold these stones; and what manner of a building is this?” And listen to the Master as he says: “There shall not remain one stone upon another,” and you have the fountain head of all these streams running down into our poetry.
Mark the wonderful consistency, and the wonderful movement of this story—consider it as a drama. You may regard the gospels as beginning at that moment when suddenly there was with the angel a great company of the heavenly hosts, appearing to the shepherds as they watched their flocks by night. It practically ends when the disciples, after the ascension, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple singing the song which began in angel mouths and ends in human mouths. The purpose of the story was to sing that angelic music into the human heart.
In conclusion: What inferences may be drawn from the statements I have made? Certainly not that the gospels have attained their success because they are a drama. They had to have the truth to succeed. They have the truth, and that has given them success. It behooved that Christ should suffer and rise from the dead the third day. And this behooving lies in something very deep in our nature. We believe that these gospels are inspired; that the authors were moved by the Holy Ghost; and it seems to me to be a necessary inference that the story should be well told; and well told means dramatically told. If it be true that the gospels sweep a larger circle and involve a greater work than was ever attempted by a human brain, if it be true that you can put a million of Shaksperes into their compass and still have an abyss of art unfilled, then you have an inference, an argument, in the line of the evidences of Christianity that has never been attempted. And that is that the best told, most dramatically told story, the story of the visit of God’s son to the earth, of his life, death, resurrection and ascension, must have been told by God himself. No human pen can be eloquent enough, no heart wide enough, no intellect could penetrate into the human heart deeply enough, to produce these gospels. In the literary perfection of the gospel there lies an evidence of the truth, of the divine authorship of the gospels, which in time to come, when all men read and think, will weigh perhaps more than any other kind of argument that has been drawn upon to this hour.
By theHon. NEAL DOW.
The policy of license to the liquor traffic had been the uniform practice of the civilized world since the reign of Edward VI., of England, when it was first established. Since that time, in England, there have been more than four hundred and fifty separate acts relating to the traffic, each of them being a vain attempt to improve upon all that had gone before, in the hope, if not in the expectation, of diminishing in some degree the tremendous evils coming from it. For the last twenty years there has been no session of Parliament, I think, at which there have not been several separate bills introduced, relating to that matter; at some of them, these bills have been in number, from eight to ten, sometimes even twelve. When our fathers first came over the waters to this western world, they brought with them the policy of license, because at that time no other had been attempted or thought of.
In 1820 Maine was separated from Massachusetts and set up housekeeping for herself, bringing with her, as a part of her outfit, the policy of license, which had been brought over in the “Mayflower” by the Pilgrim Fathers, and established in Plymouth colony in the first years of its existence. By the peculiar industries of Maine the people were led into the habit of the excessive use of strong drink. All our people living a little way back from the sea coast were engaged in the lumbering business. We had vast forests of invaluable pine, whence Maine was and is called the “Pine Tree State.” The people through all the winter season were living in camps in the woods, engaged in felling the trees and transporting them to the water courses, by which they would be taken to the innumerable saw mills which crowded the falls on almost all our streams. In the camps, away from home influences and home restraints, the “lumbermen” indulged freely in strong drink, which was a large and indispensable part of their rations.
On the breaking up of the streams in the spring, these men were engaged in “driving river,” as it was called, i. e., following the “drives” of logs, many, many miles down all the water courses to the “booms,” whence they were impounded and secured ready for the saw mills which were kept in operation through the year, often running night and day. On these drives many of the men were often in the icy water more or less all day, dislodging the logs from rocks or shallows, by which they were stopped in their course down stream. In all this laborious and trying work, the men used rum freely and largely, as the universal custom was in those days. In those old times I have seen our great rivers covered for miles, from shore to shore, with innumerable logs, so closely packed as almost to hide the water from view. Many “river drivers” were following along on either shore to prevent the logs from “lodging,” and to “start” all that had been “grounded.” At night I have seen these men in great numbers around their camp fires, wild and boisterous, under the influence of liquor, like so many Comanche savages just home from the war path, with many scalps hanging at their belts. On many of these drives the men would be engaged for weeks, with rum as the most important part of their ration. On the return of these men to civilized life a large part of them would spend in a week, in a drunken carouse, all the wages paid them for their winter’s work, without regard to wife and children at home.
The saw mills in Maine were on a very large scale, and were in great numbers. There were great masses of men engaged in them, all using rum freely and in immense quantities. I have heard it said that two quarts a day to each man was the regular allowance. While all these men—in whatever department working—earned large wages, they were not at all benefited by that, because they spent all in rum, except a miserable pittance doled out to the wretched wife and children.
The transportation of this “lumber” to the West Indies—the principal market for it—was a very great industry; it was called the “West India Trade.” Great numbers of vessels were engaged in it, running from all our principal ports which had direct communication with the vast system of saw mills on all our streams. The returns for this lumber were mostly West India rum and molasses, to be converted into New England rum, at our numerous distilleries. All along our sea coast great numbers of our people were engaged in the mackerel and cod fisheries; there were a great many vessels employed in that industry, the products of which were mostly sent to the West Indies in the lumber ships, the returns for which were also “rum and molasses!” I have heard men say who were owners of timber lands and of saw mills—“operators” on a large scale, and owners of West India traders—that Maine was never a dollar the richer for all these great industries. The returns were mostly in rum, and in molasses converted into rum, so that our boundless forests of invaluable timber were literally poured down the throats of our people in the form of rum. The result of all this was that Maine was the poorest state in the Union, consuming the entire value of all its property of every kind in rum, in every period of less than twenty years.
I have run hastily over this account of the condition of Maine in the old rum time to show that our people, according to the general opinion on this subject, were most unlikely to adopt a policy of prohibition to the liquor traffic, which was spread everywhere all over the state, and was intimately interwoven into all the habits and customs of the time. All over the state there was a general appearance of neglect and dilapidation in houses, barns, school houses, farms, churches. By their habits of drinking a great many of our people were disinclined to work, and many of them were unfitted for it. It used to be said that three-fourths of the farms were mortgaged to the town, village and country traders, all of whom kept in stock liquors of all sorts as the most important and most profitable part of their supplies.
A few men in Maine resolved to change all that by changing the law by which the liquor traffic was licensed, and by substituting for it the policy of prohibition. This was supposed to be a great undertaking, as in fact it was. An indispensable preparatory step was to change public opinion, on which all law is supposed to be founded. To do this meetings were held all over the state—not only in the larger towns, but in villages and in all the rural districts. There was hardly a little country church or town house or roadside school house where we did not lay out before the people the fact that the liquor traffic was inconsistent with the general good; that it was in deadly hostility to every interest of nation, state and people. In our missionary work about the state, traveling in our own carriages in summer, and in our own sleighs in winter, we took with us large supplies of tracts relating to the liquor traffic and its results. These were prepared for the purpose, and were distributed freely at all our meetings, and we threw them out to the people as we passed their houses, and as we met them on our way; and to the children as we passed the country school houses. In this way, by persistent work, we changed the public opinion upon the matter and fired the hearts of the people with a burning indignation against the liquor traffic, by which they were made poor and kept poor.
This work was continued for several years without intermission; we had a definite object in view, and that was to overthrow the liquor traffic, to outlaw it, to put it under the ban, and to drive it out as a pestilent thing, the whole influence of which was to spread poverty, pauperism, suffering, wretchedness and crime broadcast among the people, at the same time that no possible good came from it. In due time we made earnest application to the legislature for a law of prohibition, but our prayers were not heeded. We were regarded as having no rights which politicians were bound to respect, and we were treated with small courtesy. We soon took in the situation,and addressed ourselves at once to the only instrumentality through which we could possibly succeed—that is, the ballot box. We sent in great numbers of petitions to the legislature, but we were beaten by more than two to one. At the next election we swept the State House clear of almost every man who had voted against us; we did this irrespective of all party ties and affiliations.
To the legislature thus elected we sent no petitions; we went there in person, with a bill all prepared, and offered it as one that would be acceptable to temperance men. It was on Friday, the 30th of May, 1851, that we did this. We had a public hearing in the Representative Hall on the afternoon of that day. Saturday, the 31st of May, was to be the last day of the session. The committee voted unanimously to accept the bill as it was, with no change whatever. It was printed on Friday night and laid upon the desks of the members the next morning. Immediately after the morning hour it was taken up for consideration.
Now this was the situation on that Saturday morning. The liquor traffic was a lawful trade in Maine, as it was throughout the civilized world. There were liquor shops, wholesale and retail, all over the state, with large stocks of liquor for sale, as there are now in all our states, where the traffic is yet prosecuted by authority of law, and under its protection. The bill lying upon the members’ desks proposed to change all that; it forbade the trade absolutely; it declared that there was no property in intoxicating liquors kept for unlawful sale; that such liquors so kept, or supposed to be so kept, should be seized on complaint and warrant, or on sight, without warrant, and should be confiscated and destroyed, unless the claimant could show to the satisfaction of the court that they were not intended for sale. They might be seized wherever seen; on railway cars, on steamboats, or in transitu by any other mode of transportation; they might be hunted like wild and dangerous beasts, and like them, if resistance was offered, they might be destroyed upon the spot. If it be decided that the liquors are kept for unlawful sale, the party is sentenced, in addition to the loss of the liquor, to a fine of one hundred dollars and costs, and on the second conviction, to the same fine and to imprisonment at hard labor for six months. And it was expressly provided that no action should be had or maintained in any court in the state for the recovery of intoxicating liquors nor for the value thereof. The liquor traffic was put by that bill outside the law, beyond its protection, and was denounced as an enemy to the state and people—utterly inconsistent with the public welfare.
On that Saturday this extraordinary measure, such as had never been heard of in the world before, with no change whatever, was passed through all its stages to be enacted, and on Monday, at nine o’clock in the morning, it was approved by the Governor, and from that moment it was the law, because the act provided that it should take effect when signed by the executive. All the stocks of liquors in the state were then liable to be seized and destroyed, but the local authorities allowed the parties having them in possession a reasonable time in which to “send them away to other states and countries where they could be lawfully sold;” and this was done. There was a hasty departure of these liquors from all parts of the state. It was not an appeal to the legislature by petitions that accomplished this wonderful overturn in the status of the liquor traffic in Maine, it was simply and only because the people put their will in relation to it into the ballot box. There is no other way in which it can be done in any other states, or in the nation. This movement against the liquor traffic is now, as it was then, a far more important political question than any other, more important than all others combined, to every interest of the nation, state, and people. What has been the result of this legislation?
“In some places liquor is sold secretly in violation of law, as many other offences are committed against the statutes, but in large districts of the state, the liquor traffic is nearly or quite unknown, where formerly it was carried on like any other trade.
“Sidney Perham,“Governor of Maine.”
“I can and do, from my own personal observation, unhesitatingly affirm that the consumption of intoxicating liquors in Maine is not to-day one-fourth so great as it was twenty years ago; in the country portions of the state the sale and use have almost entirely ceased. In my opinion our remarkable temperance reform of to-day is the legitimate child of the law.
“Wm. P. Frye,“M. C. of Maine, and ex-Att’y Gen’l of the State.”
“I have the honor unhesitatingly to concur in the opinions expressed in the foregoing by my colleague, Hon. Wm. Frye.
“Lot M. Morrill,“U. S. Senate.”
“I concur in the foregoing statements; and on the point of the relative amount of liquors sold at present in Maine and in those states where a system of license prevails, I am very sure from personal knowledge and observation that the sales are immeasurably less in Maine.
“J. G. Blaine,“Speaker U. S. House of Representatives.”
“I concur in the statements made by Mr. Frye. Of the great good produced by the Prohibitory Liquor Law of Maine, no man can doubt who has seen its result. It has been of immense value.
“H. Hamlin,“U. S. Senate.”
“We are satisfied that there is much less intemperance in Maine than formerly, and that the result is largely produced by what is termed prohibitory legislation.
“John A. Peters, M. C of Maine.
“Eugene Hale, M. C. of Maine.”
“I fully concur in the statement of my colleague, Mr. Frye, in regard to the effect of the enforcement of the liquor law in the state of Maine.
“John Lynch, M. C. of Maine.”
These certificates are from both Senators and all the Representatives of Maine in Congress.
These statements are indorsed by many mayors and ex-mayors of cities, and many other officials in every part of the state; by General Chamberlaine, ex-Governor and President of Bowdoin College, and by many clergymen in every county in the state.
The convention of Good Templars resolved, “That by the operation of the Maine law in this state, the traffic in intoxicating liquors has been greatly diminished, and that the happy effects of this change are everywhere apparent, and that the quantity of liquors now sold in this state can not be one-tenth as much as it was formerly.”
The State Conventions of the Republican party of Maine have always adopted resolves relating to this matter. I have some of them before me now.
Republican State Convention of 1878: “Temperance among the people may be greatly promoted by wise prohibitory legislation, as well as by all those moral agencies which have secured us beneficent results; and it is a source of congratulation that the principle of prohibition, which has always been upheld by Republicans, is now concurred in by so large a majority of the people that it is no longer a party question, the Democrats having for several years declined to contest and dispute it.” 1879: “We recognize temperance as a cause which has conferred the greatest benefits on the state, and we sustain the principle of prohibition which in its operation has so largely suppressed liquor selling, and added incalculably to the sum of virtue and prosperity among the people.” 1880: “Experience has demonstrated the wisdom of the policy of prohibition as an auxiliary of temperance, and as contributing to the material wealth, happiness and prosperity of the state; and we refer with confidence and pride to an undeviating support of the same as one of the cardinal principles of the Republican party of Maine.”
There was no election in 1881, and no convention, but the resolve of 1882 is: