V. November Boughs   
15. Notes to Late English Books   
     
“SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA,” LONDON EDITION, JUNE, 1887. PREFACE TO THE READER IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS.


IF you will only take the following pages, as you do some long and gossippy letter written for you by a relative or friend traveling through distant scenes and incidents, and jotting them down lazily and informally, but ever veraciously (with occasional diversions of critical thought about somebody or something,) it might remove all formal or literary impediments at once, and bring you and me close together in the spirit in which the jottings were collated to be read. You have had, and have, plenty of public events and facts and general statistics of America;—in the following book is a common individual New World private life, its birth and growth, its struggles for a living, its goings and comings and observations (or representative portions of them) amid the United States of America the last thirty or forty years, with their varied war and peace, their local coloring, the unavoidable egotism, and the lights and shades and sights and joys and pains and sympathies common to humanity. Further introductory light may be found in the paragraph, “A Happy Hour’s Command,” and the bottom note belonging to it, at the beginning of the book. I have said in the text that if I were required to give good reason-for-being of “Specimen Days,” I should be unable to do so. Let me fondly hope that it has at least the reason and excuse of such off-hand gossippy letter as just alluded to, portraying American life-sights and incidents as they actually occurred—their presentation, making additions as far as it goes, to the simple experience and association of your soul, from a comrade soul;—and that also, in the volume, as below any page of mine, anywhere, ever remains, for seen or unseen basis, phrase, GOOD-WILL BETWEEN THE COMMON PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONS.      1   
     
 
ADDITIONAL NOTE, 1887, TO ENGLISH EDITION “SPECIMEN DAYS.”


As I write these lines I still continue living in Camden, New Jersey, America. Coming this way from Washington City, on my road to the sea-shore (and a temporary rest, as I supposed) in the early summer of 1873, I broke down disabled, and have dwelt here, as my central residence, all the time since—almost 14 years. In the preceding pages I have described how, during those years, I partially recuperated (in 1876) from my worst paralysis by going down to Timber Creek, living close to Nature, and domiciling with my dear friends, George and Susan Stafford. From 1877 or ’8 to ’83 or ’4 I was well enough to travel around, considerably—journey’d westward to Kansas, leisurely exploring the Prairies, and on to Denver and the Rocky Mountains; another time north to Canada, where I spent most of the summer with my friend Dr. Bucke, and jaunted along the great lakes, and the St. Lawrence and Saguenay rivers; another time to Boston, to properly print the final edition of my poems (I was there over two months, and had a “good time.”) I have so brought out the completed “Leaves of Grass” during this period; also “Specimen Days,” of which the foregoing is a transcript; collected and re-edited the “Democratic Vistas” cluster (see companion volume to the present)—commemorated Abraham Lincoln’s death, on the successive anniversaries of its occurrence, by delivering my lecture on it ten or twelve times; and “put in,” through many a month and season, the aimless and resultless ways of most human lives.      2   
  Thus the last 14 years have pass’d. At present (end-days of March, 1887—I am nigh entering my 69th year) I find myself continuing on here, quite dilapidated and even wreck’d bodily from the paralysis, &c.—but in good heart (to use a Long Island country phrase,) and with about the same mentality as ever. The worst of it is, I have been growing feebler quite rapidly for a year, and now can’t walk around—hardly from one room to the next. I am forced to stay in-doors and in my big chair nearly all the time. We have had a sharp, dreary winter too, and it has pinch’d me. I am alone most of the time; every week, indeed almost every day, write some—reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say dawdle over books and papers a good deal—spend half the day at that.      3   
  Nor can I finish this note without putting on record—wafting over sea from hence—my deepest thanks to certain friends and helpers (I would specify them all and each by name, but imperative reasons, outside of my own wishes, forbid,) in the British Islands, as well as in America. Dear, even in the abstract, is such flattering unction always no doubt to the soul! Nigher still, if possible, I myself have been, and am to-day indebted to such help for my very sustenance, clothing, shelter, and continuity. And I would not go to the grave without briefly, but plainly, as I here do, acknowledging—may I not say even glorying in it?      4   
     
 
PREFACE TO “DEMOCRATIC VISTAS” WITH OTHER PAPERS.—ENGLISH EDITION.


MAINLY I think I should base the request to weigh the following pages on the assumption that they present, however indirectly, some views of the West and Modern, or of a distinctly western and modern (American) tendency, about certain matters.      5   
  Then, too, the pages include (by attempting to illustrate it,) a theory herein immediately mentioned. For another and different point of the issue, the Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show of the bulk, the common people of America (from sources representing not only the British Islands, but all the world,) means, at least, eligibility to Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show for the bulk, the common people of all civilized nations.      6   
  That positively “the dry land has appeared,” at any rate, is an important fact.      7   
  America is really the great test or trial case for all the problems and promises and speculations of humanity, and of the past and present.      8   
  I say, too, we 1 are not to look so much to changes, ameliorations, and adaptations in Politics as to those of Literature and (thence) domestic Sociology. I have accordingly in the following melange introduced many themes besides political ones.      9   
  Several of the pieces are ostensibly in explanation of my own writings; but in that very process they best include and set forth their side of principles and generalities pressing vehemently for consideration our age.     10   
  Upon the whole, it is on the atmosphere they are born in, and, (I hope) give out, more than any specific piece or trait, I would care to rest.     11   
  I think Literature—a new, superb, democratic literature—is to be the medicine and lever, and (with Art) the chief influence in modern civilization. I have myself not so much made a dead set at this theory, or attempted to present it directly, as admitted it to color and sometimes dominate what I had to say. In both Europe and America we have serried phalanxes who promulge and defend the political claims: I go for an equal force to uphold the other.

WALT WHITMAN.

  CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY,
    April, 1888.     12   


Note 1.  We who, in many departments, ways, make the building up of the masses, by building up grand individuals, our shibboleth: and in brief that is the marrow of this book.

V. November Boughs   
16. Abraham Lincoln   
     
GLAD am I to give—were anything better lacking—even the most brief and shorn testimony of Abraham Lincoln. Everything I heard about him authentically, and every time I saw him (and it was my fortune through 1862 to ’65 to see, or pass a word with, or watch him, personally, perhaps twenty or thirty times,) added to and anneal’d my respect and love at the moment. And as I dwell on what I myself heard or saw of the mighty Westerner, and blend it with the history and literature of my age, and of what I can get of all ages, and conclude it with his death, it seems like some tragic play, superior to all else I know—vaster and fierier and more convulsionary, for this America of ours, than Eschylus or Shakspere ever drew for Athens or for England. And then the Moral permeating, underlying all! the Lesson that none so remote—none so illiterate—no age, no class—but may directly or indirectly read!      1   
  Abraham Lincoln’s was really one of those characters, the best of which is the result of long trains of cause and effect—needing a certain spaciousness of time, and perhaps even remoteness, to properly enclose them—having unequal’d influence on the shaping of this Republic (and therefore the world) as to-day, and then far more important in the future. Thus the time has by no means yet come for a thorough measurement of him. Nevertheless, we who live in his era—who have seen him, and heard him, face to face, and are in the midst of, or just parting from, the strong and strange events which he and we have had to do with—can in some respects bear valuable, perhaps indispensable testimony concerning him.      2   
  I should first like to give a very fair and characteristic likeness of Lincoln, as I saw him and watch’d him one afternoon in Washington, for nearly half an hour, not long before his death. It was as he stood on the balcony of the National Hotel, Pennsylvania Avenue, making a short speech to the crowd in front, on the occasion either of a set of new colors presented to a famous Illinois regiment, or of the daring capture, by the Western men, of some flags from “the enemy,” (which latter phrase, by the by, was not used by him at all in his remarks.) How the picture happen’d to be made I do not know, but I bought it a few days afterward in Washington, and it was endors’d by every one to whom I show’d it. Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and photographers, (many to pass on, by copies, to future times,) I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserv’d to be called a perfectly good likeness; nor do I believe there is really such a one in existence. May I not say too, that, as there is no entirely competent and emblematic likeness of Abraham Lincoln in picture or statue, there is not—perhaps cannot be—any fully appropriate literary statement or summing-up of him yet in existence?      3   
  The best way to estimate the value of Lincoln is to think what the condition of America would be to-day, if he had never lived—never been President. His nomination and first election were mainly accidents, experiments. Severely view’d, one cannot think very much of American Political Parties, from the beginning, after the Revolutionary War, down to the present time. Doubtless, while they have had their uses—have been and are “the grass on which the cow feeds”—and indispensable economies of growth—it is undeniable that under flippant names they have merely identified temporary passions, or freaks, or sometimes prejudice, ignorance, or hatred. The only thing like a great and worthy idea vitalizing a party, and making it heroic, was the enthusiasm in ’64 for re-electing Abraham Lincoln, and the reason behind that enthusiasm.      4   
  How does this man compare with the acknowledg’d “Father of his country?” Washington was model’d on the best Saxon, and Franklin—of the age of the Stuarts (rooted in the Elizabethan period)—was essentially a noble Englishman, and just the kind needed for the occasions and the times of 1776–’83. Lincoln, underneath his practicality, was far less European, was quite thoroughly Western, original, essentially non-conventional, and had a certain sort of out-door or prairie stamp. One of the best of the late commentators on Shakspere, (Professor Dowden,) makes the height and aggregate of his quality as a poet to be, that he thoroughly blended the ideal with the practical or realistic. If this be so, I should say that what Shakspere did in poetic expression, Abraham Lincoln essentially did in his personal and official life. I should say the invisible foundations and vertebra of his character, more than any man’s in history, were mystical, abstract, moral and spiritual—while upon all of them was built, and out of all of them radiated, under the control of the average of circumstances, what the vulgar call horse-sense, and a life often bent by temporary but most urgent materialistic and political reasons.      5   
  He seems to have been a man of indomitable firmness (even obstinacy) on rare occasions, involving great points; but he was generally very easy, flexible, tolerant, almost slouchy, respecting minor matters. I note that even those reports and anecdotes intended to level him down, all leave the tinge of a favorable impression of him. As to his religious nature, it seems to me to have certainly been of the amplest, deepest-rooted, loftiest kind.      6   
  Already a new generation begins to tread the stage, since the persons and events of the Secession War. I have more than once fancied to myself the time when the present century has closed, and a new one open’d, and the men and deeds of that contest have become somewhat vague and mythical—fancied perhaps in some great Western city, or group collected together, or public festival, where the days of old, of 1863 and ’4 and ’5 are discuss’d—some ancient soldier sitting in the background as the talk goes on, and betraying himself by his emotion and moisteyes—like the journeying Ithacan at the banquet of King Alcinoüs, when the bard sings the contending warriors and their battles on the plains of Troy:
           “So from the sluices of Ulysses’ eyes   
Fast fell the tears, and sighs succeeded sighs.”   
   7   
  I have fancied, I say, some such venerable relic of this time of ours, preserv’d to the next or still the next generation of America. I have fancied, on such occasion, the young men gathering around; the awe, the eager questions: “What! have you seen Abraham Lincoln—and heard him speak—and touch’d his hand? Have you, with your own eyes, look’d on Grant, and Lee, and Sherman?”      8   
  Dear to Democracy, to the very last! And among the paradoxes generated by America, not the least curious was that spectacle of all the kings and queens and emperors of the earth, many from remote distances, sending tributes of condolence and sorrow in memory of one rais’d through the commonest average of life—a rail-splitter and flat-boatman!      9   
  Consider’d from contemporary points of view—who knows what the future may decide?—and from the points of view of current Democracy and The Union, (the only thing like passion or infatuation in the man was the passion for the Union of These States,) Abraham Lincoln seems to me the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth Century.

V. November Boughs   
17. New Orleans in 1848   
     
           WALT WHITMAN GOSSIPS OF HIS SOJOURN HERE YEARS AGO AS A NEWSPAPER WRITER. NOTES OF HIS TRIP UP THE MISSISSIPPI AND TO NEW YORK.   
     
[From the New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 25, 1887.]
   1   
  AMONG the letters brought this morning (Camden, New Jersey, Jan. 15, 1887,) by my faithful post-office carrier, J. G., is one as follows:
             “NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 11, ’87.—We have been informed that when you were younger and less famous than now, you were in New Orleans and perhaps have helped on the Picayune. If you have any remembrance of the Picayune’s young days, or of journalism in New Orleans of that era, and would put it in writing (verse or prose) for the Picayune’s fiftieth year edition, Jan. 25, we shall be pleased,” etc.   
   2   
  In response to which: I went down to New Orleans early in 1848 to work on a daily newspaper, but it was not the Picayune, though I saw quite a good deal of the editors of that paper, and knew its personnel and ways. But let me indulge my pen in some gossipy recollections of that time and place, with extracts from my journal up the Mississippi and across the great lakes to the Hudson.      3   
  Probably the influence most deeply pervading everything at that time through the United States, both in physical facts and in sentiment, was the Mexican War, then just ended. Following a brilliant campaign (in which our troops had march’d to the capital city, Mexico, and taken full possession,) we were returning after our victory. From the situation of the country, the city of New Orleans had been our channel and entrepot for everything, going and returning. It had the best news and war correspondents; it had the most to say, through its leading papers, the Picayune and Delta especially, and its voice was readiest listen’d to; from it “Chapparal” had gone out, and his army and battle letters were copied everywhere, not only in the United States, but in Europe. Then the social cast and results; no one who has never seen the society of a city under similar circumstances can understand what a strange vivacity and rattle were given throughout by such a situation. I remember the crowds of soldiers, the gay young officers, going or coming, the receipt of important news, the many discussions, the returning wounded, and so on.      4   
  I remember very well seeing Gen. Taylor with his staff and other officers at the St. Charles Theatre one evening (after talking with them during the day.) There was a short play on the stage, but the principal performance was of Dr. Colyer’s troupe of “Model Artists,” then in the full tide of their popularity. They gave many fine groups and solo shows. The house was crowded with uniforms and shoulder-straps. Gen. T. himself, if I remember right, was almost the only officer in civilian clothes; he was a jovial, old, rather stout, plain man, with a wrinkled and dark-yellow face, and, in ways and manners, show’d the least of conventional ceremony or etiquette I ever saw; he laugh’d unrestrainedly at everything comical. (He had a great personal resemblance to Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, of New York.) I remember Gen. Pillow and quite a cluster of other militaires also present.      5   
  One of my choice amusements during my stay in New Orleans was going down to the old French Market, especially of a Sunday morning. The show was a varied and curious one; among the rest, the Indian and negro hucksters with their wares. For there were always fine specimens of Indians, both men and women, young and old. I remember I nearly always on these occasions got a large cup of delicious coffee with a biscuit, for my breakfast, from the immense shining copper kettle of a great Creole mulatto woman (I believe she weigh’d 230 pounds.) I never have had such coffee since. About nice drinks, anyhow, my recollection of the “cobblers” (with strawberries and snow on top of the large tumblers,) and also the exquisite wines, and the perfect and mild French brandy, help the regretful reminiscence of my New Orleans experiences of those days. And what splendid and roomy and leisurely bar-rooms! particularly the grand ones of the St. Charles and St. Louis. Bargains, auctions, appointments, business conferences, &c., were generally held in the spaces or recesses of these bar-rooms.      6   
  I used to wander a midday hour or two now and then for amusement on the crowded and bustling levees, on the banks of the river. The diagonally wedg’d-in boats, the stevedores, the piles of cotton and other merchandise, the carts, mules, negroes, etc., afforded never-ending studies and sights to me. I made acquaintances among the captains, boatmen, or other characters, and often had long talks with them—sometimes finding a real rough diamond among my chance encounters. Sundays I sometimes went forenoons to the old Catholic Cathedral in the French quarter. I used to walk a good deal in this arrondissement; and I have deeply regretted since that I did not cultivate, while I had such a good opportunity, the chance of better knowledge of French and Spanish Creole New Orleans people. (I have an idea that there is much and of importance about the Latin race contributions to American nationality in the South and Southwest that will never be put with sympathetic understanding and tact on record.)      7   
  Let me say, for better detail, that through several months (1848) I work’d on a new daily paper, The Crescent; my situation rather a pleasant one. My young brother, Jeff, was with me; and he not only grew very homesick, but the climate of the place, and especially the water, seriously disagreed with him. From this and other reasons (although I was quite happily fix’d) I made no very long stay in the South. In due time we took passage northward for St. Louis in the “Pride of the West” steamer, which left her wharf just at dusk. My brother was unwell, and lay in his berth from the moment we left till the next morning; he seem’d to me to be in a fever, and I felt alarm’d. However, the next morning he was all right again, much to my relief.      8   
  Our voyage up the Mississippi was after the same sort as the voyage, some months before, down it. The shores of this great river are very monotonous and dull—one continuous and rank flat, with the exception of a meagre stretch of bluff, about the neighborhood of Natchez, Memphis, etc. Fortunately we had good weather, and not a great crowd of passengers, though the berths were all full. The “Pride” jogg’d along pretty well, and put us into St. Louis about noon Saturday. After looking around a little I secured passage on the steamer “Prairie Bird,” (to leave late in the afternoon,) bound up the Illinois River to La Salle, where we were to take canal for Chicago. During the day I rambled with my brother over a large portion of the town, search’d after a refectory, and, after much trouble, succeeded in getting some dinner.      9   
  Our “Prairie Bird” started out at dark, and a couple of hours after there was quite a rain and blow, which made them haul in along shore and tie fast. We made but thirty miles the whole night. The boat was excessively crowded with passengers, and had withal so much freight that we could hardly turn around. I slept on the floor, and the night was uncomfortable enough. The Illinois River is spotted with little villages with big names, Marseilles, Naples, etc.; its banks are low, and the vegetation excessively rank. Peoria, some distance up, is a pleasant town; I went over the place; the country back is all rich land, for sale cheap. Three or four miles from P., land of the first quality can be bought for $3 or $4 an acre. (I am transcribing from my notes written at the time.)     10   
  Arriving at La Salle Tuesday morning, we went on board a canal-boat, had a detention by sticking on a mud bar, and then jogg’d along at a slow trot, some seventy of us, on a moderate-sized boat. (If the weather hadn’t been rather cool, particularly at night, it would have been insufferable.) Illinois is the most splendid agricultural country I ever saw; the land is of surpassing richness; the place par excellence for farmers. We stopt at various points along the canal, some of them pretty villages.     11   
  It was 10 o’clock A. M. when we got in Chicago, too late for the steamer; so we went to an excellent public house, the “American Temperance,” and I spent the time that day and till next morning, looking around Chicago.     12   
  At 9 the next forenoon we started on the “Griffith” (on board of which I am now inditing these memoranda,) up the blue waters of Lake Michigan. I was delighted with the appearance of the towns along Wisconsin. At Milwaukee I went on shore, and walk’d around the place. They say the country back is beautiful and rich. (It seems to me that if we should ever remove from Long Island, Wisconsin would be the proper place to come to.) The towns have a remarkable appearance of good living, without any penury or want. The country is so good naturally, and labor is in such demand.     13   
  About 5 o’clock one afternoon I heard the cry of “a woman overboard.” It proved to be a crazy lady, who had become so from the loss of her son a couple of weeks before. The small boat off, and succeeded in picking her up, though she had been in the water 15 minutes. She was dead. Her husband was on board. They went off at the next stopping place. While she lay in the water she probably recover’d her reason, as she toss’d up her arms and lifted her face toward the boat.     14   
  Sunday Morning, June 11.—We pass’d down Lake Huron yesterday and last night, and between 4 and 5 o’clock this morning we ran on the “flats,” and have been vainly trying, with the aid of a steam tug and a lumbering lighter, to get clear again. The day is beautiful and the water clear and calm. Night before last we stopt at Mackinaw, (the island and town,) and I went up on the old fort, one of the oldest stations in the Northwest. We expect to get to Buffalo by to-morrow. The tug has fasten’d lines to us, but some have been snapt and the others have no effect. We seem to be firmly imbedded in the sand. (With the exception of a larger boat and better accommodations, it amounts to about the same thing as a becalmment I underwent on the Montauk voyage, East Long Island, last summer.) Later.—We are off again—expect to reach Detroit before dinner.     15   
  We did not stop at Detroit. We are now on Lake Erie, jogging along at a good round pace. A couple of hours since we were on the river above. Detroit seem’d to me a pretty place and thrifty. I especially liked the looks of the Canadian shore opposite and of the little village of Windsor, and, indeed, all along the banks of the river. From the shrubbery and the neat appearance of some of the cottages, I think it must have been settled by the French. While I now write we can see a little distance ahead the scene of the battle between Perry’s fleet and the British during the last war with England. The lake looks to me a fine sheet of water. We are having a beautiful day.     16   
  June 12.—We stopt last evening at Cleveland, and though it was dark, I took the opportunity of rambling about the place; went up in the heart of the city and back to what appear’d to be the court-house. The streets are unusually wide, and the buildings appear to be substantial and comfortable. We went down through Main Street and found, some distance along, several squares of ground very prettily planted with trees and looking attractive enough. Return’d to the boat by way of the lighthouse on the hill.     17   
  This morning we are making for Buffalo, being, I imagine, a little more than half across Lake Erie. The water is rougher than on Michigan or Huron. (On St. Clair it was smooth as glass.) The day is bright and dry, with a stiff head wind.     18   
  We arriv’d in Buffalo on Monday evening; spent that night and a portion of next day going round the city exploring. Then got in the cars and went to Niagara; went under the falls—saw the whirlpool and all the other sights.     19   
  Tuesday night started for Albany; travel’d all night. From the time daylight afforded us a view of the country all seem’d very rich and well cultivated. Every few miles were large towns or villages.     20   
  Wednesday late we arriv’d at Albany. Spent the evening in exploring. There was a political meeting (Hunker) at the capitol, but I pass’d it by. Next morning I started down the Hudson in the “Alida;” arriv’d safely in New York that evening.

V. November Boughs   
18. Small Memoranda   
     
           
Thousands lost—here one or two preserv’d.
ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE, Washington, Aug. 22, 1865.—As I write this, about noon, the suite of rooms here is fill’d with southerners, standing in squads, or streaming in and out, some talking with the Pardon Clerk, some waiting to see the Attorney General, others discussing in low tones among themselves. All are mainly anxious about their pardons. The famous 13th exception of the President’s Amnesty Proclamation of—, makes it necessary that every secessionist, whose property is worth $20,000 or over, shall get a special pardon, before he can transact any legal purchase, sale, &c. So hundreds and thousands of such property owners have either sent up here, for the last two months, or have been, or are now coming personally here, to get their pardons. They are from Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and every southern State. Some of their written petitions are very abject. Secession officers of the rank of Brigadier General, or higher, also need these special pardons. They also come here. I see streams of the $20,000 men, (and some women,) every day. I talk now and then with them, and learn much that is interesting and significant. All the southern women that come (some splendid specimens, mothers, &c.) are dress’d in deep black.      1   
  Immense numbers (several thousands) of these pardons have been pass’d upon favorably; the Pardon Warrants (like great deeds) have been issued from the State Department, on the requisition of this office. But for some reason or other, they nearly all yet lie awaiting the President’s signature. He seems to be in no hurry about it, but lets them wait.      2   
  The crowds that come here make a curious study for me. I get along, very sociably, with any of them—as I let them do all the talking; only now and then I have a long confab, or ask a suggestive question or two.      3   
  If the thing continues as at present, the property and wealth of the Southern States is going to legally rest, for the future, on these pardons. Every single one is made out with the condition that the grantee shall respect the abolition of slavery, and never make an attempt to restore it.      4   
     
  Washington, Sept. 8, 9, &c., 1865.—The arrivals, swarms, &c., of the $20,000 men seeking pardons, still continue with increas’d numbers and pertinacity. I yesterday (I am a clerk in the U. S. Attorney General’s office here) made out a long list from Alabama, nearly 200, recommended for pardon by the Provisional Governor. This list, in the shape of a requisition from the Attorney General, goes to the State Department. There the Pardon Warrants are made out, brought back here, and then sent to the President, where they await his signature. He is signing them very freely of late.      5   
  The President, indeed, as at present appears, has fix’d his mind on a very generous and forgiving course toward the return’d secessionists. He will not countenance at all the demand of the extreme Philo-African element of the North, to make the right of negro voting at elections a condition and sine qua non of the reconstruction of the United States south, and of their resumption of co-equality in the Union.      6   
     
  A glint inside of Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet appointments. One item of many.—While it was hanging in suspense who should be appointed Secretary of the Interior, (to take the place of Caleb Smith,) the choice was very close between Mr. Harlan and Col. Jesse K. Dubois, of Illinois. The latter had many friends. He was competent, he was honest, and he was a man. Mr. Harlan, in the race, finally gain’d the Methodist interest, and got himself to be consider’d as identified with it; and his appointment was apparently ask’d for by that powerful body. Bishop Simpson, of Philadelphia, came on and spoke for the selection. The President was much perplex’d. The reasons for appointing Col. Dubois were very strong, almost insuperable—yet the argument for Mr. Harlan, under the adroit position he had plac’d himself, was heavy. Those who press’d him adduc’d the magnitude of the Methodists as a body, their loyalty, more general and genuine than any other sect—that they represented the West, and had a right to be heard—that all or nearly all the other great denominations had their representatives in the heads of the government—that they as a body and the great sectarian power of the West, formally ask’d Mr. Harlan’s appointment—that he was of them, having been a Methodist minister—that it would not do to offend them, but was highly necessary to propitiate them.      7   
  Mr. Lincoln thought deeply over the whole matter. He was in more than usual tribulation on the subject. Let it be enough to-say that though Mr. Harlan finally receiv’d the Secretaryship, Col. Dubois came as near being appointed as a man could, and not be. The decision was finally made one night about 10 o’clock. Bishop Simpson and other clergymen and leading persons in Mr. Harlan’s behalf, had been talking long and vehemently with the President. A member of Congress who was pressing Col. Dubois’s claims, was in waiting. The President had told the Bishop that he would make a decision that evening, and that he thought it unnecessary to be press’d any more on the subject. That night he call’d in the M. C. above alluded to, and said to him: “Tell Uncle Jesse that I want to give him this appointment, and yet I cannot. I will do almost anything else in the world for him I am able. I have thought the matter all over, and under the circumstances think the Methodists too good and too great a body to be slighted. They have stood by the government, and help’d us their very best. I have had no better friends; and as the case stands, I have decided to appoint Mr. Harlan.”      8   
     
 
NOTE TO A FRIEND.


             [Written on the fly-leaf of a copy of “Specimen Days,” sent to Peter Doyle, at Washington, June, 1883.]   

  Pete, do you remember—(of course you do—I do well)—those great long jovial walks we had at times for years, (1866–’72) out of Washington City—often moonlight nights—’way to “Good Hope”;—or, Sundays, up and down the Potomac shores, one side or the other, sometimes ten miles at a stretch? Or when you work’d on the horse-cars, and I waited for you, coming home late together—or resting and chatting at the Market, corner 7th Street and the Avenue, and eating those nice musk or watermelons? Or during my tedious sickness and first paralysis (’73) how you used to come to my solitary garret-room and make up my bed, and enliven me, and chat for an hour or so—or perhaps go out and get the medicines Dr. Drinkard had order’d for me—before you went on duty? … Give my love to dear Mrs. and Mr. Nash, and tell them I have not forgotten them, and never will.

W. W.
   9   
     
 
WRITTEN IMPROMPTU IN AN ALBUM.


GERMANTOWN, PHILA., Dec. 26, ’83.

  In memory of these merry Christmas days and nights—to my friends Mr. and Mrs. Williams, Churchie, May, Gurney, and little Aubrey.… A heavy snow-storm blocking up everything, and keeping us in. But souls, hearts, thoughts, unloos’d. And so—one and all, little and big—hav’n’t we had a good time?

W. W.
  10   
     
 
THE PLACE GRATITUDE FILLS IN A FINE CHARACTER.


           
From the Philadelphia Press, Nov. 27, 1884, (Thanksgiving number.)

  Scene.—A large family supper party, a night or two ago, with voices and laughter of the young, mellow faces of the old, and a by-and-by pause in the general jovialty. “Now, Mr. Whitman,” spoke up one of the girls, “what have you to say about Thanksgiving? Won’t you give us a sermon in advance, to sober us down?” The sage nodded smilingly, look’d a moment at the blaze of the great wood fire, ran his forefinger right and left through the heavy white moustache that might have otherwise impeded his voice, and began: “Thanksgiving goes probably far deeper than you folks suppose. I am not sure but it is the source of the highest poetry—as in parts of the Bible. Ruskin, indeed, makes the central source of all great art to be praise (gratitude) to the Almighty for life, and the universe with its objects and play of action.     11   
  “We Americans devote an official day to it every year; yet I sometimes fear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient, independent Republic. Gratitude, anyhow, has never been made half enough of by the moralists; it is indispensable to a complete character, man’s or woman’s—the disposition to be appreciative, thankful. That is the main matter, the element, inclination—what geologists call the trend. Of my own life and writings I estimate the giving thanks part, with what it infers, as essentially the best item. I should say the quality of gratitude rounds the whole emotional nature; I should say love and faith would quite lack vitality without it. There are people—shall I call them even religious people, as things go?—who have no such trend to their disposition.”

V. November Boughs   
19. Last of the War Cases   
     
           
Memorandized at the time, Washington, 1865–’66.

  [OF reminiscences of the Secession War, after the rest is said, I have thought it remains to give a few special words—in some respects at the time the typical words of all, and most definite—of the samples of the kill’d and wounded in action, and of soldiers who linger’d afterward, from these wounds, or were laid up by obstinate disease or prostration. The general statistics have been printed already, but can bear to be briefly stated again. There were over 3,000,000 men (for all periods of enlistment, large and small) furnish’d to the Union army during the war, New York State furnishing over 500,000, which was the greatest number of any one State. The losses by disease, wounds, kill’d in action, accidents, &c., were altogether about 600,000, or approximating to that number. Over 4,000,000 cases were treated in the main and adjudicatory army hospitals. The number sounds strange, but it is true. More than two-thirds of the deaths were from prostration or disease. To-day there lie buried over 300,000 soldiers in the various National army Cemeteries, more than half of them (and that is really the most significant and eloquent bequest of the War) mark’d “unknown.” In full mortuary statistics of the war, the greatest deficiency arises from our not having the rolls, even as far as they were kept, of most of the Southern military prisons—a gap which probably both adds to, and helps conceal, the indescribable horrors of those places; it is, however, (restricting gone vivid point only) certain that over 30,000 Union soldiers died, largely of actual starvation, in them. And now, leaving all figures and their “sum totals,” I feel sure a few genuine memoranda of such things—some cases jotted down ’64, ’65, and ’66—made at the time and on the spot, with all the associations of those scenes and places brought back, will not only go directest to the right spot, but give a clearer and more actual sight of that period, than anything else. Before I give the last cases I begin with verbatim extracts from letters home to my mother in Brooklyn, the second year of the war.—W. W.]      1   
     
  Washington, Oct. 13, 1863.—There has been a new lot of wounded and sick arriving for the last three days. The first and second days, long strings of ambulances with the sick. Yesterday the worst, many with bad and bloody wounds, inevitably long neglected. I thought I was cooler and more used to it, but the sight of some cases brought tears into my eyes. I had the luck yesterday, however, to do lots of good. Had provided many nourishing articles for the men for another quarter, but, fortunately, had my stores where I could use them at once for these new-comers, as they arrived, faint, hungry, fagg’d out from their journey, with soil’d clothes, and all bloody. I distributed these articles, gave partly to the nurses I knew, or to those in charge. As many as possible I fed myself. Then I found a lot of oyster soup handy, and bought it all at once.      2   
  It is the pitiful sight, this, when the men are first brought in, from some camp hospital broke up, or a part of the army moving. These who arrived yesterday are cavalry men. Our troops had fought like devils, but got the worst of it. They were Kilpatrick’s cavalry; were in the rear, part of Meade’s retreat, and the reb cavalry, knowing the ground the taking a favorable opportunity, dash’d in between, cut them off, and shell’d them terribly. But Kilpatrick turn’d and brought them out mostly. It was last Sunday. (One of the most terrible sights and tasks is of such receptions.)      3   
  Oct. 27, 1863.—If any of the soldiers I know (or their parents or folks) should call upon you—as they are often anxious to have my address in Brooklyn—you just use them as you know how, and if you happen to have pot-luck, and feel to ask them to take a bite, don’t be afraid to do so. I have a friend, Thomas Neat, 2d N. Y. Cavalry, wounded in leg, now home in Jamaica, on furlough; he will probably call. Then possibly a Mr. Haskell, or some of his folks, from western New York: he had a son died here, and I was with the boy a good deal. The old man and his wife have written me and ask’d me my Brooklyn address; he said he had children in New York, and was occasionally down there. (When I come home I will show you some of the letters I get from mothers, sisters, fathers, &c. They will make you cry.)      4   
  How the time passes away! To think it is over a year since I left home suddenly—and have mostly been down in front since. The year has vanish’d swiftly, and oh, what scenes I have witness’d during that time! And the war is not settled yet; and one does not see anything certain, or even promising, of a settlement. But I do not lose the solid feeling, in myself, that the Union triumph is assured, whether it be sooner or whether it be later, or whatever roundabout way we may be led there; and I find I don’t change that conviction from any reverses we meet, nor delays, nor blunders. One realizes here in Washington the great labors, even the negative ones, of Lincoln; that it is a big thing to have just kept the United States from being thrown down and having its throat cut. I have not waver’d or had any doubt of the issue, since Gettysburg.      5   
  8th September, ’63.—Here, now, is a specimen army hospital case: Lorenzo Strong, Co. A, 9th United States Cavalry, shot by a shell last Monday night, 14th. Seem’d to be doing pretty well till Wednesday noon, 16th, when he took a turn for the worse, and a strangely rapid and fatal termination ensued. Though I had much to do, I staid and saw all. It was a death-picture characteristic of these soldiers’ hospitals—the perfect specimen of physique, one of the most magnificent I ever saw—the convulsive spasms and working of muscles, mouth, and throat. There are two good women nurses, one on each side. The doctor comes in and gives him a little chloroform. One of the nurses constantly fans him, for it is fearfully hot. He asks to be rais’d up, and they put him in a half-sitting posture. He call’d for “Mark” repeatedly, half-deliriously, all day. Life ebbs, runs now with the speed of a mill race; his splendid neck, as it lays all open, works still, slightly; his eyes turn back. A religious person coming in offers a prayer, in subdued tones, bent at the foot of the bed; and in the space of the aisle, a crowd, including two or three doctors, several students, and many soldiers, has silently gather’d. It is very still and warm, as the struggle goes on, and dwindles, a little more, and a little more—and then welcome oblivion, painlessness, death. A pause, the crowd drops away, a white bandage is bound around and under the jaw, the propping pillows are removed, the limpsy head falls down, the arms are softly placed by the side, all composed, all still,—and the broad white sheet is thrown over everything.      6   
  April 10, 1864.—Unusual agitation all around concentrated here. Exciting times in Congress. The Copperheads are getting furious, and want to recognize the Southern Confederacy. “This is a pretty time to talk of recognizing such—,” said a Pennsylvania officer in hospital to me to-day, “after what has transpired the last three years.” After first Fredericksburg I felt discouraged myself, and doubted whether our rulers could carry on the war. But that had pass’d away. The war must be carried on. I would willingly go in the ranks myself if I thought it would profit more than as at present, and I don’t know sometimes but I shall, as it is. Then there is certainly a strange, deep, fervid feeling form’d or arous’d in the land, hard to describe or name; it is not a majority feeling, but it will make itself felt. M., you don’t know what a nature a fellow gets, not only after being a soldier a while, but after living in the sights and influences of the camps, the wounded, &c.—a nature he never experienced before. The stars and stripes, the tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce such an effect on a fellow as never before. I have seen them bring tears on some men’s cheeks, and others turn pale with emotion. I have a little flag (it belong’d to one of our cavalry regiments,) presented to me by one of the wounded; it was taken by the secesh in a fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody skirmish following. It cost three men’s lives to get back that four-by-three flag—to tear it from the breast of a dead rebel—for the name of getting their little “rag” back again. The man that secured it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep it. I was with him a good deal; he wanted to give me some keepsake, he said,—he didn’t expect to live,—so he gave me that flag. The best of it all is, dear M., there isn’t a regiment, cavalry or infantry, that wouldn’t do the like, on the like occasion.      7   
  April 12.—I will finish my letter this morning; it is a beautiful day. I was up in Congress very late last night. The House had a very excited night session about expelling the men that proposed recognizing the Southern Confederacy. You ought to hear (as I do) the soldiers talk; they are excited to madness. We shall probably have hot times here, not in the military fields alone. The body of the army is true and firm as the North Star.      8   
  May 6, ’64.—M., the poor soldier with diarrhœa, is still living, but, oh, what a looking object! Death would be a relief to him—he cannot last many hours. Cunningham, the Ohio soldier, with leg amputated at thigh, has pick’d up beyond expectation; now looks indeed like getting well. (He died a few weeks afterward.) The hospitals are very full. I am very well indeed. Hot here to-day.      9   
  May 23, ’64.—Sometimes I think that should it come when it must, to fall in battle, one’s anguish over a son or brother kill’d might be temper’d with much to take the edge off. Lingering and extreme suffering from wounds or sickness seem to me far worse than death in battle. I can honestly say the latter has no terrors for me, as far as I myself am concern’d. Then I should say, too, about death in war, that our feelings and imaginations make a thousand times too much of the whole matter. Of the many I have seen die, or known of, the past year, I have not seen or known one who met death with terror. In most cases I should say it was a welcome relief and release.     10   
  Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young soldier of seventeen, Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, Massachusetts, 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, Battery M. He was brought to one of the hospitals mortally wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself, as I sat looking at him, it ought to be a relief to his folks if they could see how little he really suffer’d. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed. As it was extremely hot, and I sat a good while silently fanning him, and wiping the sweat, at length he open’d his eyes quite wide and clear, and look’d inquiringly around. I said, “What is it, my boy? Do you want anything?” He answer’d quietly, with a good-natured smile, “Oh, nothing; I was only looking around to see who was with me.” His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he lay in an evident peacefulness that sanity and health might have envied. I had to leave for other engagements. He died, I heard afterward, without any special agitation, in the course of the night.     11   
  Washington, May 26, ’63.—M., I think something of commencing a series of lectures, readings, talks, &c., through the cities of the North, to supply myself with funds for hospital ministrations. I do not like to be so beholden to others; I need a pretty free supply of money, and the work grows upon me, and fascinates me. It is the most magnetic as well as terrible sight: the lots of poor wounded and helpless men depending so much, in one ward or another, upon my soothing or talking to them, or rousing them up a little, or perhaps petting, or feeding them their dinner or supper (here is a patient, for instance, wounded in both arms,) or giving some trifle for a novelty or change—anything, however trivial, to break the monotony of those hospital hours.     12   
  It is curious: when I am present at the most appalling scenes, deaths, operations, sickening wounds (perhaps full of maggots,) I keep cool and do not give out or budge, although my sympathies are very much excited; but often, hours afterward, perhaps when I am home, or out walking alone, I feel sick, and actually tremble, when I recall the case again before me.     13   
  Sunday afternoon, opening of 1865.—Pass’d this afternoon among a collection of unusually bad cases, wounded and sick Secession soldiers, left upon our hands. I spent the previous Sunday afternoon there also. At that time two were dying. Two others have died during the week. Several of them are partly deranged. I went around among them elaborately. Poor boys, they all needed to be cheer’d up. As I sat down by any particular one, the eyes of all the rest in the neighboring cots would fix upon me, and remain steadily riveted as long as I sat within their sight. Nobody seem’d to wish anything special to eat or drink. The main thing ask’d for was postage stamps, and paper for writing. I distributed all the stamps I had. Tobacco was wanted by some.     14   
  One call’d me over to him and ask’d me in a low tone what denomination I belong’d to. He said he was a Catholic—wish’d to find some one of the same faith—wanted some good reading. I gave him something to read, and sat down by him a few minutes. Moved around with a word for each. They were hardly any of them personally attractive cases, and no visitors come here. Of course they were all destitute of money. I gave small sums to two or three, apparently the most needy. The men are from quite all the Southern States, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, &c.     15   
  Wrote several letters. One for a young fellow named Thomas J. Byrd, with a bad wound and diarrhœa. Was from Russell county, Alabama; been out four years. Wrote to his mother; had neither heard from her nor written to her in nine months. Was taken prisoner last Christmas, in Tennessee; sent to Nashville, then to Camp Chase, Ohio, and kept there a long time; all the while not money enough to get paper and postage stamps. Was paroled, but on his way home the wound took gangrene; had diarrhœa also; had evidently been very low. Demeanor cool, and patient. A dark-skinn’d, quaint young fellow, with strong Southern idiom; no education.     16   
  Another letter for John W. Morgan, aged 18, from Shellot, Brunswick county, North Carolina; been out nine months; gunshot wound in right leg, above knee; also diarrhœa; wound getting along well; quite a gentle, affectionate boy; wish’d me to put in the letter for his mother to kiss his little brother and sister for him. [I put strong envelopes on these, and two or three other letters, directed them plainly and fully, and dropt them in the Washington post-office the next morning myself.]     17   
  The large ward I am in is used for Secession soldiers exclusively. One man, about forty years of age, emaciated with diarrhœa, I was attracted to, as he lay with his eyes turn’d up, looking like death. His weakness was so extreme that it took a minute or so, every time, for him to talk with anything like consecutive meaning; yet he was evidently a man of good intelligence and education. As I said anything, he would lie a moment perfectly still, then, with closed eyes, answer in a low, very slow voice, quite correct and sensible, but in a way and tone that wrung my heart. He had a mother, wife, and child living (or probably living) in his home in Mississippi. It was long, long since he had seen them. Had he caus’d a letter to be sent them since he got here in Washington? No answer. I repeated the question, very slowly and soothingly. He could not tell whether he had or not—things of late seem’d to him like a dream. After waiting a moment, I said: “Well, I am going to walk down the ward a moment, and when I come back you can tell me. If you have not written, I will sit down and write.” A few minutes after I return’d; he said he remember’d now that some one had written for him two or three days before. The presence of this man impress’d me profoundly. The flesh was all sunken on face and arms; the eyes low in their sockets and glassy, and with purple rings around them. Two or three great tears silently flow’d out from the eyes, and roll’d down his temples (he was doubtless unused to be spoken to as I was speaking to him.) Sickness, imprisonment, exhaustion, &c., had conquer’d the body, yet the mind held mastery still, and call’d even wandering remembrance back.     18   
  There are some fifty Southern soldiers here; all sad, sad cases. There is a good deal of scurvy. I distributed some paper, envelopes, and postage stamps, and wrote addresses full and plain on many of the envelopes.     19   
  I return’d again Tuesday, August 1, and moved around in the same manner a couple of hours.     20   
  September 22, ’65.—Afternoon and evening at Douglas Hospital to see a friend belonging to 2d New York Artillery (Hiram W. Frazee, Serg’t,) down with an obstinate compound fracture of left leg receiv’d in one of the last battles near Petersburg. After sitting a while with him, went through several neighboring wards. In one of them found an old acquaintance transferr’d here lately, a rebel prisoner, in a dying condition. Poor fellow, the look was already on his face. He gazed long at me. I ask’d him if he knew me. After a moment he utter’d something, but inarticulately. I have seen him off and on for the last five months. He has suffer’d very much; a bad wound in left leg, severely fractured, several operations, cuttings, extractions of bone, splinters, &c. I remember he seem’d to me, as I used to talk with him, a fair specimen of the main strata of the Southerners, those without property or education, but still with the stamp which comes from freedom and equality. I liked him; Jonathan Wallace, of Hurd Co., Georgia, age 30 (wife, Susan F. Wallace, Houston, Hurd Co., Georgia.) [If any good soul of that county should see this, I hope he will send her this word.] Had a family; had not heard from them since taken prisoner, now six months. I had written for him, and done trifles for him, before he came here. He made no outward show, was mild in his talk and behavior, but I knew he worried much inwardly. But now all would be over very soon. I half sat upon the little stand near the head of the bed. Wallace was somewhat restless. I placed my hand lightly on his forehead and face, just sliding it over the surface. In a moment or so he fell into a calm, regular-breathing lethargy or sleep, and remain’d so while I sat there. It was dark, and the lights were lit. I hardly know why (death seem’d hovering near,) but I stay’d nearly an hour. A Sister of Charity, dress’d in black, with a broad white linen bandage around her head and under her chin, and a black crape over all and flowing down from her head in long wide pieces, came to him, and moved around the bed. She bow’d low and solemn to me. For some time she moved around there noiseless as a ghost, doing little things for the dying man.     21   
  December, ’65.—The only remaining hospital is now “Harewood,” out in the woods, northwest of the city. I have been visiting there regularly every Sunday, during these two months.     22   
  January 24, ’66.—Went out to Harewood early to-day, and remain’d all day.     23   
  Sunday, February 4, 1866.—Harewood Hospital again. Walk’d out this afternoon (bright, dry, ground frozen hard) through the woods. Ward 6 is fill’d with blacks, some with wounds, some ill, two or three with limbs frozen. The boys made quite a picture sitting round the stove. Hardly any can read or write. I write for three or four, direct envelopes, give some tobacco, &c.     24   
  Joseph Winder, a likely boy, aged twenty-three, belongs to 10th Color’d Infantry (now in Texas;) is from Eastville, Virginia. Was a slave; belong’d to Lafayette Homeston. The master was quite willing he should leave. Join’d the army two years ago; has been in one or two battles. Was sent to hospital with rheumatism. Has since been employ’d as cook. His parents at Eastville; he gets letters from them, and has letters written to them by a friend. Many black boys left that part of Virginia and join’d the army; the 10th, in fact, was made up of Virginia blacks from thereabouts. As soon as discharged is going back to Eastville to his parents and home, and intends to stay there.     25   
  Thomas King, formerly 2d District Color’d Regiment, discharged soldier, Company E, lay in a dying condition; his disease was consumption. A Catholic priest was administering extreme unction to him. (I have seen this kind of sight several times in the hospitals; it is very impressive.)     26   
  Harewood, April 29, 1866. Sunday afternoon.—Poor Joseph Swiers, Company H, 155th Pennsylvania, a mere lad (only eighteen years of age;) his folks living in Reedsburgh, Pennsylvania. I have known him now for nearly a year, transferr’d from hospital to hospital. He was badly wounded in the thigh at Hatcher’s Run, February 6, ’65.     27   
  James E. Ragan, Atlanta, Georgia; 2d United States Infantry. Union folks. Brother impress’d, deserted, died; now no folks, left alone in the world, is in a singularly nervous state; came in hospital with intermittent fever.     28   
  Walk slowly around the ward, observing, and to see if I can do anything. Two or three are lying very low with consumption, cannot recover; some with old wounds; one with both feet frozen off, so that on one only the heel remains. The supper is being given out: the liquid call’d tea, a thick slice of bread, and some stew’d apples.     29   
  That was about the last I saw of the regular army hospitals.     30

   
V. November Boughs   
20. Elias Hicks: Portrait in Old Age   
     
HERE is a portrait of E. H. from life, by Henry Inman, in New York, about 1827 or ’28. The painting was finely copper-plated in 1830, and the present is a fac simile. Looks as I saw him in the following narrative.      1   
  The time was signalized by the separation of the Society of Friends, so greatly talked of—and continuing yet—but so little really explain’d. (All I give of this separation is in a Note following.)

BORN … … MARCH 19, 1748.
DIED … … FEBRUARY 20, 1880.

V. November Boughs   
21. Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks   
     
Prefatory Note.—AS myself a little boy hearing so much of E. H., at that time, long ago, in Suffolk and Queens and Kings Counties—and more than once personally seeing the old man—and my dear, dear father and mother faithful listeners to him at the meetings—I remember how I dream’d to write perhaps a piece about E. H. and his look and discourses, however long afterward—for my parents’ sake—and the dear Friends too! And the following is what has at last but all come out of it—the feeling and intention never forgotten yet!      1   
  There is a sort of nature of persons I have compared to little rills of water, fresh, from perennial springs—(and the comparison is indeed an appropriate one)—persons not so very plenty, yet some few certainly of them running over the surface and area of humanity, all times, all lands. It is a specimen of this class I would now present. I would sum up in E. H., and make his case stand for the class, the sort, in all ages, all lands, sparse, not numerous, yet enough to irrigate the soil—enough to prove the inherent moral stock and irrepressible devotional aspirations growing indigenously of themselves, always advancing, and never utterly gone under or lost.      2   
  Always E. H. gives the service of pointing to the fountain of all naked theology, all religion, all worship, all the truth to which you are possibly eligible—namely in yourself and your inherent relations. Others talk of Bibles, saints, churches, exhortations, vicarious atonements—the canons outside of yourself and apart from man—E. H. to the religion inside of man’s very own nature. This he incessantly labors to kindle, nourish, educate, bring forward and strengthen. He is the most democratic of the religionists—the prophets.      3   
  I have no doubt that both the curious fate and death of his four sons, and the facts (and dwelling on them) of George Fox’s strange early life, and permanent “conversion,” had much to do with the peculiar and sombre ministry and style of E. H. from the first, and confirmed him all through. One must not be dominated by the man’s almost absurd saturation in cut and dried biblical phraseology, and in ways, talk, and standard, regardful mainly of the one need he dwelt on, above all the rest. This main need he drove home to the soul; the canting and sermonizing soon exhale away to any auditor that realizes what E. H. is for and after. The present paper, (a broken memorandum of his formation, his earlier life,) is the cross-notch that rude wanderers make in the woods, to remind them afterward of some matter of first-rate importance and full investigation. (Remember too, that E. H. was a thorough believer in the Hebrew Scriptures, in his way.)      4   
  The following are really but disjointed fragments recall’d to serve and eke out here the lank printed pages of what I commenc’d unwittingly two months ago. Now, as I am well in for it, comes an old attack, the sixth or seventh recurrence, of my war-paralysis, dulling me from putting the notes in shape, and threatening any further action, head or body.      5   
 
—W. W., Camden, N. J., July, 1888.
   6   
  TO BEGIN with, my theme is comparatively featureless. The great historian has pass’d by the life of Elias Hicks quite without glance or touch. Yet a man might commence and overhaul it as furnishing one of the amplest historic and biography’s back-grounds. While the foremost actors and events from 1750 to 1830 both in Europe and America were crowding each other on the world’s stage—While so many kings, queens, soldiers, philosophs, musicians, voyagers, littérateurs, enter one side, cross the boards, and disappear—amid loudest reverberating names—Frederick the Great, Swedenborg, Junius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Linneus, Herschel—curiously contemporary with the long life of Goethe—through the occupancy of the British throne by George the Third—amid stupendous visible political and social revolutions, and far more stupendous invisible moral ones—while the many quarto volumes of the Encyclopædia Française are being published at fits and intervals, by Diderot, in Paris—while Haydn and Beethoven and Mozart and Weber are working out their harmonic compositions—while Mrs. Siddons and Talma and Kean are acting—while Mungo Park explores Africa, and Capt. Cook circumnavigates the globe—through all the fortunes of the American Revolution, the beginning, continuation and end, the battle of Brooklyn, the surrender at Saratoga, the final peace of ’83—through the lurid tempest of the French Revolution, the execution of the king and queen, and the Reign of Terror—through the whole of the meteor-career of Napoleon—through all Washington’s, Adams’s, Jefferson’s, Madison’s, and Monroe’s Presidentiads—amid so many flashing lists of names, (indeed there seems hardly, in any department, any end to them, Old World or New,) Franklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mirabeau, Fox, Nelson, Paul Jones, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, Fulton, Walter Scott, Byron, Mesmer, Champollion—Amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and coruscate and fade like aurora boreales—Louis the 16th threaten’d by the mob, the trial of Warren Hastings, the death-bed of Robert Burns, Wellington at Waterloo, Decatur capturing the Macedonian, or the sea-fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon—During all these whiles, I say, and though on a far different grade, running parallel and contemporary with all—a curious quite yet busy life centred in a little country village on Long Island, and within sound on still nights of the mystic surf-beat of the sea. About this life, this Personality—neither soldier, nor scientist, nor littérateur—I propose to occupy a few minutes in fragmentary talk, to give some few melanges, disconnected impressions, statistics, resultant groups, pictures, thoughts of him, or radiating from him.      7   
  Elias Hicks was born March 19, 1748, in Hempstead township, Queens county, Long Island, New York State, near a village bearing the old Scripture name of Jericho, (a mile or so north and east of the present Hicksville, on the L. I. Railroad.) His father and mother were Friends, of that class working with their own hands, and mark’d by neither riches nor actual poverty. Elias as a child and youth had small education from letters, but largely learn’d from Nature’s schooling. He grew up even in his ladhood a thorough gunner and fisherman. The farm of his parents lay on the south or sea-shore side of Long Island, (they had early removed from Jericho,) one of the best regions in the world for wild fowl and for fishing. Elias became a good horseman, too, and knew the animal well, riding races; also a singer, fond of “vain songs,” as he afterwards calls them; a dancer, too, at the country balls. When a boy of 13 he had gone to live with an elder brother; and when about 17 he changed again and went as apprentice to the carpenter’s trade. The time of all this was before the Revolutionary War, and the locality 30 to 40 miles from New York city. My great-grandfather, Whitman, was often with Elias at these periods, and at merry-makings and sleighrides in winter over “the plains.”      8   
  How well I remember the region—the flat plains of the middle of Long Island, as then, with their prairie-like vistas and grassy patches in every direction, and the ‘kill-calf’ and herds of cattle and sheep. Then the South Bay and shores and the salt meadows, and the sedgy smell, and numberless little bayous and hummock-islands in the waters, the habitat of every sort of fish and aquatic fowl of North America. And the bay men—a strong, wild, peculiar race—now extinct, or rather entirely changed. And the beach outside the sandy bars, sometimes many miles at a stretch, with their old history of wrecks and storms—the weird, white-gray beach—not without its tales of pathos—tales, too, of grandest heroes and heroisms.      9   
  In such scenes and elements and influences—in the midst of Nature and along the shores of the sea—Elias Hicks was fashion’d through boyhood and early manhood, to maturity. But a moral and mental and emotional change was imminent. Along at this time he says:
             My apprenticeship being now expir’d, I gradually withdrew from the company of my former associates, became more acquainted with Friends, and was more frequent in my attendance of meetings; and although this was in some degree profitable to me, yet I made but slow progress in my religious improvement. The occupation of part of my time in fishing and fowling had frequently tended to preserve me from falling into hurtful associations; but through the rising intimations and reproofs of divine grace in my heart, I now began to feel that the manner in which I sometimes amus’d myself with my gun was not without sin; for although I mostly preferr’d going alone, and while waiting in stillness for the coming of the fowl, my mind was at times so taken up in divine meditations, that the opportunities were seasons of instruction and comfort to me; yet, on other occasions, when accompanied by some of my acquaintances, and when no fowls appear’d which would be useful to us after being obtain’d, we sometimes, from wantonness or for mere diversion, would destroy the small birds which could be of no service to us. This cruel procedure affects my heart while penning these lines.   
  10   
  In his 23d year Elias was married, by the Friends’ ceremony, to Jemima Seaman. His wife was an only child; the parents were well off for common people, and at their request the son-in-law mov’d home with them and carried on the farm—which at their decease became his own, and he liv’d there all his remaining life. Of this matrimonial part of his career, (it continued, and with unusual happiness, for 58 years,) he says, giving the account of his marriage:
             On this important occasion, we felt the clear and consoling evidence of divine truth, and it remain’d with us as a seal upon our spirits, strengthening us mutually to bear, with becoming fortitude, the vicissitudes and trials which fell to our lot, and of which we had a large share in passing through this probationary state. My wife, although not of a very strong constitution, liv’d to be the mother of eleven children, four sons and seven daughters. Our second daughter, a very lovely, promising child, died when young, with the small-pox, and the youngest was not living at its birth. The rest all arriv’d to years of discretion, and afforded us considerable comfort, as they prov’d to be in a good degree dutiful children. All our sons, however, were of weak constitutions, and were not able to take care of themselves, being so enfeebl’d as not to be able to walk after the ninth or tenth year of their age. The two eldest died in the fifteenth year of their age, the third in his seventeenth year, and the youngest was nearly nineteen when he died. But, although thus helpless, the innocency of their lives, and the resign’d cheerfulness of their dispositions to their allotments, made the labor and toil of taking care of them agreeable and pleasant; and I trust we were preserv’d from murmuring or repining, believing the dispensation to be in wisdom, and according to the will and gracious disposing of an all-wise providence, for purposes best known to himself. And when I have observ’d the great anxiety and affliction which many parents have with undutiful children who are favor’d with health, especially their sons, I could perceive very few whose troubles and exercises, on that account, did not far exceed ours. The weakness and bodily infirmity of our sons tended to keep them much out of the way of the troubles and temptations of the world; and we believ’d that in their death they were happy, and admitted into the realms of peace and joy: a reflection, the most comfortable and joyous that parents can have in regard to their tender offspring.   
  11   
  Of a serious and reflective turn, by nature, and from his reading and surroundings, Elias had more than once markedly devotional inward intimations. These feelings increas’d in frequency and strength, until soon the following:
             About the twenty-sixth year of my age I was again brought, by the operative influence of divine grace, under deep concern of mind; and was led, through adorable mercy, to see, that although I had ceas’d from many sins and vanities of my youth, yet there were many remaining that I was still guilty of, which were not yet aton’d for, and for which I now felt the judgments of God to rest upon me. This caus’d me to cry earnestly to the Most High for pardon and redemption, and he graciously condescended to hear my cry, and to open a way before me, wherein I must walk, in order to experience reconciliation with him; and as I abode in watchfulness and deep humiliation before him, light broke forth out of obscurity, and my darkness became as the noon-day. I began to have openings leading to the ministry, which brought me under close exercise and deep travail of spirit; for although I had for some time spoken on subjects of business in monthly and preparative meetings, yet the prospect of opening my mouth in public meetings was a close trial; but I endeavor’d to keep my mind quiet and resign’d to the heavenly call, if it should be made clear to me to be my duty. Nevertheless, as I was, soon after, sitting in a meeting, in much weightiness of spirit, a secret, though clear, intimation accompanied me to speak a few words, which were then given to me to utter, yet fear so prevail’d, that I did not yield to the intimation. For this omission, I felt close rebuke, and judgment seem’d, for some time, to cover my mind; but as I humbl’d myself under the Lord’s mighty hand, he again lifted up the light of his countenance upon me, and enabl’d me to renew covenant with him, that if he would pass by this my offence, I would, in future, be faithful, if he should again require such a service of me.   
  12   
  The Revolutionary War following, tried the sect of Friends more than any. The difficulty was to steer between their convictions as patriots, and their pledges of non-warring peace. Here is the way they solv’d the problem:
             A war, with all its cruel and destructive effects, having raged for several years between the British Colonies in North America and the mother country, Friends, as well as others, were expos’d to many severe trials and sufferings; yet, in the colony of New York, Friends, who stood faithful to their principles, and did not meddle in the controversy, had, after a short period at first, considerable favor allow’d them. The yearly meeting was held steadily, during the war, on Long Island, where the king’s party had the rule; yet Friends from the Main, where the American army ruled, had free passage through both armies to attend it, and any other meetings they were desirous of attending, except in a few instances. This was a favor which the parties would not grant to their best friends, who were of a warlike disposition; which shows what great advantages would redound to mankind, were they all of this pacific spirit. I pass’d myself through the lines of both armies six times during the war, without molestation, both parties generally receiving me with openness and civility; and although I had to pass over a tract of country, between the two armies, sometimes more than thirty miles in extent, and which was much frequented by robbers, a set, in general, of cruel, unprincipled banditti, issuing out from both parties, yet, excepting once, I met with no interruption even from them. But although Friends in general experienc’d many favors and deliverances, yet those scenes of war and confusion occasion’d many trials and provings in various ways to the faithful. One circumstance I am willing to mention, as it caus’d me considerable exercise and concern. There was a large cellar under the new meeting-house belonging to Friends in New York, which was generally let as a store. When the king’s troops enter’d the city, they took possession of it for the purpose of depositing their warlike stores; and ascertaining what Friends had the care of letting it, their commissary came forward and offer’d to pay the rent; and those Friends, for want of due consideration, accepted it. This caus’d great uneasiness to the concern’d part of the Society, who apprehended it not consistent with our peaceable principles to receive payment for the depositing of military stores in our houses. The subject was brought before the yearly meeting in 1779, and engag’d its careful attention; but those Friends, who had been active in the reception of the money, and some few others, were not willing to acknowledge their proceedings to be inconsistent, nor to return the money to those from whom it was receiv’d; and in order to justify themselves therein, they referr’d to the conduct of Friends in Philadelphia in similar cases. Matters thus appearing very difficult and embarrassing, it was unitedly concluded to refer the final determination thereof to the yearly meeting of Pennsylvania: and several Friends were appointed to attend that meeting in relation thereto, among whom I was one of the number. We accordingly set out on the 9th day of the 9th month, 1779, and I was accompanied from home by my beloved friend John Willis, who was likewise on the appointment. We took a solemn leave of our families, they feeling much anxiety at parting with us, on account of the dangers we were expos’d to, having to pass not only the lines of the two armies, but the deserted and almost uninhabited country that lay between them, in many places the grass being grown up in the streets, and many houses desolate and empty. Believing it, however, my duty to proceed in the service, my mind was so settled and trust-fix’d in the divine arm of power, that faith seem’d to banish all fear, and cheerfulness and quiet resignation were, I believe, my constant companions during the journey. We got permission, with but little difficulty, to pass the outguards of the king’s army at Kingsbridge, and proceeded to Westchester. We afterwards attended meetings at Harrison’s Purchase, and Oblong, having the concurrence of our monthly meeting to take some meeting in our way, a concern leading thereto having for some time previously attended my mind. We pass’d from thence to Nine Partners, and attended their monthly meeting, and then turn’d our faces towards Philadelphia, being join’d by several others of the Committee. We attended New Marlborough, Hardwick, and Kingswood meetings on our journey, and arriv’d at Philadelphia on the 7th day of the week, and 25th of 9th month, on which day we attended the yearly meeting of Ministers and Elders, which began at the eleventh hour. I also attended all the sittings of the yearly meeting until the 4th day of the next week, and was then so indispos’d with a fever, which had been increasing on me for several days, that I was not able to attend after that time. I was therefore not present when the subject was discuss’d, which came from our yearly meeting; but I was inform’d by my companion, that it was a very solemn opportunity, and the matters was resulted in advising that the money should be return’d into the office from whence it was receiv’d, accompanied with our reasons for so doing: and this was accordingly done by the direction of our yearly meeting the next year.   
  13   
  Then, season after season, when peace and Independence reign’d, year following year, this remains to be (1791) a specimen of his personal labors:
             I was from home on this journey four months and eleven days; rode about one thousand five hundred miles, and attended forty-nine particular meetings among Friends, three quarterly meetings, six monthly meetings, and forty meetings among other people.   
  14   
  And again another experience:
             In the forepart of this meeting, my mind was reduc’d into such a state of great weakness and depression, that my faith was almost ready to fail, which produc’d great searchings of heart, so that I was led to call in question all that I had ever before experienc’d. In this state of doubting, I was ready to wish myself at home, from an apprehension that I should only expose myself to reproach, and wound the cause I was embark’d inn; for the heavens seem’d like brass, and the earth as iron; such coldness and hardness, I thought, could scarcely have ever been experienc’d before by any creature, so great was the depth of my baptism at this time; nevertheless, as I endeavor’d to quiet my mind, in this conflicting dispensation, and be resign’d to my allotment, however distressing, towards the latter part of the meeting a ray of light broke through the surrounding darkness, in which the Shepherd of Israel was pleas’d to arise, and by the light of his glorious countenance, to scatter those clouds of opposition. Then ability was receiv’d, and utterance given, to speak of his marvellous works in the redemption of souls, and to open the way of life and salvation, and the mysteries of his glorious kingdom, which are hid from the wise and prudent of this world, and reveal’d only unto those who are reduc’d into the state of little children and babes in Christ.   
  15   
  And concluding another jaunt in 1794:
             I was from home in this journey about five months, and travell’d by land and water about two thousand two hundred and eighty-three miles; having visited all the meetings of Friends in the New England states, and many meetings amongst those of other professions; and also visited many meetings, among Friends and others, in the upper part of our own yearly meeting; and found real peace in my labors.   
  16   
  Another ‘tramp’ in 1798:
             I was absent from home in this journey about five months and two weeks, and rode about sixteen hundred miles, and attended about one hundred and forty-three meetings.   
  17   
  Here are some memoranda of 1813, near home:
             First day. Our meeting this day pass’d in silent labor. The cloud rested on the tabernacle; and, although it was a day of much rain outwardly, yet very little of the dew of Hermon appear’d to distil among us. Nevertheless, a comfortable calm was witness’d towards the close, which we must render to the account of unmerited mercy and love.   
  Second day. Most of this day was occupied in a visit to a sick friend, who appear’d comforted therewith. Spent part of the evening in reading part of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.   
  Third day. I was busied most of this day in my common vocations. Spent the evening principally in reading Paul. Found considerable satisfaction in his first epistle to the Corinthians; in which he shows the danger of some in setting too high a value on those who were instrumental in bringing them to the knowledge of the truth, without looking through and beyond the instrument, to the great first cause and Author of every blessing, to whom all the praise and honor are due.   
  Fifth day, 1st of 4th month. At our meeting to-day found it, as usual, a very close steady exercise to keep the mind center’d where it ought to be. What a multitude of intruding thoughts imperceptibly, as it were, steal into the mind, and turn it from its proper object, whenever it relaxes its vigilance in watching against them. Felt a little strength, just at the close, to remind Friends of the necessity of a steady perseverance, by a recapitulation of the parable of the unjust judge, showing how men ought always to pray, and not to faint.   
  Sixth day. Nothing material occurr’d, but a fear lest the cares of the world should engross too much of my time.   
  Seventh day. Had an agreeable visit from two ancient friends, whom I have long lov’d. The rest of the day I employ’d in manual labor, mostly in gardening.   
  18   
  But we find if we attend to records and details, we shall lay out an endless task. We can briefly say, summarily, that his whole life was a long religious missionary life of method, practicality, sincerity, earnestness, and pure piety—as near to his time here, as one in Judea, far back—or in any life, any age. The reader who feels interested must get—with all its dryness and mere dates, absence of emotionality or literary quality, and whatever abstract attraction (with even a suspicion of cant, sniffling,) the “Journal of the Life and Religious Labours of Elias Hicks, written by himself,” at some Quaker book-store. (It is from this headquarters I have extracted the preceding quotations.) During E. H.’s matured life, continued from fifty to sixty years—while working steadily, earning his living and paying his way without intermission—he makes, as previously memorandised, several hundred preaching visits, not only through Long Island, but some of them away into the Middle or Southern States, or north into Canada, or the then far West—extending to thousands of miles, or filling several weeks and sometimes months. These religious journeys—scrupulously accepting in payment only his transportation from place to place, with his own food and shelter, and never receiving a dollar of money for “salary” or preaching—Elias, through good bodily health and strength, continues till quite the age of eighty. It was thus at one of his latest jaunts in Brooklyn city I saw and heard him. This sight and hearing shall now be described.

 Elias Hicks was at this period in the latter part (November or December) of 1829. It was the last tour of the many missions of the old man’s life. He was in the 81st year of his age, and a few months before he had lost by death a beloved wife with whom he had lived in unalloyed affection and esteem for 58 years. (But a few months after this meeting Elias was paralyzed and died.) Though it is sixty years ago since—and I a little boy at the time in Brooklyn, New York—I can remember my father coming home toward sunset from his day’s work as carpenter, and saying briefly, as he throws down his armful of kindling-blocks with a bounce on the kitchen floor, “Come, mother, Elias preaches to-night.” Then my mother, hastening the supper and the table-cleaning afterward, gets a neighboring young woman, a friend of the family, to step in and keep house for an hour or so—puts the two little ones to bed—and as I had been behaving well that day, as a special reward I was allow’d to go also.     20   
  We start for the meeting. Though, as I said, the stretch of more than half a century has pass’d over me since then, with its war and peace, and all its joys and sins and deaths (and what a half century! how it comes up sometimes for an instant, like the lightning flash in a storm at night!) I can recall that meeting yet. It is a strange place for religious devotions. Elias preaches anywhere—no respect to buildings—private or public houses, school-rooms, barns, even theatres—anything that will accommodate. This time it is in a handsome ball-room, on Brooklyn Heights, overlooking New York, and in full sight of that great city, and its North and East Rivers fill’d with ships—is (to specify more particularly) the second story of “Morrison’s Hotel,” used for the most genteel concerts, balls, and assemblies—a large, cheerful, gay-color’d room, with glass chandeliers bearing myriads of sparkling pendants, plenty of settees and chairs, and a sort of velvet divan running all round the side-walls. Before long the divan and all the settees and chairs are fill’d; many fashionable out of curiosity; all the principal dignitaries of the town, Gen. Jeremiah Johnson, Judge Furman, George Hall, Mr. Willoughby, Mr. Pierrepont, N. B. Morse, Cyrus P. Smith, and F. C. Tucker. Many young folks too; some richly dress’d women; I remember I noticed with one party of ladies a group of uniform’d officers, either from the U. S. Navy Yard, or some ship in the stream, or some adjacent fort. On a slightly elevated platform at the head of the room, facing the audience, sit a dozen or more Friends, most of them elderly, grim, and with their broad-brimm’d hats on their heads. Three or four women, too, in their characteristic Quaker costumes and bonnets. All still as the grave.     21   
  At length after a pause and stillness becoming almost painful, Elias rises and stands for a moment or two without a word. A tall, straight figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress’d in drab cloth, clean-shaved face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clear black eyes, 1 long or middling-long white hair; he was at this time between 80 and 81 years of age, his head still wearing the broad-brim. A moment looking around the audience with those piercing eyes, amid the perfect stillness. (I can almost see him and the whole scene now.) Then the words come from his lips, very emphatically and slowly pronounc’d, in a resonant, grave, melodious voice, What is the chief end of man? I was told in my early youth, it was to glorify God, and seek and enjoy him forever.     22   
  I cannot follow the discourse. It presently becomes very fervid, and in the midst of its fervor he takes the broad-brim hat from his head, and almost dashing it down with violence on the seat behind, continues with uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardly suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heard Father Taylor, the sailor’s preacher, and found in his passionate unstudied oratory the resemblance to Elias Hicks’s—not argumentative or intellectual, but so penetrating—so different from anything in the books—(different as the fresh air of a May morning or sea-shore breeze from the atmosphere of a perfumer’s shop.) While he goes on he falls into the nasality and sing-song tone sometimes heard in such meetings; but in a moment or two more, as if recollecting himself, he breaks off, stops, and resumes in a natural tone. This occurs three or four times during the talk of the evening, till all concludes.     23   
  Now and then, at the many scores and hundreds—even thousands—of his discourses—as at this one—he was very mystical and radical, 2 and had much to say of “the light within.” Very likely this same inner light, (so dwelt upon by newer men, as by Fox and Barclay at the beginning, and all Friends and deep thinkers since and now,) is perhaps only another name for the religious conscience. In my opinion they have all diagnos’d, like superior doctors, the real inmost disease of our times, probably any times. Amid the huge inflammation call’d society, and that other inflammation call’d politics, what is there to-day of moral power and ethic sanity as antiseptic to them and all? Though I think the essential elements of the moral nature exist latent in the good average people of the United States of to-day, and sometimes break out strongly, it is certain that any mark’d or dominating National Morality, (if I may use the phrase) has not only not yet been develop’d, but that—at any rate when the point of view is turn’d on business, politics, competition, practical life, and in character and manners in our New World—there seems to be a hideous depletion, almost absence, of such moral nature. Elias taught throughout, as George Fox began it, or rather reiterated and verified it, the Platonic doctrine that the ideals of character, of justice, of religious action, whenever the highest is at stake, are to be conform’d to no outside doctrine of creeds, Bibles, legislative enactments, conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow the inward Deity-planted law of the emotional soul. In this only the true Quaker, or Friend, has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhaps strainingly carrying it out, that both the Old and New England records of Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts.     24   
  In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons or instructions, (“seal’d orders” the biographer calls them,) prepar’d by the sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one:
             Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells with the pure in heart, to whom it was promis’d of old that they shall see God.   
  25   
  How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then in Omar Khayyam:
           I sent my soul through the Invisible,   
  Some letter of that after-life to spell,   
And by-and-by my soul return’d to me,   
  And answer’d, “I myself am Heaven and Hell.”   
  26   
  Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice of Quakerism, the difficult-to-describe “Light within” or “Inward Law, by which all must be either justified or condemn’d,” I will not undertake where so many have fail’d—the task of making the statement of it for the average comprehension. We will give, partly for the matter and partly as specimen of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hicks himself says in allusion to it—one or two of very many passages. Most of his discourses, like those of Epictetus and the ancient peripatetics, have left no record remaining—they were extempore, and those were not the times of reporters. Of one, however, deliver’d in Chester, Pa., toward the latter part of his career, there is a careful transcript; and from it (even if presenting you a sheaf of hidden wheat that may need to be pick’d and thrash’d out several times before you get the grain,) we give the following extract:     27   
  “I don’t want to express a great many words; but I want you to be call’d home to the substance. For the Scriptures, and all the books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him. ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.’ Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love—that love which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in love, and they are constrain’d to walk in it; and if they ‘walk in it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.’     28   
  “But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have any material blood? Not a drop of it, my friends—not a drop of it. That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God breath’d into it.     29   
  “As we read, in the beginning, that ‘God form’d man of the dust of the ground, and breath’d into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’ He breath’d into that soul. and it became alive to God.”     30   
  Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted in correspondence:     31   
  “Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the heart, and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens’d to the children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true and saving knowledge of God can be obtain’d. And by this inward law and light, all will be either justified or condemn’d, and all made to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them that they should receive power, when they had receiv’d the pouring forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian faith in one day.     32   
  “By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law, as it is heeded and obey’d, ever did, or ever can, make a true and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non-essentials in religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and the angelic song cannot be heard in our land—that of ‘glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men.’     33   
  “But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and light the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we shall be brought to know and believe alike, that there is but one Lord, one faith, and but one baptism; one God and Father, that is above all, through all, and in all.     34   
  “And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded in the scriptures of truth be fulfill’d—‘He,’ the Lord, ‘shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the wean’d child put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth,’ that is our earthly tabernacle, ‘shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’”     35   
  The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts are not to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one, and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through religious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number of instances of much that is obscure, to “the world’s people,” in the preachings of this remarkable man.     36   
  Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding. If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind oratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper even than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried with him, or probed into, and shook and arous’d in them—a sympathetic germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no book, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge, intuition—not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch’d out only by powerful human magnetism:
           Unheard by sharpest ear—unform’d in clearest eye, or cunningest mind,   
Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth,   
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly,   
Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss;   
Open, but still a secret—the real of the real—an illusion;   
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner;   
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme—historians in prose;   
Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted;   
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d.   
  37   
  That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life—that aspiration towards the ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, in perhaps every character. More definitely, as near as I remember (aided by my dear mother long afterward,) Elias Hicks’s discourse there in the Brooklyn ball-room, was one of his old never-remitted appeals to that moral mystical portion of human nature, the inner light. But it is mainly for the scene itself, and Elias’s personnel, that I recall the incident.     38   
  Soon afterward the old man died:
             On first day morning, the 14th of 2d month (February, 1830,) he was engaged in his room, writing to a friend, until a little after ten o’clock, when he return’d to that occupied by the family, apparently just attack’d by a paralytic affection, which nearly deprived him of the use of his right side, and of the power of speech. Being assisted to a chair near the fire, he manifested by signs, that the letter which he had just finish’d, and which had been dropp’d by the way, should be taken care of; and on its being brought to him, appear’d satisfied, and manifested a desire that all should sit down and be still, seemingly sensible that his labours were brought to a close, and only desirous of quietly waiting the final change. The solemn composure at this time manifest in his countenance, was very impressive, indicating that he was sensible the time of his departure was at hand, and that the prospect of death brought no terrors with it. During his last illness, his mental faculties were occasionally obscured, yet he was at times enabled to give satisfactory evidence to those around him, that all was well, and that he felt nothing in his way.   
  His funeral took place on fourth day, the 3d of 3d month. It was attended by a large concourse of Friends and others, and a solid meeting was held on the occasion; after which, his remains were interr’d in Friends’ burial-ground at this place (Jericho, Queens County, New York.)   
  39   
  I have thought (even presented so incompletely, with such fearful hiatuses, and in my own feebleness and waning life) one might well memorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not eminent in literature or politics or inventions or business, it is a token of not a few, and is significant. Such men do not cope with statesmen or soldiers—but I have thought they deserve to be recorded and kept up as a sample—that this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little flowing liquid rill of Nature’s life, maintaining freshness. As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the madness of contending hosts—the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell’s heat and noise and competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God’s hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the ground, at men’s very feet, a curious little brook of clear and cool, and ever-healthy, ever-living water.     40   
     
  Note.—The Separation.—The division vulgarly call’d between Orthodox and Hicksites in the Society of Friends took place in 1827, ’8 and ’9. Probably it had been preparing some time. One who was present has since described to me the climax, at a meeting of Friends in Philadelphia crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, with Elias as principal speaker. In the course of his utterance or argument he made use of these words: “The blood of Christ—the blood of Christ—why, my friends, the actual blood of Christ in itself was no more effectual than the blood of bulls and goats—not a bit more—not a bit.” At these words, after a momentary hush, commenced a great tumult. Hundreds rose to their feet.… Canes were thump’d upon the floor. From all parts of the house angry mutterings. Some left the place, but more remain’d, with exclamations, flush’d faces and eyes. This was the definite utterance, the overt act, which led to the separation. Families diverg’d—even husbands and wives, parents and children, were separated.     41   
  Of course what Elias promulg’d spread a great commotion among the Friends. Sometimes when he presented himself to speak in the meeting, there would be opposition—this led to angry words, gestures, unseemly noises, recriminations. Elias, at such times, was deeply affected—the tears roll’d in streams down his cheeks—he silently waited the close of the dispute. “Let the Friend speak; let the Friend speak!” he would say when his supporters in the meeting tried to bluff off some violent orthodox person objecting to the new doctrinaire. But he never recanted.     42   
  A reviewer of the old dispute and separation made the following comments on them in a paper ten years ago: “It was in America, where there had been no persecution worth mentioning since Mary Dyer was hang’d on Boston Common, that about fifty years ago differences arose, singularly enough upon doctrinal points of the divinity of Christ and the nature of the atonement. Whoever would know how bitter was the controversy, and how much of human infirmity was found to be still lurking under broad-brim hats and drab coats, must seek for the information in the Lives of Elias Hicks and of Thomas Shillitoe, the latter an English Friend, who visited us at this unfortunate time, and who exercised his gifts as a peacemaker with but little success. The meetings, according to his testimony, were sometimes turn’d into mobs. The disruption was wide, and seems to have been final. Six of the ten yearly meetings were divided; and since that time various sub-divisions have come, four or five in number. There has never, however, been anything like a repetition of the excitement of the Hicksite controversy; and Friends of all kinds at present appear to have settled down into a solid, steady, comfortable state, and to be working in their own way without troubling other Friends whose ways are different.”     43   
     
  Note.—Old persons, who heard this man in his day, and who glean’d impressions from what they saw of him, (judg’d from their own points of view,) have, in their conversation with me, dwelt on another point. They think Elias Hicks had a large element of personal ambition, the pride of leadership, of establishing perhaps a sect that should reflect his own name, and to which he should give especial form and character. Very likely. Such indeed seems the means, all through progress and civilization, by which strong men and strong convictions achieve anything definite. But the basic foundation of Elias was undoubtedly genuine religious fervor. He was like an old Hebrew prophet. He had the spirit of one, and in his later years look’d like one. What Carlyle says of John Knox will apply to him:
             “He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in him a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one;—a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. ‘He lies there,’ said the Earl of Morton at Knox’s grave, ‘who never fear’d the face of man.’ He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God’s truth.”   
  44   
     
  A Note yet. The United States to-day.—While under all previous conditions (even convictions) of society, Oriental, Feudal, Ecclesiastical, and in all past (or present) Despotisms, through the entire past, there existed, and exists yet, in ally and fusion with them, and frequently forming the main part of them, certain churches, institutes, priesthoods, fervid beliefs, &c., practically promoting religious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanity there under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all there was of justice, art, literature, and good manners—it is clear I say, that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now and henceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs, adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according to our circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits, of the present day, in the United States, exist not by any solid convictions, but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful sufferance. Few speak openly—none officially—against them. But the ostent continuously imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountains of belief in them are now utterly ceas’d and departed from the minds of men?     45   
     
  A Lingering Note.—In the making of a full man, all the other consciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c.,) are to be crown’d and effused by the religious conscience. In the higher structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, the Religious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtle vitalization and antiseptic play call’d Health in the physiologic structure. To person or State, the main verteber (or rather the verteber) is Morality. That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all the supersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality. It is to run through and knit the superior parts, and keep man or State vital and up right, as health keeps the body straight and blooming. Of course a really grand and strong and beautiful character is probably to be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with reference to itself, its own personal and social sphere—with (paradox though it may be) the clear understanding that the conventional theories of life, worldly ambition, wealth, office, fame, &c., are essentially but glittering mayas, delusions.     46   
  Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will sometimes find themselves saying, It isn’t only those who know most, who contribute most to God’s glory. Doubtless these very scientists at times stand with bared heads before the humblest lives and personalities. For there is something greater (is there not?) than all the science and poems of the world—above all else, like the stars shining eternal—above Shakspere’s plays, or Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Raphael—something that shines elusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening—high above all the vaunted wealth and pride—prov’d by its practical outcropping in life, each case after its own concomitants—the intuitive blending of divine love and faith in a human emotional character—blending for all, for the unlearn’d, the common, and the poor.     47   
  I don’t know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark has been made in books, all ages,) that no life ever lived, even the most uneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found in itself as subtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or playwrights fabled. Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos’d obscure. For it isn’t only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark, or almost dark, unnotic’d orbs and suns, (like the dusky companion of Sirius, seven times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space, real and potent as any—perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none recks of them. In the bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not even names. Amid ceaseless sophistications all times, the soul would seem to glance yearningly around for such contrasts—such cool, still offsets.     48   


Note 1.  In Walter Scott’s reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the most eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated, dark-orbed eyes he ever beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks’s must have been like them. [back]   
Note 2.  The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays—but in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He said, “A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend all the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound copy of the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and yet not be truly religious person at all.” E. believ’d little in a church as organiz’d—even his own—with houses, ministers, or with salaries, creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But he believ’d always in the universal church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.—He was fond of pithy proverbs. He said, “It matters not where you live, but how you live.” He said once to my father,” They talk of the devil—I tell thee, Walter, there is no worse devil than man.”

V. November Boughs   
22. George Fox (and Shakspere)   
     
WHILE we are about it, we must almost inevitably go back to the origin of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov’d to be the most mark’d individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the 16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous’d—(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to think of it—that age! its events, persons—Shakspere just dead, (his folios publish’d, complete)—Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!      1   
  As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sine qua non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transport ourselves back to the England of that period. As I say, it is the time of tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflicting forms, governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, and ebb and flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of the long feud between the Parliament and the Crown. In the midst of the sprouts, began George Fox—born eight years after the death of Shakspere. He was the son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was “converted” before the age of 20. But O the sufferings, mental and physical, through which those years of the strange youth pass’d! He claim’d to be sent by God to fulfil a mission. “I come,” he said, “to direct people to the spirit that gave forth the Scriptures.” The range of his thought, even then, cover’d almost every important subject of after times, antislavery, women’s rights, &c. Though in a low sphere, and among the masses, he forms a mark’d feature in the age.      2   
  And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb’d age! The foundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic, the credulous, all breaking—the light of the new, and of science and democracy, definitely beginning—a mad, fierce, almost crazy age! The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of the Protectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles. Those were the years following the advent and practical working of the Reformation—but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy. We think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminations of war and peace; and so it is. But there could hardly be a grander and more picturesque and varied age than that.      3   
  Born out of and in this age, when Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and John Locke were still living—amid the memories of Queen Elizabeth and James First, and the events of their reigns—when the radiance of that galaxy of poets, warriors, statesmen, captains, lords, explorers, wits and gentlemen, that crowded the courts and times of those sovereigns still fill’d the atmosphere—when America commencing to be explor’d and settled commenc’d also to be suspected as destin’d to overthrow the old standards and calculations—when Feudalism, like a sunset, seem’d to gather all its glories, reminiscences, personalisms, in one last gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new day, a new incipient genius—amid the social and domestic circles of that period—indifferent to reverberations that seem’d enough to wake the dead, and in a sphere far from the pageants of the court, the awe of any personal rank or charm of intellect, or literature, or the varying excitement of Parliamentarian or Royalist fortunes—this curious young rustic goes wandering up and down England.      4   
  George Fox, born 1624, was of decent stock, in ordinary lower life—as he grew along toward manhood, work’d at shoemaking, also at farm labors—loved to be much by himself, half-hidden in the woods, reading the Bible—went about from town to town, dress’d in leather clothes—walk’d much at night, solitary, deeply troubled (“the inward divine teaching of the Lord”)—sometimes goes among the ecclesiastical gatherings of the great professors, and though a mere youth bears bold testimony—goes to and fro disputing—(must have had great personality)—heard the voice of the Lord speaking articulately to him, as he walk’d in the fields—feels resistless commands not to be explain’d, but follow’d, to abstain from taking off his hat, to say Thee and Thou, and not bid others Good morning or Good evening—was illiterate, could just read and write—testifies against shows, games, and frivolous pleasures—enters the courts and warns the judges that they see to doing justice—goes into public houses and market-places, with denunciations of drunkenness and money-making—rises in the midst of the church-services, and gives his own explanations of the ministers’ explanations, and of Bible passages and texts—sometimes for such things put in prison, sometimes struck fiercely on the mouth on the spot, or knock’d down, and lying there beaten and bloody—was of keen wit, ready to any question with the most apropos of answers—was sometimes press’d for a soldier, (him for a soldier!)—was indeed terribly buffeted; but goes, goes, goes—often sleeping out-doors, under hedges, or hay stacks—forever taken before justices—improving such, and all occasions, to bear testimony, and give good advice—still enters the “steeple-houses,” (as he calls churches,) and though often dragg’d out and whipt till he faints away, and lies like one dead, when he comes-to—stands up again, and offering himself all bruis’d and bloody, cries out to his tormenters, “Strike—strike again, here where you have not yet touch’d! my arms, my head, my cheeks.”—Is at length arrested and sent up to London, confers with the Protector, Cromwell,—is set at liberty, and holds great meetings in London.      5   
  Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates one or two here, and three or four there, until gradually there were others who went about in the same spirit, and by degrees the Society of Friends took shape, and stood among the thousand religious sects of the world. Women also catch the contagion, and go round, often shamefully misused. By such contagion these ministerings, by scores, almost hundreds of poor travelling men and women, keep on year after year, through ridicule, whipping, imprisonment, &c.—some of the Friend-ministers emigrate to New England—where their treatment makes the blackest part of the early annals of the New World. Some were executed, others maim’d, par-burnt, and scourg’d—two hundred die in prison—some on the gallows, or at the stake.      6   
  George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and hearers, and preach’d many times on Long Island, New York State. In the village of Oysterbay they will show you the rock on which he stood, (1672,) addressing the multitude, in the open air—thus rigidly following the fashion of apostolic times.—(I have heard myself many reminiscences of him.) Flushing also contains (or contain’d—I have seen them) memorials of Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, that shaded him while he bore his testimony to people gather’d in the highway.—Yes, the American Quakers were much persecuted—almost as much, by a sort of consent of all the other sects, as the Jews were in Europe in the middle ages. In New England, the cruelest laws were pass’d, and put in execution against them. As said, some were whipt—women the same as men. Some had their ears cut off—others their tongues pierc’d with hot irons—others their faces branded. Worse still, a woman and three men had been hang’d, (1660.)—Public opinion, and the statutes, join’d together, in an odious union, Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Witches.—Such a fragmentary sketch of George Fox and his time—and the advent of ‘the Society of Friends’ in America.      7   
     
  Strange as it may sound, Shakspere and George Fox, (think of them! compare them!) were born and bred of similar stock, in much the same surroundings and station in life—from the same England—and at a similar period. One to radiate all of art’s, all literature’s splendor—a splendor so dazzling that he himself is almost lost in it, and his contemporaries the same—his fictitious Othello, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, as real as any lords of England or Europe then and there—more real to us, the mind sometimes thinks, than the man Shakspere himself. Then the other—may we indeed name him the same day? What is poor plain George Fox compared to William Shakspere—to fancy’s lord, imagination’s heir? Yet George Fox stands for something too—a thought—the thought that wakes in silent hours—perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is this thought—aye, greater than all else. When the gorgeous pageant of Art, refulgent in the sunshine, color’d with roses and gold—with all the richest mere poetry, old or new, (even Shakspere’s)—with all that statue, play, painting, music, architecture, oratory, can effect, ceases to satisfy and please—When the eager chase after wealth flags, and beauty itself becomes a loathing—and when all worldly or carnal or esthetic, or even scientific values, having done their office to the human character, and minister’d their part to its development—then, if not before, comes forward this over-arching thought, and brings its eligibilities, germinations. Most neglected in life of all humanity’s attributes, easily cover’d with crust, deluded and abused, rejected, yet the only certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none find—in it I for myself clearly see the first, the last, the deepest depths and highest heights of art, of literature, and of the purposes of life. I say whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or best of all sets an incarnated example here, of life or death, is dearest to humanity—remains after the rest are gone. And here, for these purposes, and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias Hicks—as the man George Fox had done years before him—lived long, and died, faithful in life, and faithful in death.