Complete Prose Works

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And as he concluded this wicked and most brutal reply, the speaker
open'd the door and went into the bar-room. But in his intoxication,
during the hour that follow'd, Mike was far from being at ease. At
the end of that hour, the words, "perhaps when you arrive she may be
_dead_?" were not effaced from his hearing yet, and he started for
home. The elder brother had wended his way back in sorrow.

Let me go before the younger one, awhile, to a room in that home. A
little girl lay there dying. She had been ill a long time; so it was
no sudden thing for her parents, and her brethren and sisters, to be
called for the witness of the death agony. The girl was not what might
be called beautiful. And yet, there is a solemn kind of loveliness
that always surrounds a sick child. The sympathy for the weak and
helpless sufferer, perhaps, increases it in our own ideas. The
ashiness and the moisture on the brow, and the film over the
eyeballs--what man can look upon the sight, and not feel his heart
awed within him? Children, I have sometimes fancied too, increase in
beauty as their illness deepens.

Besides the nearest relatives of little Jane, standing round her
bedside, was the family doctor. He had just laid her wrist down upon
the coverlet, and the look he gave the mother, was a look in which
there was no hope. "My child!" she cried, in uncontrollable agony, "O!
my child!" And the father, and the sons and daughters, were bowed down
in grief, and thick tears rippled between the fingers held before
their eyes.

Then there was silence awhile. During the hour just by-gone, Jane had,
in her childish way, bestow'd a little gift upon each of her kindred,
as a remembrancer when she should be dead and buried in the grave.
And there was one of these simple tokens which had not reach'd
its destination. She held it in her hand now. It was a very small
much-thumbed book--a religious story for infants, given her by her
mother when she had first learn'd to read.

While they were all keeping this solemn stillness-broken only by the
suppress'd sobs of those who stood and watch'd for the passing away of
the girl's soul--a confusion of some one entering rudely, and speaking
in a turbulent voice, was heard in an adjoining apartment. Again the
voice roughly sounded out; it was the voice of the drunkard Mike, and
the father bade one of his sons go and quiet the intruder "If nought
else will do," said he sternly, "put him forth by strength. We want no
tipsy brawlers here, to disturb such a scene as this." For what
moved the sick girl uneasily on her pillow, and raised her neck, and
motion'd to her mother? She would that Mike should be brought to her
side. And it was enjoin'd on him whom the father had bade to eject the
noisy one, that he should tell Mike his sister's request, and beg him
to come to her.

He came. The inebriate--his mind sober'd by the deep solemnity of the
scene--stood there, and leaned over to catch the last accounts of one
who soon was to be with the spirits of heaven. All was the silence of
the deepest night. The dying child held the young man's hand in one of
hers; with the other she slowly lifted the trifling memorial she had
assigned especially for him, aloft in the air. Her arm shook--her
eyes, now becoming glassy with the death-damps, were cast toward her
brother's face. She smiled pleasantly, and as an indistinct gurgle
came from her throat, the uplifted hand fell suddenly into the open
palm of her brother's, depositing the tiny volume there. Little Jane
was dead.

From that night, the young man stepped no more in his wild courses,
but was reform'd.

DUMB KATE

Not many years since--and yet long enough to have been before the
abundance of railroads, and similar speedy modes of conveyance--the
travelers from Amboy village to the metropolis of our republic were
permitted to refresh themselves, and the horses of the stage had a
breathing spell, at a certain old-fashion'd tavern, about half way
between the two places. It was a quaint, comfortable, ancient house,
that tavern. Huge buttonwood trees embower'd it round about, and there
was a long porch in front, the trellis'd work whereof, though old and
moulder'd, had been, and promised still to be for years, held together
by the tangled folds of a grape vine wreath'd about it like a
tremendous serpent.

How clean and fragrant everything was there! How bright the pewter
tankards wherefrom cider or ale went into the parch'd throat of the
thirsty man! How pleasing to look into the expressive eyes of Kate,
the land-lord's lovely daughter, who kept everything so clean and
bright!

Now the reason why Kate's eyes had become so expressive was, that,
besides their proper and natural office, they stood to the poor girl
in the place of tongue and ears also. Kate had been dumb from her
birth. Everybody loved the helpless creature when she was a child.
Gentle, timid, and affectionate was she, and beautiful as the lilies
of which she loved to cultivate so many every summer in her garden.
Her light hair, and the like-color'd lashes, so long and silky, that
droop'd over her blue eyes of such uncommon size and softness--her
rounded shape, well set off by a little modest art of dress--her
smile--the graceful ease of her motions, always attracted the
admiration of the strangers who stopped there, and were quite a pride
to her parents and friends.

How could it happen that so beautiful and inoffensive a being should
taste, even to its dregs, the bitterest unhappiness? Oh, there must
indeed be a mysterious, unfathomable meaning in the decrees of
Providence which is beyond the comprehension of man; for no one on
earth less deserved or needed "the uses of adversity" than Dumb Kate.
Love, the mighty and lawless passion, came into the sanctuary of the
maid's pure breast, and the dove of peace fled away forever.

One of the persons who had occasion to stop most frequently at the
tavern kept by Dumb Kate's parents was a young man, the son of a
wealthy farmer, who own'd an estate in the neighborhood. He saw Kate,
and was struck with her natural elegance. Though not of thoroughly
wicked propensities, the fascination of so fine a prize made this
youth determine to gain her love, and, if possible, to win her to
himself. At first he hardly dared, even amid the depths of his own
soul, to entertain thoughts of vileness against one so confiding and
childlike. But in a short time such feelings wore away, and he made up
his mind to become the betrayer of poor Kate. He was a good-looking
fellow, and made but too sure of his victim. Kate was lost!

The villain came to New York soon after, and engaged in a business
which prosper'd well, and which has no doubt by this time made him
what is call'd a man of fortune.

Not long did sickness of the heart wear into the life and happiness of
Dumb Kate. One pleasant spring day, the neighbors having been called
by a notice the previous morning, the old churchyard was thrown open,
and a coffin was borne over the early grass that seem'd so delicate
with its light green hue. There was a new made grave, and by its side
the bier was rested--while they paused a moment until holy words had
been said. An idle boy, call'd there by curiosity, saw something lying
on the fresh earth thrown out from the grave, which attracted his
attention. A little blossom, the only one to be seen around, had grown
exactly on the spot where the sexton chose to dig poor Kate's last
resting-place. It was a weak but lovely flower, and now lay where it
had been carelessly toss'd amid the coarse gravel. The boy twirl'd it
a moment in his fingers--the bruis'd fragments gave out a momentary
perfume, and then fell to the edge of the pit, over which the child at
that moment lean'd and gazed in his inquisitiveness. As they dropp'd,
they were wafted to the bottom of the grave. The last look was
bestow'd on the dead girl's face by those who loved her so well in
life, and then she was softly laid away to her sleep beneath that
green grass covering.

Yet in the churchyard on the hill is Kate's grave. There stands a
little white stone at the head, and verdure grows richly there;
and gossips, some-times of a Sabbath afternoon, rambling over that
gathering-place of the gone from earth, stop a while, and con over the
dumb girl's hapless story.

TALK TO AN ART-UNION

_A Brooklyn fragment_

It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist
in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and
die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess.
Who would not mourn that an ample palace, of surpassingly graceful
architecture, fill'd with luxuries, and embellish'd with fine pictures
and sculpture, should stand cold and still and vacant, and never be
known or enjoy'd by its owner? Would such a fact as this cause your
sadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts of
the most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is
always waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there with
any genuine sense of its grandeur and glory.

I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the
artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate
sensitiveness to moral beauty. Such men are not merely artists, they
are also artistic material. Washington in some great crisis, Lawrence
on the bloody deck of the Chesapeake, Mary Stuart at the block,
Kossuth in captivity, and Mazzini in exile--all great rebels and
innovators, exhibit the highest phases of the artist spirit. The
painter, the sculptor, the poet, express heroic beauty better in
description; but the others _are_ heroic beauty, the best belov'd of
art.

Talk not so much, then, young artist, of the great old masters, who
but painted and chisell'd. Study not only their productions. There is
a still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal from
the altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of all
grand actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriots
and martyrs--of all the mighty deeds written in the pages of
history--deeds of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude.

BLOOD-MONEY

"_Guilty of the body and the blood of Christ_."

I.

Of olden time, when it came to pass
That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his work on earth,
Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,
And took pay for his body.

Curs'd was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand
grew dry;
And darkness frown'd upon the seller of the like of God,
Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her,
and heaven refused him,
He hung in the air, self-slaughter'd.

The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk'd silently forward,
Since those ancient days--many a pouch enwrapping meanwhile
Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.

And still goes one, saying,
"What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?"
And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.

II

Look forth, deliverer,
Look forth, first-born of the dead,
Over the tree-tops of Paradise;
See thyself in yet continued bonds,
Toilsome and poor, thou bear'st man's form again,
Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison,
Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest;
With staves and swords throng the willing servants of authority,
Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite;
Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures' talons,
The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their palms;
Bruised, bloody, and pinion'd is thy body,
More sorrowful than death is thy soul.

Witness of anguish, brother of slaves,
Not with thy price closed the price of thine image:
And still Iscariot plies his trade.

_April, 1843_.

PAUMANOK.

WOUNDED IN THE HOUSE OF FRIENDS

_"And one shall say unto him. What are these wounds in thy hands? Then
he shall answer Those with which I was wounded in the house of my
friends."--Zechariah, xiii. 6._

If thou art balk'd, O Freedom,
The victory is not to thy manlier foes;
From the house of friends comes the death stab.

Virginia, mother of greatness,
Blush not for being also mother of slaves;
You might have borne deeper slaves--
Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity--
Terrific screamers of freedom,
Who roar and bawl, and get hot i' the face,
But were they not incapable of august crime,
Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink--
Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground,
A dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing;
All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain,
In life walking in that as in a shroud;
Men whom the throes of heroes,
Great deeds at which the gods might stand appal'd,
The shriek of the drown'd, the appeal of women,
The exulting laugh of untied empires,
Would touch them never in the heart,
But only in the pocket.

Hot-headed Carolina,
Well may you curl your lip;
With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny
Which brings you no such breed as this.

Arise, young North!
Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards:
The gray-hair'd sneak, the blanch'd poltroon,
The feign'd or real shiverer at tongues,
That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for--
Are they to be our tokens always?

SAILING THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT

Vast and starless, the pall of heaven
Laps on the trailing pall below;
And forward, forward, in solemn darkness,
As if to the sea of the lost we go.

Now drawn nigh the edge of the river,
Weird-like creatures suddenly rise;
Shapes that fade, dissolving outlines
Baffle the gazer's straining eyes.

Towering upward and bending forward,
Wild and wide their arms are thrown,
Ready to pierce with forked fingers
Him who touches their realm upon.

Tide of youth, thus thickly planted,
While in the eddies onward you swim,
Thus on the shore stands a phantom army,
Lining forever the channel's rim.

Steady, helmsman! you guide the immortal;
Many a wreck is beneath you piled,
Many a brave yet unwary sailor
Over these waters has been beguiled.

Nor is it the storm or the scowling midnight,
Cold, or sickness, or fire's dismay--
Nor is it the reef, or treacherous quicksand,
Will peril you most on your twisted way.

But when there comes a voluptuous languor,
Soft the sunshine, silent the air,
Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness,
Then, young pilot of life, beware.

NOVEMBER BOUGHS

OUR EMINENT VISITORS

_Past, Present and Future_

Welcome to them each and all! They do good--the deepest, widest, most
needed good--though quite certainly not in the ways attempted--which
have, at times, something irresistibly comic. What can be more
farcical, for instance, than the sight of a worthy gentleman
coming three or four thousand miles through wet and wind to speak
complacently and at great length on matters of which he both entirely
mistakes or knows nothing--before crowds of auditors equally
complacent, and equally at fault?

Yet welcome and thanks, we say, to those visitors we have, and have
had, from abroad among us--and may the procession continue! We have
had Dickens and Thackeray, Froude, Herbert Spencer, Oscar Wilde, Lord
Coleridge--soldiers, savants, poets--and now Matthew Arnold and Irving
the actor. Some have come to make money--some for a "good time"--some
to help us along and give us advice--and some undoubtedly to
investigate, _bona fide_, this great problem, democratic America,
looming upon the world with such cumulative power through a hundred
years, now with the evident intention (since the secession war)
to stay, and take a leading hand, for many a century to come, in
civilization's and humanity's eternal game. But alas! that very
investigation--the method of that investigation--is where the deficit
most surely and helplessly comes in. Let not Lord Coleridge and Mr.
Arnold (to say nothing of the illustrious actor) imagine that when
they have met and survey'd the etiquettical gatherings of our wealthy,
distinguish'd and sure-to-be-put-forward-on-such-occasions citizens
(New York, Boston, Philadelphia, &c., have certain stereotyped strings
of them, continually lined and paraded like the lists of dishes at
hotel tables--you are sure to get the same over and over again--it is
very amusing)--and the bowing and introducing, the receptions at
the swell clubs, the eating and drinking and praising and praising
back--and the next "day riding about Central Park, or doing the"
Public Institutions "--and so passing through, one after another,
the full-dress coteries of the Atlantic cities, all grammatical and
cultured and correct, with the toned-down manners of the gentlemen,
and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and finger-glasses--Let not our
eminent visitors, we say, suppose that, by means of these experiences,
they have "seen America," or captur'd any distinctive clew or purport
thereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats that lie within and
vitalize this Commonweal to-day--of the hard-pan purports and
idiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and triumphantly by its bulk of
men North and South, generation after generation, superficially
unconscious of their own aims, yet none the less pressing onward
with deathless intuition--those coteries do not furnish the faintest
scintilla. In the Old World the best flavor and significance of a
race may possibly need to be look'd for in its "upper classes," its
gentries, its court, its _etat major_. In the United States the rule
is revers'd. Besides (and a point, this, perhaps deepest of all,)
the special marks of our grouping and design are not going to be
understood in a hurry. The lesson and scanning right on the ground are
difficult; I was going to say they are impossible to foreigners--but I
have occasionally found the clearest appreciation of all, coming from
far-off quarters. Surely nothing could be more apt, not only for our
eminent visitors present and to come, but for home study, than the
following editorial criticism of the London _Times_ on Mr. Froude's
visits and lectures here a few years ago, and the culminating dinner
given at Delmonico's, with its brilliant array of guests:

"We read the list," says the _Times_, "of those who assembled to do
honor to Mr. Froude: there were Mr. Emerson, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Curtis,
Mr. Bryant; we add the names of those who sent letters of regret that
they could not attend in person--Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier. They
are names which are well known--almost as well known and as much
honor'd in England as in America; and yet what must we say in the end?
The American people outside this assemblage of writers is something
vaster and greater than they, singly or together, can comprehend. It
cannot be said of any or all of them that they can speak for their
nation. We who look on at this distance are able perhaps on that
account to see the more clearly that there are qualities of the
American people which find no representation, no voice, among these
their spokesmen. And what is true of them is true of the English class
of whom Mr. Froude may be said to be the ambassador. Mr. Froude is
master of a charming style. He has the gift of grace and the gift of
sympathy. Taking any single character as the subject of his study, he
may succeed after a very short time in so comprehending its workings
as to be able to present a living figure to the intelligence and
memory of his readers. But the movements of a nation, the, _voiceless
purpose of a people which cannot put its own thoughts into words, yet
acts upon them in each successive generation_--these things do not lie
within his grasp.... The functions of literature such as he represents
are limited in their action; the influence he can wield is artificial
and restricted, and, while he and his hearers please and are pleas'd
with pleasant periods, his great mass of national life will flow
around them unmov'd in its tides by action as powerless as that of the
dwellers by the shore to direct the currents of the ocean."

A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded, permanently
treasur'd by our literary classes and educators. (The gestation, the
youth, the knitting preparations, are now over, and it is full time
for definite purpose, result.) How few think of it, though it is the
impetus and background of our whole Nationality and popular life. In
the present brief memorandum I very likely for the first time awake
"the intelligent reader" to the idea and inquiry whether there isn't
such a thing as the distinctive genius of our democratic New World,
universal, immanent, bringing to a head the best experience of the
past--not specially literary or intellectual--not merely "good," (in
the Sunday School and Temperance Society sense,)-some invisible spine
and great sympathetic to these States, resident only in the average
people, in their practical life, in their physiology, in their
emotions, in their nebulous yet fiery patriotism, in the armies (both
sides) through the whole secession war--an identity and character
which indeed so far "finds no voice among their spokesmen."

To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears to-day, is even
yet, for its most important results, entirely in the tentative state;
its very formation-stir and whirling trials and essays more splendid
and picturesque, to my thinking, than the accomplish'd growths and
shows of other lands, through European history, or Greece, or all the
past. Surely a New World literature, worthy the name, is not to be,
if it ever comes, some fiction, or fancy, or bit of sentimentalism or
polish'd work merely by itself, or in abstraction. So long as such
literature is no born branch and offshoot of the Nationality, rooted
and grown from its roots, and fibred with its fibre, it can never
answer any deep call or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught Republic
is wiser than its teachers. The best literature is always a result of
something far greater than itself--not the hero, but the portrait of
the hero. Before there can be recorded history or poem there must
be the transaction. Beyond the old masterpieces, the Iliad, the
interminable Hindu epics, the Greek tragedies, even the Bible itself,
range the immense facts of what must have preceded them, their _sine
qua non_--the veritable poems and masterpieces, of which, grand as
they are, the word-statements are but shreds and cartoons.

For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest, most
stupendous processes ever known, ever perform'd by man or nation,
on the largest scales and in countless varieties, are now and here
presented. Not as our poets and preachers are always conventionally
putting it--but quite different. Some colossal foundry, the flaming
of the fire, the melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surging
crowds of workmen shifting from point to point, the murky shadows,
the rolling haze, the discord, the crudeness, the deafening din, the
disorder, the dross and clouds of dust, the waste and extravagance
of material, the shafts of darted sunshine through the vast open
roof-scuttles aloft-the mighty castings, many of them not yet fitted,
perhaps delay'd long, yet each in its due time, with definite place
and use and meaning--Such, more like, is a symbol of America.

After all of which, returning to our starting-point, we reiterate, and
in the whole Land's name, a welcome to our eminent guests. Visits like
theirs, and hospitalities, and hand-shaking, and face meeting face,
and the distant brought near--what divine solvents they are! Travel,
reciprocity, "interviewing," intercommunion of lands--what are they
but Democracy's and the highest Law's best aids? O that our own
country--that every land in the world--could annually, continually,
receive the poets, thinkers, scientists, even the official magnates,
of other lands, as honor'd guests. O that the United States,
especially the West, could have had a good long visit and explorative
jaunt, from the noble and melancholy Tourgueneff, before he died--or
from Victor Hugo--or Thomas Carlyle. Castelar, Tennyson, any of the
two or three great Parisian essayists--were they and we to come face
to face, how is it possible but that the right understanding would
ensue?

THE BIBLE AS POETRY

I suppose one cannot at this day say anything new, from a literary
point of view, about those autochthonic bequests of Asia--the Hebrew
Bible, the mighty Hindu epics, and a hundred lesser but typical
works; (not now definitely including the Iliad--though that work was
certainly of Asiatic genesis, as Homer himself was--considerations
which seem curiously ignored.) But will there ever be a time or
place--ever a student, however modern, of the grand art, to whom those
compositions will not afford profounder lessons than all else of their
kind in the garnerage of the past? Could there be any more opportune
suggestion, to the current popular writer and reader of verse, what
the office of poet was in primeval times--and is yet capable of being,
anew, adjusted entirely to the modern?