How vain is human strength to flee,
Thou mighty One! from thee!
Thou hid’st the scenes that lie the grave beyond—
Thou hast the secrets of the world unseen;
Where the loved ones, the beautiful, the fond,
And all who tossed on life’s wild sea have been,
Have gone in silence at thy dreadful call,
Great conqueror of all!
Empires are crumbled at thy dread command,
And nations rise and nourish but to fall;
Even earth is thine; and thou e’er long shalt stand,
And mark its wealth, and power, and beauty, all
Fade and depart as sunbeams in the heaven
Vanish and die at even!
The midnight storm, the tempest raging high,
The sweeping pestilence, and fell disease,
Rude winter’s blast, and balmy summer’s sigh,
Earth, and the sea whose murmurs never cease,
All are but agents of thy sovereign will,
Thy bidding to fulfil.
Couldst thou to man’s earth-fettered soul reveal
The bliss thou bringest to the pure in heart,
Would sudden horror o’er his spirit steal,
When called at last with low-born joys to part?
Would he not rather sigh for that bless’d shore,
Where death is known no more?
Stern Power! though others shudder at thy tread,
And vainly seek thy arrow to evade,
Before thy stroke I fain would bow my head,
Nor grieve to see my transient pleasures fade:
In thy embrace my sorrows all shall cease,
For in the grave is peace!
Our schooner was ‘up’ for Charleston by the first fair wind; but the captain was fastidious, and the only fair wind was directly aft. A point or two off would not do, unless it had been blowing for a day or two and was likely to continue till the captain could land his passengers in Charleston. Running in on the Georgia coast was always very delightful to the passengers, but not at all so to Captain S——. We had taken berths in the schooner about the middle of April, and when the first week in May had passed by, we began to think it would be difficult to find the precise article of air which the captain desired. During this time it seemed to have become coquettish, giving us all kinds of northerly, all varieties of east, and a preponderance of westerly wind, finishing off with a sirocco from the south-west, (‘a Boston east wind boiled,’ and the only unpleasant summer wind on the coast,) after which it stopped short; the sand and the orange blossoms settled again, and every thing hung perpendicular. The next morning a puff came up from the south in a very blustering manner, as though it had an immense capital to back it, but proved very short-winded. Our little craft thinking to beat us, shook its sails out right and left, and dashed out of the harbor, rounding the point in a handsome manner; but before reaching the bar it slacked away, till ‘small by degrees and beautifully less,’ it came to a dead stand; and the same evening we dashed back again with a no’th-east-by-east behind us, to the great delight of promenaders on the sea-wall and the public in general. Ladies rode through the streets at a hard-gallop; little niggers crept under balconies; and an individual who shall be nameless performed a feat with a certain Di. Vernon of that ilk, which resulted in a bill the next morning of some odd dollars for extra motion, and a severe lesson upon the moralities of fast-riding. The mid-day weather at this time was decidedly summerish, the temperature having the feel of about seventy in our latitude, but ranging there from eighty to ninety degrees.
We were beginning the summer custom of gathering every morning to meet the ‘doctor’ (sea-breeze) on the square, only a short walk below, which I prolonged on the sea-wall to the little schooner, examined the labels on the berths, crushed an orange at the corner shop, and lounged up to the nine-pin alley to close up the ‘unfinished business.’ After bowling, if it was too warm to invent any thing that would not be forgotten before dinner, the old routine was the order of the day; and back-gammon or flirtation had it, according as we were nearer the Florida House or the one ‘round the corner.’ The thirty or forty others who had helped make the winter pleasant, had been gone for weeks, and our little parties for bathing or riding, or any other trifling matter which might be better than a cigar on the piazza, had that snug kind of personality which is so much more pleasant than safe, that I half-wished the thirty or forty had gone much sooner than they did.
I was sitting on the piazza one morning with a number of un-appropriated blank hours before me, a little embarrassed whether to tease the big bear in the yard or lean over and give up to it, with the old dog who was snapping at flies on the floor, when it struck me as something very fresh, that as the wind was still two points off, I could make one more sally into the country. Before the thought had time to cool, my horse was brought to the door, and looking about for a companion, I asked Miss H——, who hesitated and declined; but I found one in Lieut. T——, who was that morning going over to Picolata. The distance is eighteen miles, through an unbroken pine-barren, (one opening only, at Fort Searle, twelve miles out,) and an under-growth of palmettos of just sufficient height for Indians to hide in. For a long time the travel over all that portion of the territory lying south of a line fifty miles north of us, was with an escort of fifteen or twenty men, who moved at a slow rate, a hundred yards apart, so as not to present to the Indians more than one or two shots at a time from any one point.
Notwithstanding the precaution of a strong escort every day, out or in, on the Picolata road, there had been more downright murdering there than in any other part of the territory, some having been shot down almost in sight of Augustine. This was not escort-day, but if it had been, our horses were not disposed to be six hours in the sun, in going so short a distance. The little grey steed that I had been using for some weeks was not by any means a lady’s article, but he had been alongside of them in many a ride on the beach, and so learned the trick of combining the playful and gallant in a very pretty manner. His ambition was to be always up to the mark, and a head more if his companion would allow it; but at the least indication of rivalry his head went down, and nothing less than iron muscles could keep him from his twelve-mile gait. If not well-matched it was his delight to dash ahead for a hundred yards, and then stop and look back, or perhaps return, make a short sweep around his companion, jog on sociably for a little, and then repeat the manœuvre; and in doing this my arms were only sufficient to guide him a little in case he attempted the barren, and keep him clear of the saw-palmetto. T——‘s animal belonged at Picolata. The quarter-master at the barracks had sent him up to be taken over, and as we mounted at the Florida House, I could not help smiling as I recognized the same fellow that the quarter-master had politely sent me for a similar purpose some time previous. He was long-bodied and very long-limbed, and having been brought up in camp, his motion had all the stiffness of the marching step. His point, any two points being given, was to make the straight line between them in the shortest possible time, in an unbroken trot; but there was no danger of his breaking it; he was not capable of a gallop; his limbs couldn’t be brought to it.
We passed out of town at an easy pace, talking over the last night’s ball; and while crossing the bridge the lieutenant called my attention to his saddle, a cast-iron frame thinly covered with leather, leaving large rib-spaces on the back, which he commended as being delightfully cool. ‘But, my dear fellow,’ said I, ‘why didn’t you get a blanket?’ He replied that after getting accustomed to it, it was much easier than the padded saddle. ‘Do you know,’ said I, ‘that that horse is a trotter?’ ‘I’m used to trotters,’ said he. ‘You ease up a little in the stirrups?’ ‘No; contrary to rules.’
We now entered the barren, and the moment the horses dipped their hoofs in the sand, the old ‘forker,’ seeing the problem to be solved, took the bit in his teeth and started for Picolata. At the first dash the forker went ahead. He had laid his course, as they say at sea, and no up-helm or down-helm had the slightest effect upon him. His mind was made up; no wavering, no playfulness, no scarishness, no looking to the right or left. Picolata was the point; ‘no two ways’ to Picolata; he was on the right way, and he was the horse to do it in double-quick time. The little grey had evidently thought it was too hot for any thing in his line; but as soon as he noticed any thing like game in his companion, his head went down as usual; and after a little hard running, we brushed by the old fellow, made the requisite heading, wheeled, passing the forker on the larboard quarter, and made the circuit, to his great satisfaction. ‘Here we go!’ said I, as we passed him again; and this time the grey kept ‘head on’ for some miles, till at length I succeeded in stopping him, and looked back. The forker was coming in a bee-line, T—— bobbing up and down ‘with a short uneasy motion,’ endeavoring to make a seat of his jacket which he had stripped off; and as he came nearer I noticed that he was trying to look very cool and comfortable. We waited till they came up, but there was no stopping; the forker went by without winking or noticing the grey in the slightest manner.
Easing up on the reins till we came abreast, ‘How are you now?’ said I. ‘Oh, this is nothing’ said T——, turning round a very little with a highly-charged expression of face; ‘a little rough; yes, a little—little rough; but you observe my seat, Sir—West Point?’ ‘O yes,’ said I; ‘very fine—and cool, I suspect.’ But there was not much chance of intelligible conversation. T—— kept on talking, but his remarks, meant for the quarter-master, were so barbarously broken, that I could only guess occasionally at some exclamations, which for point and emphasis were highly military. Our rate of travel was not, you observe, from five to ten, or from eight to twelve miles an hour, but exactly ten. That was the forker’s motion, from which there was no deviation. If he was struck, his heels went up suddenly and very high, but it was no impediment. He evidently took the blow as a military order for a rear motion; nothing more, and no occasion for malice. Now, if any body wishes to know about the face of the country; how bounded, what products, etc., between Augustine and Picolata, I am unable to give the slightest information from any notes taken that morning. My perceptions were all in medias res; and I only remember seeing a wild turkey that we scared up, and an alligator that made for the water while we were a quarter of a mile distant, and splashed in in a great fright some time after we had passed him.
In little more than an hour we entered the opening at Fort Searle so suddenly, that I heard the orderly report, as he marched up to the commanding officer: ‘Two gentlemen from Augustine, Sir.’ ‘Very well,’ said the officer; and he turned to receive the lieutenant, but T—— was past all dignities. Stretching himself on a bench he ordered brandy-and-water, and as that was not quite the thing, added a little cherry bounce, and finished with old Jamaica, and presently went round a corner with a tumbler of the latter; but whether for external or internal application, I am unable to say. Without stopping long enough to get stiff, we mounted again, and after a few closing flourishes from the little grey entered the city of Picolata, consisting of one house, and were greeted with the chattering of ten thousand black-birds all in full chorus. A boat coming up very opportunely, we took passage in her that night, and next morning were at Pilatka.
A few miles south of that place, there is a small plantation on the river that had been deserted and the house burned down by the Indians during the first winter of the war. Some weeks previous, while at Pilatka, Colonel —— had politely offered me a sergeant and nine men to visit the place, but shortly after reaching it they complained of the musquitoes and rode back to the camp, leaving me with the guide and Gen. W—— to finish the survey. I now found a young physician who was waiting an escort for Tampa Bay, and we went out alone; and after studying trails for a long time, and taking directions by the compass, we came in sight of the hammock when some miles distant, and entering by a winding road that was arched over so as to be almost dark as night, we emerged, after a quarter of a mile, in a little round spot in the wilderness, which for quiet beauty was beyond any thing I had ever before seen. There were some forty acres in the circle, and yet it looked not unlike a dollar in a tumbler, so high and dense was the forest. The magnolias, a hundred feet in air, were in full blossom, their white tops making an unbroken wreath over the area, while the lower branches of the live-oaks were loaded with the long moss, hanging like curtains, motionless in the bright light, and not a single bird on the tree-tops to break the perfect charm of the place. Beautiful, very beautiful! but how strangely still! A squirrel chattering, or the rat-tat of a woodpecker, would have been something; but there was not a single voice out; not so much as the hum of a musquito, though it was the hottest of summer days.
Why didn’t the oaks speak, or the magnolias? If they had, shaken their white heads, and raising their trailing garments, had all burst out in some grand anthem, I should only have thought it quite in character; and if personally addressed, it would have seemed entirely a matter of course. I should have replied civilly, begged pardon for intruding in so informal a manner, and backed out as soon as possible; and perhaps the click of a rifle would have produced the same effect. We rode around the little gem, and found the charred timbers where the house stood, and a few orange trees that the Indians had left; but the cool spring was so hid in the high grass, that we were forced back with parched lips to the flat water at Pilatka, which place we reached in time for a late dinner; and just as the evening set in I took passage again for Picolata.
All the boats running on the river were in the government service, and ours at this time was loaded fore and aft with a company of dragoons, bound to Black Creek. As we left the dock, another large boat came out in a pompous manner, and gave us chase; and as the day had been intensely hot, a large line of clouds rolled over the bluff at the same time, probably from the gulf en route to the Atlantic, and moving slowly across the river, gathered their black folds around the pine-tops, shutting all up, river and forest, every thing but our chimneys, in utter darkness. And now began a scene which combined little and great in a manner quite fantastic. Boatmen swearing and yelling to each other as the boats came near collision, and that infernal scream sounding off through the pine barrens like some spirit newly damned; horses prancing and threshing on the bows; men growling at cards, and over head thunder and lightning leading off the storm in a very brilliant and point-blank manner; all which was quite rousing and melo-dramatic. While I was noticing the pilot’s manner of steering by flashes, a gentleman came up, whom I recognised as a resident of St. Augustine; and as he had a horse at Picolata, we agreed to go over together that night, as the darkness was rather favorable, and the road being sandy, we could ride rapidly without being heard.
It was late in the evening when we reached Picolata; and with a good deal of uproar, men shouting, steam puffing, and half a dozen blacks gesticulating on shore, we each made a fortunate leap to the dock; and walking up to the camp in a blaze of pitch-pine, we ordered our horses, and at eleven o’clock entered the pine woods for St. Augustine. ‘I wouldn’t go over to-night,’ said the man as he brought up my horse; ‘the rascals have been seen about here within a day or two; for God’s sake, Sir, don’t go over to-night!’ But this only gave a keener zest to the ride. I had carried with me every where a double-barrelled gun, but I had found it an awkward companion, and having been all day in the saddle I concluded to leave it to be sent over, and mean time trust to my friend’s pistols.
The rain had ceased, and the wind had gone down, but the night was still so dark that we could only guess at the road by the strip of light over head, and now and then a flash, which would light up the avenue for a long distance ahead, and then leave it still darker than before. As we entered the barren at an easy trot, I was pleased to notice that the darkness or the storm had tamed my little grey into a very sober humor, and his companion also was in a very moralizing way. There was no starting at the lightning, no attempt at running, but with a noiseless tread they stepped daintily in the sand, pointing their ears hither and yon, and as it seemed to me, affecting a little scarishness, though what they could hear when the forest was so breathless, it was difficult to imagine; but every little while they would both leap some fifteen feet across the road, (which couldn’t be affectation) shiver a little, and then pick their way carefully as before. We could see nothing, hear nothing; but horses are keen snuffers, and they might smell when we couldn’t; but what was singular, the vaulting was done from the same side of the road.
We were still keeping up a little small-talk, when some miles in the forest, both horses, without any jump or start of any kind, stopped suddenly; and looking ahead, we saw something moving stealthily toward us. My companion cocked a pistol and challenged; but we only heard a little grumbling, and I counted him a dead man; but before we had time to guess about it, something brushed by, and by a flash of light we saw a glitter of buttons, and a man on horseback. Whoever or whatever he was, we saw him but a moment, and he was soon out of hearing. With a remark or two upon the fool-hardiness of the man, we quickened our pace, and went on at a dashing rate, abreast and Indian fashion, just as it happened; now one leading and now the other, according to the wind of our horses; and in this manner we were passing the most dangerous part of the road, when there was a sudden whizzing about our ears, and the report of half a dozen rifles. The little grey reared and plunged and I landed—where, I don’t know; but the next that I remember, I was standing alone in the pine barren. I had been running for a long time; how far I couldn’t tell, being conscious only of dodging often from one tree to another. On looking about I remarked that the clouds had opened a little, and that there was nothing to be seen or heard in any direction. Presently I heard a yell, and looking around, a strapping Indian, with his rifle drawn to his eye, fired as I faced him, and the ball parted a lock of my hair in a manner very embarrassing. I levelled upon the rascal, but missed fire; the rain had wet the powder in the tube. The fellow took no pains to hide himself, but was very coolly loading again, and had got his ball ready, when I once more started off at full speed.
It was a sharp race, and a warm one. After running a mile or more, there was a small stream to be crossed; and with a few well-balanced steps on a half-decayed log that lay at the edge of the water, I reached the opposite bank just as my pursuer stepped on at the other end. Hearing a strange kind of shock, I turned and saw the big six-footed animal astride the log, twisting and writhing about in great agony. He had slipped and fallen in such a manner as to pain him almost beyond endurance. I stood on the bank and laughed at him; and—shall I confess it?—I tried half a dozen more caps at the fellow, with a most savage deliberateness; to all which he paid not the slightest attention; but as his strength came gradually back, I took to my heels again, and fortunately reached the highway….
The last ten miles of our ride that night were passed over in a very headlong manner: we stopped only once, as we heard the cry of some hounds on the south side, and then on again, keeping our horses just within their speed, till at the worst place on the road, we gave up the reins and let them go. In less than two hours from Picolata, we snuffed the salt air again; and reaching the open country, walked our horses leisurely into St. Augustine.
As we entered the city my companion left me; and as I drew rein on the square, I noticed that the schooner was still at the dock, and all about the city was quiet and undisturbed. The storm had gone by, its skirts hanging on the eastern horizon, and forming a back-ground to the light of the light-house, while the city and bay were bright in the starlight; and if stars shine any brighter in the small hours, they were doing their best then. All looked pleasant and quite at home, even to the sentry at the corner; and there was nothing, you would say, to make one sad; but as I turned the corner I drew a breath of such yawning profundity that the old dog at the Florida House started up and growled impromptu. That dog had held a stout nigger all night in the yard, not long before; but fortunately he knew me, and after smelling, to make sure that all was right, he followed me into an out-house, when I rolled Bob out of a cradle, and giving a general order in a low voice for a warm bath in the morning, found my quarters and went to bed.
At sunrise the next morning I was half awake, grasping at the skirts of a pleasant dream, when Bob came in, blew about the room for awhile, and cried out ‘Massa, did you order um wom bath?’ ‘No; clear out! Eh? warm bath? Yes; warm bath, to be sure.’ And Bob went out, and came in directly with two wenches and a warm bath. ‘How’s the wind Bob?’ ‘De wind?’ ‘Yes; where’s the wind’ ‘Dun know, Sah.’ ‘Well, go out in the balcony and see where it comes from.’ Bob shouted through the open window, ‘De wind come from de Souf.’
I made but one spring, and the blacks vanished. Going below, I found the house in commotion. The schooner was to sail at nine o’clock, and the signal would be the report of a two-pounder which the captain carried on his quarter-deck. At eight o’clock I had been all over town from the fort to the powder house; looked in at the church, where were some fifteen or twenty kneeling, silent and devotional; and was seated at breakfast, when we heard the captain’s gun, an hour before the time. ‘My God!’ said I, ‘I can’t go without seeing Mrs. J—— and kind Mrs. G——; and then there’s the pretty Di. Vernon!’ (I had bade them good-by a dozen times.) I rushed into the street, and seeing half-a-dozen ladies not far off, gave them a touch-and-go shake; rushed up a wrong street, then back again, and finally came out on the square and saw the little schooner’s sails bellied out full; passengers waving their handkerchiefs, and the people all around crying out to me to hurry, or I should lose my chance. But I didn’t hurry. The idea of hurry, after we had waited six weeks! That captain too, had he been asleep all this time, and just awaked? No; I did not hurry, but walked leisurely across the square, looking over my shoulder occasionally to see if —— was any where in sight, for she had promised to be at the dock; and passing over the long wharf in the same stubborn way, I stepped on board the schooner with a stiffer upper lip than I ever remember to have had in that climate. The moment that my feet touched the deck, the ropes slipped and away flew the schooner; but in all this ‘heat, haste and hunger,’ from a half-swallowed breakfast, and consignments of pacquets and kind wishes that were left behind, the sentiment of my last look was burnt to a cinder.
It cannot be that earth was given for our abiding place,
Or that for nought we’re darkly doomed the storms of life to face;
It cannot be our being’s cast from ’neath the ocean wave
Of vast Eternity, to sink again within its grave.
Else tell me why the aspiring thoughts, the glorious hopes of man,
Which spring up from his ‘heart of hearts,’ brook not earth’s narrow span;
Oh! tell me why unsatisfied forever here they roam,
And seem to claim in higher spheres a refuge and a home.
Why is it that the rainbow and the tints of evening clouds
Dispel the mists in which the world our spirits still enshrouds?
The chord they strike!—oh, tell me not that it can be of earth—
The golden heart-string that they touch is not of mortal birth:
The very buds and blossoms, and the balmy summer air,
Awake within us shadows vague of things more bright and fair;
’Tis almost like remembrance—oh! would that I could tell
The meaning of that hidden charm my spirit knows so well!
A simple tone can rouse it; a smile, or even a sigh
Can make the ghost-like shadows flit before my dreaming eye;
’Tis one of life’s deep mysteries; in vain we seek to trace
The hidden spell’s dark origin that chains our feeble race:
But, oh! may we not fancy, may we not sweetly think,
’Tis between us and another world a dim mysterious link?
May we not hope that secret chord from God to man was given,
To shadow forth within his soul pure images of heaven?
The very stars which pierce the veil far o’er this world of sin,
And seem to give faint visions of a paradise within,
In all their hallowed loveliness, their vague and mystic lore,
Oh! do they not seem beckoning to a purer, holier shore?
And tell me why the well-loved eyes which here upon us beam
Gleam radiantly o’er our path, then vanish like a dream;
My Mother! oh! my Mother! shall they find belief in me,
Who tell me there’s no happy land where I shall meet with thee?
I know there is a heaven which is peopled not with shades,
Where the buds and flowers ne’er wither, and the rainbow never fades:
Where the mourners cease from mourning, and in smiles of joy are drest,
Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest:
Oh! there is gladness in the thought; ’tis deep, deep joy to me
To feel that those I love so well I there again shall see;
To know that though around them now my very heart-strings twine,
They’ll be forever with me there—forever more be mine!
Good-by, Old Year! we wait to greet the New,
And hope within its circling hours to see
More of content and less of misery.
Yet, haply, all life’s toilsome journey through,
No happier scenes than thine will meet our view;
If so, we humbly bow to Heaven’s decree,
With hearts, though wounded, still as firm and true
As when we first knelt to the Deity.
Many will weep, Old Year! while thou dost lay
Thine aged head within the voiceless tomb.
We weep, yet on the clouds of grief doth play
The bow of promise, lighting up their gloom.
Not so with many hearts that crushed and bleeding lie,
Whose only thought of gladness is like thee to die!
Brooklyn, Dec., 1843.
Sir: My friends abroad complain that my last letter reached them in small type, most pernicious to English eyes, and half hidden among the rubbish of your editorial remarks, literary notices, and chit-chat with your million butterfly correspondents. Unless I am better served in future, I shall be compelled to transfer my patronage to the post-office, dangerous as it is, and liable to the occasional interference of American citizens. I have conferred with an attorney, who tells me that there is just ground for an action for breach of trust, in the unfaithful performance of the duty you have undertaken. It remains with yourself to avert any such consequence, by attending more strictly in future to the proper conveyance of my correspondence.
During the last week I have received a note from the gentleman who stole the letters. This I enclose to you; and as I do not know where to address him, I will simply reply to him, through the Magazine, that although I have the highest respect for his talents, I would see him several miles on his way to the devil, before I would comply with his polite request.
Truly yours, etc.,
My Dear Friend: You will be surprised that I have found out your address, and indeed it required some sagacity. But now that I have, you will pardon me for broaching a matter in which we are mutually concerned. You must be aware how horribly I have been used by the Editor of the Knickerbocker, and all through the share I have unfortunately had in your troublesome correspondence. He still persists in refusing to pay me a proper remuneration for my services, for which hitherto, I am sorry to say, I have received only insult and vexation. I have been advised by my lawyer to institute a suit at law against the miscreant, and matters are now in progress toward that desirable result.
In the mean time I have thought proper to apply to your sense of justice for a partial compensation of the trouble you have caused me. My character has been assailed, my tranquillity disturbed, and my valuable time taken up, without a penny of remuneration. Now, Sir, if you think fit to transmit to the address of ‘M. R.,’ through the post-office, a hundred dollars ($100), I will overlook what is past, and resign solely to yourself what interest I possess in your epistolary intercourse through the pages of that infamous Magazine. With sentiments of esteem,
Yours, as before,
‘So shaken as we are, so wan with care,’ we begin to wish that we had never undertaken the publication of these letters. Between two impending law-suits how shall we muster courage to keep on the even tenor of our way? Even our staunch friend, the anonymous Public, torments us with frequent accusatory epistles, charging us with dulness, impiety, and irreverence for American institutions. All these we must lay on the back of our Englishman, whose compatriots we confess are apt to assume a latitude of style hardly tolerated among us. In the mean time, gentle Public, respected Cockney, and worthy Mail-Robber, we cry you mercy all round!
Good Cassio, Charles, Mercutio, Benedick,
(Of all your names I scarce know which to pick,)
Colossal relic of the nobler time
When great John Philip trod the scene sublime;
Ay, true Colossus, for like that which strode
From shore to shore, while seas beneath him flowed,
You seem to stand between two generations,
High o’er the tide of Time and its mutations;
Be not alarmed; this comes not from a dun,
Nor any scheming, transatlantic Bunn,
Tempting with golden hopes your waning years,
Like ‘certain stars shot madly from their spheres,’
Like Mathews or old Dowton, to expose
The shank all shrunken from its youthful hose;
So boldly read, howe’er it make you sigh,
Nor manager nor creditor am I;
Yet in some sort you are indeed my debtor,
And owe me for my pains at least a letter.
Not long ago, conversing at the Club
Which Londoners with ‘Garrick’s’ title dub,
We both confessed, and each with equal grief,
That poor Melpomene was past relief;
So many symptoms of her dotage shows
This nineteenth century of steam and prose.
Nor in herself, said you, entirely lies
Th’ incurable complaint whereof she dies;
’Tis not alone that play-wrights are too poor
For gods or men or columns to endure;4
Nor that all players in a mould are cast,
Every new Roscius aping still the last;
Nor yet that Taste’s too delicate excess
Demands perfection and despises less;
But mere indifference, that worst disease,
From bard and actor take all power to please.
How strive to please? when all their friends that were,
To empty benches empty sounds prefer;
And seek, like bees attracted by a gong,
The fairy-land of tip-toe and of song;
Whether a voice of more than earthly strain
Be newly sent by Danube or the Seine,
Or some aërial, thistle-downy thing
Float from La Scala on a zephyr’s wing.
Say, might a Siddons, conjured from the tomb,
Again the scene of her renown illume?
Could her high art, (ay, even at half price,)
The crowd from ‘La Sonnambula’ entice?
No; dance and song, the Drama’s deadly plagues,
Rubini’s notes, and Ellsler’s heav’nly legs,
Would nightly still bring amateurs in flocks,
To watch the bravos of the royal box.
While thus, between our filberts and our wine,
We mourned with sighs your mistress’s decline,
You half indulged the fond imagination,
That what seemed death was but her emigration.
Perhaps, quoth you, and ’twas a bold ‘perhaps,’
Ere many years of exile shall elapse,
The wand’ring maid may find in foreign lands
More loving hearts and hospitable hands.
Perchance her feet, with furry buskins graced,
May shuddering walk the cold Canadian waste,
And rest contented with a bleak repose
In shrubless climes of never-thawing snows.
Yes, in those woods that gird the northern lakes,
Pathless as yet, and wild with shaggy brakes,
Or in the rank savannahs of the south,
Or sea-like prairies near Missouri’s mouth,
Fate may conduct her to some sacred spot,
Where to resume her sceptre and to—squat.
Some happier settlement and simpler race,
Where, though her worship lack its ancient grace,
New days may dawn, like those of royal Bess,
And every stream a Stratford shall possess;
Where, though in marshes resonant with frogs,
And rudely housed in temples built of logs,
The nymph, regenerate in her classic robe,
May see revived the ‘Fortune’ and the ‘Globe.’
Such was the dream your fancy dared to mould
Of what yourself had witnessed here of old;
When with your twins—your Fanny and your fame—
Among our cousins of the west you came;
But you mistook a momentary fashion
For a deep-seated and enduring passion:
Now to your own a friend’s experience add,
And judge what grounds your glorious vision had.
Beyond that Cape which mortals christen Cod,
Where drifted sand-heaps choke the scanty sod,
Round the rough shore a crooked city clings,
Sworn foe to queens, it seems, as well as kings.
On three steep hills it soars, as Rome on seven,
To claim a near relationship with heaven.
Fit home for saints! the very name it bears
A kind of sacred origin declares;
Ta’en, as I find by hunting records o’er,
From one Botolfo, canonized of yore,5
Whom bards have left nor epitaph nor verse on,
Though in his day, sans doubt, a decent person:
This town, in olden times of stake and flame,
A famous nest of Puritans became;
Sad, rigid souls, who hated as they ought
The carnal arms wherewith the Devil fought;
Dancing and dicing, music, and whate’er
Spreads for humanity the hell-born snare.
Stage-plays especially their hearts abhorred,
Holding the Muses hateful to the Lord,
Save when old Sternhold and his brother bard
Oped their hoarse throats and strained an anthem hard.
From that angelic race of perfect men,
(Sure seraphs never trod the world ’till then,)
Descends the race to whom the sway is given
Of the world’s morals by confiding Heaven.
These of each virtue know the market price,
And shrewdly count the cost of every vice;
So, to their prudent adage faithful still,
Are honest more from policy than will.
As if with heaven a bargain they had made
To practise goodness and to be well paid.
They too, devoutly as their fathers did,
Sin, sack, and sugar equally forbid;
Holding each hour unpardonably spent
Which on the ledger leaves no monument;
While oft they read, with small but pious wit,
Th’ inscription o’er the play-house portals writ,
In a bad sense—‘The entrance to the Pit.’
Among this godly tribe it was my fate
To view a triumph they enjoyed of late,
Which, lest the chroniclers who come hereafter
Omit, and cheat our children of their laughter,
I, a Daguerre-like sketcher of the time,
Will faintly shadow as I can in rhyme.
Once these Botolphians, when their boards you trod,
Received you almost as a demi-god;
Rushed to the teeming rows in frantic swarms,
And rained applauses not in showers but storms.
But should you now their fickle welcome ask,
Faint shouts would greet the veteran of the mask;
And ah! what anguish would it be to search
For your old play-house in a bastard church!
To find the dome wherein your hour you strutted,
Altered and maimed and circumcised and gutted;
Become in truth, all metaphor to drop,
A mongrel thing—half chapel and half shop.
Long had the augur and the priest foretold
The sad reverse they doomed it to behold;
Long had the school-boy, as he passed it by,
And maiden viewed it with presaging eye;
Oft had the wealthy deacon with a frown
Glared on the pile he longed to batter down,
And reckoned oft, with sanctimonious air,
What rents ’twould fetch if purified with prayer;6
While through the green-room whispered rumors went,
That heaven and earth were on its ruin bent.
Too just a fear! The vision long foreseen
Has come at last; behold the fallen queen!
The queen of passion, stripped of all her pride,
Discrowned, indignant from her temple glide.
With draggling robe, slip-shod, her buskin loose,
She flies a barren people’s cold abuse;
Summons her sister, who forbears to smile,
And leaves to rats the desecrated pile,
Which dogs and nags already had begun,
Unless by blows and hunger driv’n, to shun:
For well-bred curs and steeds genteel contemn
A stage which Taste had sunk too low for them;
Whereon the town had seen, without remorse,
A herd of bisons and a hairless horse!
Behind the two chief mourners of the band
A sad procession followed, hand in hand;
Heroes un-heroed, most unknightly knights,
Wand-broken fairies, disenchanted sprites;
Dukes no more ducal, even on the bill,
Milk-livered murd’rers too ill-fed to kill;
Mild-looking demons that a babe might daunt,
Witches and ghosts most naturally gaunt;
Lovers made pale by keener pangs than love’s,
Unspangled princesses with greasy gloves;
Wits very witless—grave comedians mute,
And silent sons of violin and flute.
After these down-look’d leaders of the show,
Who creep like Trajan’s Dacians, wan and slow,
Comes a long train of underlings that bear
Imperial robes that kings no more may wear;
With truncheons, helmets, thunder-bolts and casks
Of snow and lightning—bucklers, foils and masks.
As tow’rd the steep of Capitolian Jove
When chiefs victorious through the rabble strove,
With all their conquests in their trophies told,
And every battle mark’d with plundered gold;
When the whole glory of the war rolled by,
And gaping Rome seemed all one mighty eye,
Behind the living captives came the dead,
Poor noseless gods, and some without a head,
With pictures, ivory images and plumes,
And priceless tapestry from palace-looms;
Ev’n such, although Night’s alchymy no more
The crinkling tinsel turns to precious ore,
Appears the pomp of this discarded race,
As heaped with spoil they quit their ancient place,
Bearing their Lares with them as they go—
Two dusty statues and a bust or so;
With mail which once a Harry Fifth had on,
Triumphal cars with all the triumph gone;
Goblets of tin mixed up with Yorick’s bones,
Bags made of togas—barrows formed of thrones,
Whereon the majesty of Denmark sat;
Fie! Juliet’s petticoats in Wolsey’s hat!
Swords hacked at Bosworth, fasces, guns and spears
Rusted with blood before, and now with tears.
Enough of this: kind prompter, touch the bell!
Children of mirth and midnight, fare ye well!
The vision melts away, the motley crowd
Is veiled by Prospero in a passing cloud;
Like his dissolving pageantry they fade,
The vap’ry stuff whereof our dreams are made;
No more malignant winter to beguile,
Nor start the virgin’s tear, the judge’s smile;
Save when some annalist, like me, recalls
The ancient fame of those degraded walls;
Or till an age less hateful to the Muse
To their old shape restore the anxious pews.
Sir: It has not been until after much reflection on my own part, and I must say, very civil encouragement on that of my friend Mr. John Waters, whose acquaintance I have chanced upon some months back, that I have determined to venture, either in the form of an advértisement extra, or possibly by your very polite admission of this self-introductory letter into your fashionable pages, to submit to the view of the more refined and intellectual part of the society of the Atlantic cities and particularly to that of New York, the peculiar claim that I conceive myself to possess upon their consideration and regard.
I have been hitherto deterred from taking this decisive step, as well by the very disturbed and almost turbulent state, which, since my arrival in this country, appears to have characterized its monetary concerns—alas! my dear Sir, those horrid yet necessary evils and grievances of life!—as by some expectations I had cause to entertain soon after I set foot upon your hospitable shores, of the immediate death of a maiden aunt in Cornwall, upon which incident, and her continued celibacy, depend very much all my present reversionary hopes.
The health of the old lady being however at my latest intelligence unexpectedly reinstated; the cotton crops coming forward as I understand to good markets, and the wonderful discovery having been made of converting western pork into sallad oil; the Tories being put down, and the banks having entered into what some time ago seemed the paulo post futurum of specie payments; I desire to share in the general tide of prosperity; I launch myself upon it at its flood, discard all reserve, and shall descend at once without farther preface into the midst of what I have to say.
I came out then some time ago ostensibly to kill a trout or two in some of your delicious streams; and indeed I may without presumption say en passant that few professors of the Rod excel me either in the niceties of my throw, the cool self-possession with which I take my fish, or the indomitable perseverance and perfect tact with which I drown and then land him with a single hair. I say ostensibly, for I have now no desire to conceal from you the ulterior objects that I had in view of either making a book to replenish my purse, or of establishing myself for life in this your rising land of freedom and big crops.
I have had ‘good luck to your fishing’ sung to me more than once by most sweet voices, and have realized it to my heart’s content in the way of trout; but this is all. Since I arrived in America there have been no less than three travelling historians upon the ground, with whose energy of conception, art of fabrication, facility of combination, capacity of bitterness and established name, I could not enter the lists. And as for matrimonial projects, foreigners seem to me to have no longer any hope of success in consequence of the entire pre-occupation of this walk of life by a regularly drilled and educated corps of young Americans, bred up avowedly with no other pursuit; who talk, think, dream of nothing else than fortune by marriage; and with a shrewdness and intelligence of calculation that entirely distance the foreigner, (but which seem wonderfully after the nuptials to forsake them in stocks of another description,) know at a glance the value, expectations, hopes, and dependencies of each young marriageable lady even before she comes out; so that instead of being able to accomplish a purpose of this kind, I find it quite as much as I can do to avoid falling in love beyond repeal with the refinement, gentleness, grace, and untold sweetness that distinguish the portionless beauties of New-York.
Indeed this class to which I have adverted of licensed fortune-hunters is so numerous; the fortunes themselves except to the initiated are so uncertain; and the entire want of that most useful profession, les courtiers de mariage, is so grievous to all incidental visitors, that I have often thought how admirable the arrangement would be, if the young ladies were at once to adopt as a fashionable decoration some tasteful head ornament, on which should be inscribed, in distinct but graceful characters, some one of such legends as the following, which should indicate the incontestible possessions of the wearer:
The young gentlemen might wear appended to the third button-hole of the left breast, epigrammatical notices of ‘THE EXPECTATIONS’ in which they so generally abound, as follows:
A young lady, whose nice tact and discriminating judgment are only rivalled by her sweetness of disposition and exquisite personal attractions, has divided the world of beaux into three generick classes:
The plan I propose would aid manifestly in the due classification of all assistants at a ball. It is not to be thought that the sex is governed by any mercenary motive; but in the present organization of society a certain degree of attention to the mode in which matrimonial establishments are to be sustained is absolutely imperative.
Conceive then Mr. Editor how this explicit course would remove the ordinary impediments on both sides. One single tour de Valse and the whole affair might be adjusted! The gentleman forsakes the lady’s eyes and fixes his own upon her tiara; she hers upon his eloquent button-hole. During the slow movement they have deciphered the mottoes, have ascertained, (no small desideratum in a crowded ball-room!) each the exact value of his or her partner; they have arrived in thought, as far as mere expediency goes, each at a decision; and are ready for question and answer at the close of the accelerated step.
By the way, as the waltz is now conducted, the employment of the eyes during the slow sentimental movement seems frequently to the lady a matter of some degree of embarrassment; and the method I propose would effectually remove any thing of the sort. There could be no want of an object on which to rest them; no looking with a fixed gaze over the partner’s shoulder; no consulting of the cornice; no care-fraught expression; no reluctant or displeased look, as if the lady would have fain declined; no indeterminate thoughts, no indefinite sensations; no languishment; and above all never more the portentous, the ominous look which often in that entrancing dance exhibits to us the mysticism of the Sybil, without one ray of her inspiration.
No; then would the lady look, read, decide, and dance the while. ‘This might do!’—then would she sparkle. ‘Ah this would never do!’—then would she become placid, tranquil, and complete her tour with contentment; for as I think some one else has before me wisely observed, the end of doubt is the beginning of repose. Then would the faces of the ladies generally become vastly more attractive than at present during the enjoyment of the waltz; for singular as may seem the remark, although I have assisted at several New-York balls, I have met two countenances only throughout the whole galaxy of beauty that, in dancing the Waltz, have indicated either joy or undisturbed gratification: the one, is that of a little sylph-like beam of pleasure, who might well carry upon her beautiful hair, ‘unincumbered lots,’ as her wedding-portion; who gains our hearts while she laughs at us; and who, because I chance to be within half a score of her father’s years, threatens to call me her vieux chéri—while the name of the other, if I dared write it, would recall the most tasteful and fashionable costumes of France, with the sweetest poetry of Scotland.
But alas my master! I have gone prattling on without saying a word of my own pretensions until my letter has gained such a length that I am forced to defer them to another number, while I subscribe myself, dear Mr. Editor of the Knickerbocker,
Your most faithful servant,