Complete Prose Works
including the press-work. Everything seem'd turning out well; (only
my own restlessness prevented me gradually establishing a permanent
property there.) I bought a good horse, and every week went all round
the country serving my papers, devoting one day and night to it. I never
had happier jaunts--going over to south side, to Babylon, down the south
road, across to Smithtown and Comac, and back home. The experiences of
those jaunts, the dear old-fashion'd farmers and their wives, the stops
by the hay-fields, the hospitality, nice dinners, occasional evenings,
the girls, the rides through the brush, come up in my memory to this
day.
I next went to the "Aurora" daily in New York city--a sort of free
lance. Also wrote regularly for the "Tattler," an evening paper. With
these and a little outside work I was occupied off and on, until I
went to edit the "Brooklyn Eagle," where for two years I had one of the
pleasantest sits of my life--a good owner, good pay, and easy work and
hours. The troubles in the Democratic party broke forth about those
times (1848-'49) and I split off with the radicals, which led to rows
with the boss and "the party," and I lost my place.
Being now out of a job, I was offer'd impromptu, (it happen'd between
the acts one night in the lobby of the old Broadway theatre near Pearl
street, New York city,) a good chance to go down to New Orleans on the
staff of the "Crescent," a daily to be started there with plenty of
capital behind it. One of the owners, who was north buying material,
met me walking in the lobby, and though that was our first acquaintance,
after fifteen minutes' talk (and a drink) we made a formal bargain, and
he paid me two hundred dollars down to bind the contract and bear my
expenses to New Orleans. I started two days afterwards; had a good
leisurely time, as the paper wasn't to be out in three weeks. I enjoy'd
my journey and Louisiana life much. Returning to Brooklyn a year or two
afterward I started the "Freeman," first as a weekly, then daily. Pretty
soon the secession war broke out, and I, too, got drawn in the current
southward, and spent the following three years there, (as memorandized
preceding.)
Besides starting them as aforementioned, I have had to do, one time or
another, during my life, with a long list of papers, at divers places,
sometimes under queer circumstances. During the war, the hospitals at
Washington, among other means of amusement, printed a little sheet among
themselves, surrounded by wounds and death, the "Armory Square Gazette,"
to which I contributed. The same long afterward, casually, to a paper--I
think it was call'd the "Jimplecute"--out in Colorado where I stopp'd at
the time. When I was in Quebec province, in Canada, in 1880, I went into
the queerest little old French printing-office near Tadousac. It was far
more primitive and ancient than my Camden friend William Kurtz's place
up on Federal street. I remember, as a youngster, several characteristic
old printers of a kind hard to be seen these days.
THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART
My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-day in
solitude and half-shade by the creek--returning mainly to two principal
centres. One of my cherish'd themes for a never-achiev'd poem has been
the two impetuses of man and the universe--in the latter, creation's
incessant unrest,[19] exfoliation, (Darwin's evolution, I suppose.)
Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all its visible, and still
more its invisible processes? Or what is humanity in its faith, love,
heroism, poetry, even morals, but _emotion_?
Note:
[19] "Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great Bear or
Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence the imaginary
Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form the bowl and handle
will have changed places. The misty nebulae are moving, and besides
are whirling around in great spirals, some one way, some another. Every
molecule of matter in the whole universe is swinging to and fro; every
particle of ether which fills space is in jelly-like vibration. Light
is one kind of motion, heat another, electricity another, magnetism
another, sound another. Every human sense is the result of motion; every
perception, every thought is but motion of the molecules of the brain
translated by that incomprehensible thing we call mind. The processes
of growth, of existence, of decay, whether in worlds, or in the minutest
organisms, are but motion."
BY EMERSON'S GRAVE
_May 6, '82._--We stand by Emerson's new-made grave without
sadness--indeed a solemn joy and faith, almost hauteur--our soul-benison
no mere
"Warrior, rest, thy task is done,"
for one beyond the warriors of the world lies surely symboll'd here.
A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and
clear as the sun. Nor does it seem so much Emerson himself we are here
to honor--it is conscience, simplicity, culture, humanity's attributes
at their best, yet applicable if need be to average affairs, and
eligible to all. So used are we to suppose a heroic death can only
come from out of battle or storm, or mighty personal contest, or amid
dramatic incidents or danger, (have we not been taught so for ages by
all the plays and poems?) that few even of those who most sympathizingly
mourn Emerson's late departure will fully appreciate the ripen'd
grandeur of that event, with its play of calm and fitness, like evening
light on the sea.
How I shall henceforth dwell on the blessed hours when, not long since,
I saw that benignant face, the clear eyes, the silently smiling mouth,
the form yet upright in its great age--to the very last, with so much
spring and cheeriness, and such an absence of decrepitude, that even the
term _venerable_ hardly seem'd fitting.
Perhaps the life now rounded and completed in its mortal development,
and which nothing can change or harm more, has its most illustrious
halo, not in its splendid intellectual or esthetic products, but as
forming in its entirety one of the few (alas! how few!) perfect and
flawless excuses for being, of the entire literary class.
We can say, as Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, It is not we who come to
consecrate the dead--we reverently come to receive, if so it may be,
some consecration to ourselves and daily work from him.
AT PRESENT WRITING--PERSONAL
_A letter to a German friend--extract_
_May 31, '82._--"From to-day I enter upon my 64th year. The paralysis
that first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain'd, with
varying course--seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably
continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; but my spirits
are first-rate. I go around in public almost every day--now and then
take long trips, by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles--live largely
in the open air--am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)--keep up my activity
and interest in life, people, progress, and the questions of the day.
About two-thirds of the time I am quite comfortable. What mentality
I ever had remains entirely unaffected; though physically I am a
half-paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. But the principal
object of my life seems to have been accomplish'd--I have the most
devoted and ardent of friends, and affectionate relatives--and of
enemies I really make no account."
AFTER TRYING A CERTAIN BOOK
I tried to read a beautifully printed and scholarly volume on "the
Theory of Poetry," received by mail this morning from England--but gave
it up at last for a bad job. Here are some capricious pencillings that
follow'd, as I find them in my notes:
In youth and maturity Poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp of
day; but as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous still
included,) the Dusk becomes the poet's atmosphere. I too have sought,
and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according. But as I
grow old, the half-lights of evening are far more to me.
The play of Imagination, with the sensuous objects of Nature for symbols
and Faith--with Love and Pride as the unseen impetus and moving-power of
all, make up the curious chess-game of a poem.
Common teachers or critics are always asking "What does it mean?"
Symphony of fine musician, or sunset, or sea-waves rolling up the
beach--what do they mean? Undoubtedly in the most subtle-elusive sense
they mean something--as love does, and religion does, and the best
poem;--but who shall fathom and define those meanings? (I do not intend
this as a warrant for wildness and frantic escapades--but to justify the
soul's frequent joy in what cannot be defined to the intellectual part,
or to calculation.)
At its best, poetic lore is like what may be heard of conversation in
the dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few broken
murmurs. What is not gather'd is far more--perhaps the main thing.
Grandest poetic passages are only to be taken at free removes, as we
sometimes look for stars at night, not by gazing directly toward them,
but off one side.
(_To a poetic student and friend._)--I only seek to put you in rapport.
Your own brain, heart, evolution, must not only understand the matter,
but largely supply it.
FINAL CONFESSIONS--LITERARY TESTS
So draw near their end these garrulous notes. There have doubtless
occurr'd some repetitions, technical errors in the consecutiveness of
dates, in the minutiae of botanical, astronomical, &c., exactness,
and perhaps elsewhere;--for in gathering up, writing, peremptorily
dispatching copy, this hot weather, (last of July and through August,
'82,) and delaying not the printers, I have had to hurry along, no time
to spare. But in the deepest veracity of all--in reflections of objects,
scenes, Nature's outpourings, to my senses and receptivity, as they
seem'd to me--in the work of giving those who care for it, some
authentic glints, specimen-days of my life--and in the _bona fide_
spirit and relations, from author to reader, on all the subjects
design'd, and as far as they go, I feel to make unmitigated claims.
The synopsis of my early life, Long Island, New York city, and so forth,
and the diary-jottings in the Secession war, tell their own story. My
plan in starting what constitutes most of the middle of the book, was
originally for hints and data of a Nature-poem that should carry one's
experiences a few hours, commencing at noon-flush, and so through
the after-part of the day--I suppose led to such idea by my own
life-afternoon now arrived. But I soon found I could move at more ease,
by giving the narrative at first hand. (Then there is a humiliating
lesson one learns, in serene hours, of a fine day or night. Nature seems
to look on all fixed-up poetry and art as something almost impertinent.)
Thus I went on, years following, various seasons and areas, spinning
forth my thought beneath the night and stars, (or as I was confined to
my room by half-sickness,) or at midday looking out upon the sea, or far
north steaming over the Saguenay's black breast, jotting all down in the
loosest sort of chronological order, and here printing from my
impromptu notes, hardly even the seasons group'd together, or anything
corrected--so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or
starlight might cling to the lines, I dared not try to meddle with or
smooth them. Every now and then, (not often, but for a foil,) I carried
a book in my pocket--or perhaps tore out from some broken or cheap
edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had something of the sort
ready, but only took it out when the mood demanded. In that way, utterly
out of reach of literary conventions, I re-read many authors.
I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myself eventually