Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
important to provide the means of bringing them into action, as well to
develop their powers as to enlarge and invigorate the chest, with which
they are connected, and which they powerfully influence. The best I know
of is the use of the triangle. This admirably exerts the upper limbs and
the muscles of the chest, and, indeed, when adroitly employed, those of
the whole body. The triangle is made of a stick of walnut wood, four
feet long, and an inch and a half in diameter. To each end is connected
a rope, the opposite extremities of which being confined together at
such height as to allow the motion of swinging by the hands."
We have ourselves derived the greatest benefit from this simple means.
Gymnastic exercises, and if possible in the open air, are needed by
every one who is not otherwise led to exercise all parts of the body by
various kinds of labor. Some, though only partial provision, is made for
boys by gymnasia and riding-schools. In wiser nations, such have been
the care of the state. And in despotic governments, the jealousy of a
tyrant was never more justly awakened than when the youth of the land,
by a devotion to gymnastic exercises, showed their aspiration to reach
the healthful stature of manhood. For every one who possesses a strong
mind in a sane body is heir presumptive to the kingdom of this world; he
needs no external credentials, but has only to appear and make clear his
title. But for such a princely form the eye searches the street, the
mart, and the council-chamber, in vain.
Those who feel that the game of life is so nearly up with them that they
cannot devote much of the time that is left to the care of wise living
in their own persons, should, at least, be unwilling to injure the next
generation by the same ignorance which has blighted so many of us in our
earliest year. Such should attend to the work of Mr. Combe,[14] among
other good books. Mr. Combe has done much good already in this country,
and this book should be circulated every where, for many of its
suggestions are too obviously just not to be adopted as soon as read.
Dr. Warren bears his testimony against the pernicious effects that
follow upon the use of tobacco, and we cannot but hope that what he says
of its tendency to create cancer will have weight with some who are
given to the detestable habit of chewing. This practice is so odious to
women, that we must regard its prevalence here as a token of the very
light regard in which they are held, and the consequent want of
refinement among men. Dr. Warren seems to favor the practice of
hydropathy to some extent, but must needs bear his testimony in full
against homoeopathy. No matter; the little doses will insinuate their
way, and cure the ills that flesh is heir to,
"For a' that, and a' that,
And mickle mair for a' that."
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.[15]
Frederick Douglass has been for some time a prominent member of the
abolition party. He is said to be an excellent speaker--can speak from a
thorough personal experience--and has upon the audience, besides, the
influence of a strong character and uncommon talents. In the book before
us he has put into the story of his life the thoughts, the feelings, and
the adventures that have been so affecting through the living voice; nor
are they less so from the printed page. He has had the courage to name
persons, times, and places, thus exposing himself to obvious danger, and
setting the seal on his deep convictions as to the religious need of
speaking the whole truth. Considered merely as a narrative, we have
never read one more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine
feeling. It is an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be
prized as a specimen of the powers of the black race, which prejudice
persists in disputing. We prize highly all evidence of this kind, and it
is becoming more abundant. The cross of the Legion of Honor has just
been conferred in France on Dumas and Soulie, both celebrated in the
paths of light literature. Dumas, whose father was a general in the
French army, is a mulatto; Soulie, a quadroon. He went from New Orleans,
where, though to the eye a white man, yet, as known to have African
blood in his veins, he could never have enjoyed the privileges due to a
human being. Leaving the land of freedom, he found himself free to
develop the powers that God had given.
Two wise and candid thinkers--the Scotchman Kinmont, prematurely lost to
this country, of which he was so faithful and generous a student, and
the late Dr. Channing,--both thought that the African race had in them a
peculiar element, which, if it could be assimilated with those imported
among us from Europe, would give to genius a development, and to the
energies of character a balance and harmony, beyond what has been seen
heretofore in the history of the world. Such an element is indicated in
their lowest estate by a talent for melody, a ready skill at imitation
and adaptation, an almost indestructible elasticity of nature. It is to
be remarked in the writings both of Soulie and Dumas, full of faults,
but glowing with plastic life and fertile in invention. The same torrid
energy and saccharine fulness may be felt in the writings of this
Douglass, though his life, being one of action or resistance, has been
less favorable to _such_ powers than one of a more joyous flow might
have been.
The book is prefaced by two communications--one from Garrison, and one
from Wendell Phillips. That from the former is in his usual
over-emphatic style. His motives and his course have been noble and
generous; we look upon him with high respect; but he has indulged in
violent invective and denunciation till he has spoiled the temper of his
mind. Like a man who has been in the habit of screaming himself hoarse
to make the deaf hear, he can no longer pitch his voice on a key
agreeable to common ears. Mr. Phillips's remarks are equally decided,
without this exaggeration in the tone. Douglass himself seems very just
and temperate. We feel that his view, even of those who have injured him
most, may be relied upon. He knows how to allow for motives and
influences. Upon the subject of religion, he speaks with great force,
and not more than our own sympathies can respond to. The inconsistencies
of slaveholding professors of religion cry to Heaven. We are not
disposed to detest, or refuse communion with them. Their blindness is
but one form of that prevalent fallacy which substitutes a creed for a
faith, a ritual for a life. We have seen too much of this system of
atonement not to know that those who adopt it often began with good
intentions, and are, at any rate, in their mistakes worthy of the
deepest pity. But that is no reason why the truth should not be uttered,
trumpet-tongued, about the thing. "Bring no more vain oblations;"
sermons must daily be preached anew on that text. Kings, five hundred
years ago, built churches with the spoils of war; clergymen to-day
command slaves to obey a gospel which they will not allow them to read,
and call themselves Christians amid the curses of their fellow-men. The
world ought to get on a little faster than this, if there be really any
principle of improvement in it. The kingdom of heaven may not at the
beginning have dropped seed larger than a mustard-seed, but even from
that we had a right to expect a fuller growth than we can believe to
exist, when we read such a book as this of Douglass. Unspeakably
affecting is the fact that he never saw his mother at all by daylight.
"I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She
was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to
sleep, but long before I waked she was gone."
The following extract presents a suitable answer to the hackneyed
argument drawn by the defender of slavery from the songs of the slave,
and is also a good specimen of the powers of observation and manly heart
of the writer. We wish that every one may read his book, and see what a
mind might have been stifled in bondage--what a man may be subjected to
the insults of spendthrift dandies, or the blows of mercenary brutes, in
whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity except in the
outward form, and of whom the Avenger will not fail yet to demand,
"Where is thy brother?"
"The Home Plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appeaance of a country
village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed
here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting,
coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves
on the Home Plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very
unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired to
give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the
slaves the _Great House Farm_. Few privileges were esteemed higher, by
the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands
at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with
greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to a
seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms
would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They
regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their
overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to
be out of the field, from under the driver's lash, that they esteemed it
a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was called the
smartest and most trusty fellow who had this honor conferred upon him
the most frequently. The competitors for this office sought as
diligently to please their overseers as the office-seekers in the
political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits
of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the
slaves of the political parties.
"The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly
allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly
enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods,
for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once
the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as
they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came
up came out,--if not in the word, in the sound,--and as frequently in
the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic
sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment
in the most pathetic tone. Into all their songs they would manage to
weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this
when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following
words:--
'I am going away to the Great House Farm!
O, yea! O, yea! O!'
This they would sing as a chorus to words which to many would seem
unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to
themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those
songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of
slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject
could do.
"I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension;
they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and
complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone
was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance
from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit,
and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in