III.

CAMP SAXTON, NEAR BEAUFORT, S. C. January 3, 1864.

Once, and once only, thus far, the water has frozen in my tent; and the next morning showed a dense white frost outside. We have still mocking-birds and crickets and rosebuds and occasional noonday baths in the river, though the butterflies have vanished, as I remember to have observed in Fayal, after December. I have been here nearly six weeks without a rainy day; one or two slight showers there have been, once interrupting a drill, but never dress parade. For climate, by day, we might be among the isles of Greece,--though it may be my constant familiarity with the names of her sages which suggests that impression. For instance, a voice just now called, near my tent,--"Cato, whar's Plato?"

The men have somehow got the impression that it is essential to the validity of a marriage that they should come to me for permission, just as they used to go to the master; and I rather encourage these little confidences, because it is so entertaining to hear them. "Now, Cunnel," said a faltering swain the other day, "I want for get me one good lady," which I approved, especially the limitation as to number. Afterwards I asked one of the bridegroom's friends whether he thought it a good match. "Oh, yes, Cunnel," said he, in all the cordiality of friendship, "John's gwine for marry Venus." I trust the goddess prove herself a better lady than she appeared during her previous career upon this planet. But this naturally suggests the isles of Greece again.

_January 7._--On first arriving, I found a good deal of anxiety among the officers as to the increase of desertions, that being the rock on which the "Hunter Regiment" split. Now this evil is very nearly stopped, and we are every day recovering the older absentees. One of the very best things that have happened to us was a half-accidental shooting of a man who had escaped from the guard-house, and was wounded by a squad sent in pursuit. He has since died; and this very evening, another man, who escaped with him, came and opened the door of my tent, after being five days in the woods, almost without food. His clothes were in rags, and he was nearly starved, poor foolish fellow, so that we can almost dispense with further punishment. Severe penalties would be wasted on these people, accustomed as they have been to the most violent passions on the part of white men; but a mild inexorableness tells on them, just as it does on any other children. It is something utterly new to them, and it is thus far perfectly efficacious. They have a great deal of pride as soldiers, and a very little of severity goes a great way, if it be firm and consistent. This is very encouraging.

The single question which I asked of some of the plantation-superintendents, on the voyage, was, "Do these people appreciate _justice_?" If they did, it was evident that all the rest would be easy. When a race is degraded beyond that point, it must be very hard to deal with them; they must mistake all kindness for indulgence, all strictness for cruelty. With these freed slaves there is no such trouble, not a particle: let an officer be only just and firm, with a cordial, kindly nature, and he has no sort of difficulty. The plantation-superintendents and teachers have the same experience, they say; but we have an immense advantage in the military organization, which helps in two ways: it increases their self-respect, and it gives us an admirable machinery for discipline, thus improving both the fulcrum and the lever.

The wounded man died in the hospital, and the general verdict seemed to be, "Him brought it on heself." Another soldier died of pneumonia on the same day, and we had the funerals in the evening. It was very impressive. A dense mist came up, with a moon behind it, and we had only the light of pine-splinters, as the procession wound along beneath the mighty moss-hung branches of the ancient grove. The groups around the grave, the dark faces, the red garments, the scattered lights, the misty boughs, were weird and strange. The men sang one of their own wild chants. Two crickets sang also, one on either side, and did not cease their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the graves. Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me that I must have their position altered,--the heads must be towards the west; so it was done,--though they are in a place so veiled in woods that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.

We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted gin-house,--a fine well of our own within the camp-lines,--a ful-allowance of tents, all floored,--a wooden cook-house to every company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,--a substantial wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks afterwards. We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian lodges I saw in Kansas. We now meditate a regimental bakery. Our aggregate has increased from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred and forty, besides a hundred recruits now waiting at St. Augustine, and we have practised through all the main movements in battalion drill.

Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps, and dined with the General. It seemed absolutely like reentering the world; and I did not fully estimate my past seclusion till it occurred to me, as a strange and novel phenomenon, that the soldiers at the other camps were white.

_January 8._--This morning I went to Beaufort again, on necessary business, and by good luck happened upon a review and drill of the white regiments. The thing that struck me most was that same absence of uniformity, in minor points, that I noticed at first in my own officers. The best regiments in the Department are represented among my captains and lieutenants, and very well represented, too; yet it has cost much labor to bring them to any uniformity in their drill. There is no need of this, for the prescribed "Tactics" approach perfection: it is never left discretionary in what place an officer shall stand, or in what words he shall give his order. All variation would seem to imply negligence. Yet even West Point occasionally varies from the "Tactics,"--as, for instance, in requiring the line officers to face down the line, when each is giving the order to his company. In our strictest Massachusetts regiments this is not done.

It needs an artist's eye to make a perfect drill-master. Yet the small points are not merely a matter of punctilio; for, the more perfectly a battalion is drilled on the parade-ground, the more quietly it can be handled in action. Moreover, the great need of uniformity is this: that, in the field, soldiers of different companies, and even of different regiments, are liable to be intermingled, and a diversity of orders may throw everything into confusion. Confusion means Bull Run.

I wished my men at the review to-day; for, amidst all the rattling and noise of artillery and the galloping of cavalry, there was only one infantry movement that we have not practised, and that was done by only one regiment, and apparently considered quite a novelty, though it is easily taught,--forming square by Casey's method: forward on centre.

It is really just as easy to drill a regiment as a company,--perhaps easier, because one has more time to think; but it is just as essential to be sharp and decisive, perfectly clear-headed, and to put life into the men. A regiment seems small when one has learned how to handle it, a mere handful of men; and I have no doubt that a brigade or a division would soon appear equally small. But to handle either _judiciously_,--ah, that is another affair!

So of governing: it is as easy to govern a regiment as a school or a factory, and needs like qualities,--system, promptness, patience, tact; moreover, in a regiment one has the aid of the admirable machinery of the army, so that I see very ordinary men who succeed very tolerably.

Reports of a six months' armistice are rife here, and the thought is deplored by all. I cannot believe it, yet sometimes one feels very anxious about the ultimate fate of these poor people. After the experience of Hungary, one sees that revolutions may go backward; and the habit of injustice seems so deeply impressed upon the whites, that it is hard to believe in the possibility of anything better. I dare not yet hope that the promise of the President's Proclamation will be kept. For myself I can be indifferent, for the experience here has been its own daily and hourly reward; and the adaptedness of the freed slaves for drill and discipline is now thoroughly demonstrated and must soon be universally acknowledged. But it would be terrible to see this regiment disbanded or defrauded.

_January 12._--Many things glide by without time to narrate them. On Saturday we had a mail with the President's Second Message of Emancipation, and the next day it was read to the men. The words themselves did not stir them very much, because they have been often told that they were free, especially on New-Year's Day, and, being unversed in politics, they do not understand, as well as we do, the importance of each additional guaranty. But the chaplain spoke to them afterwards very effectively, as usual; and then I proposed to them to hold up their hands and pledge themselves to be faithful to those still in bondage. They entered heartily into this, and the scene was quite impressive, beneath the great oak-branches. I heard afterwards that only one man refused to raise his hand, saying bluntly that his wife was out of slavery with him, and he did not care to fight. The other soldiers of his company were very indignant, and shoved him about among them while marching back to their quarters, calling him "Coward." I was glad of their exhibition of feeling, though it is very possible that the one who had thus the moral courage to stand alone among his comrades might be more reliable, on a pinch, than some who yielded a more ready assent. But the whole response, on their part, was very hearty, and will be a good thing to which to hold them hereafter, at any time of discouragement or demoralization,--which was my chief reason for proposing it. With their simple natures, it is a great thing to tie them to some definite committal; they never forget a marked occurrence, and never seem disposed to evade a pledge.

It is this capacity of honor and fidelity which gives me such entire faith in them as soldiers. Without it, all their religious demonstration would be mere sentimentality. For instance, every one who visits the camp is struck with their bearing as sentinels. They exhibit, in this capacity, not an upstart conceit, but a steady, conscientious devotion to duty. They would stop their idolized General Saxton, if he attempted to cross their beat contrary to orders: I have seen them. No feeble or incompetent race could do this. The officers tell many amusing instances of this fidelity, but I think mine the best.

It was very dark the other night,--an unusual thing here,--and the rain fell in torrents; so I put on my India-rubber suit, and went the rounds of the sentinels, incognito, to test them. I can only say that I shall never try such an experiment again, and have cautioned my officers against it. 'T is a wonder I escaped with life and limb,--such a charging of bayonets and clicking of gun-locks. Sometimes I tempted them by refusing to give any countersign, but offering them a piece of tobacco, which they could not accept without allowing me nearer than the prescribed bayonet's distance. Tobacco is more than gold to them, and it was touching to watch the struggle in their minds; but they always did their duty at last, and I never could persuade them. One man, as if wishing to crush all his inward vacillations at one fell stroke, told me stoutly that he never used tobacco, though I found next day that he loved it as much as any one of them. It seemed wrong thus to tamper with their fidelity; yet it was a vital matter to me to know how far it could be trusted, out of my sight. It was so intensely dark that not more than one or two knew me, even after I had talked with the very next sentinel, especially as they had never seen me in India-rubber clothing, and I can always disguise my voice. It was easy to distinguish those who did make the discovery; they were always conscious and simpering when their turn came; while the others were stout and irreverent till I revealed myself, and then rather cowed and anxious, fearing to have offended.

It rained harder and harder, and when I had nearly made the rounds, I had had enough of it, and, simply giving the countersign to the challenging sentinel, undertook to pass within the lines.

"Halt!" exclaimed this dusky man and brother, bringing down his bayonet,--"de countersign not correck."

Now the magic word, in this case, was "Vicksburg," in honor of a rumored victory. But as I knew that these hard names became quite transformed upon their lips, "Carthage" being familiarized into Cartridge, and "Concord" into Corn-cob, how could I possibly tell what shade of pronunciation my friend might prefer for this particular proper name?

"Vicksburg," I repeated, blandly, but authoritatively, endeavoring, as zealously as one of Christy's Minstrels, to assimilate my speech to any supposed predilection of the Ethiop vocal organs.

"Halt dar! Countersign not correck," was the only answer.

The bayonet still maintained a position which, in a military point of view, was impressive.

I tried persuasion, orthography, threats, tobacco, all in vain. I could not pass in. Of course my pride was up; for was I to defer to an untutored African on a point of pronunciation? Classic shades of Harvard, forbid! Affecting scornful indifference, I tried to edge away, proposing to myself to enter the camp at some other point, where my elocution would be better appreciated. Not a step could I stir.

"Halt!" shouted my gentleman again, still holding me at his bayonet's point, and I wincing and halting.

I explained to him the extreme absurdity of this proceeding, called his attention to the state of the weather, which, indeed, spoke for itself so loudly that we could hardly hear each other speak, and requested permission to withdraw. The bayonet, with mute eloquence, refused the application.

There flashed into my mind, with more enjoyment in the retrospect than I had experienced at the time, an adventure on a lecturing tour in other years, when I had spent an hour in trying to scramble into a country tavern, after bed-time, on the coldest night of winter. On that occasion I ultimately found myself stuck midway in the window, with my head in a temperature of 80 deg., and my heels in a temperature of -10 deg., with a heavy window-sash pinioning the small of my back. However, I had got safe out of that dilemma, and it was time to put an end to this one.

"Call the corporal of the guard," said I, at last, with dignity, unwilling either to make a night of it or to yield my incognito.

"Corporal ob de guard!" he shouted, lustily,--"Post Number Two!" while I could hear another sentinel chuckling with laughter. This last was a special guard, placed over a tent, with a prisoner in charge. Presently he broke silence.

"Who am dat?" he asked, in a stage whisper. "Am he a buckra [white man]?"

"Dunno whether he been a buckra or not," responded, doggedly, my Cerberus in uniform; "but I's bound to keep him here till de corporal ob de guard come."

Yet, when that dignitary arrived, and I revealed myself, poor Number Two appeared utterly transfixed with terror, and seemed to look for nothing less than immediate execution. Of course I praised his fidelity, and the next day complimented him before the guard, and mentioned him to his captain; and the whole affair was very good for them all. Hereafter, if Satan himself should approach them in darkness and storm, they will take him for "de Cunnel," and treat him with special severity.

_January 13._--In many ways the childish nature of this people shows itself. I have just had to make a change of officers in a company which has constantly complained, and with good reason, of neglect and improper treatment. Two excellent officers have been assigned to them; and yet they sent a deputation to me in the evening, in a state of utter wretchedness. "We's bery grieved dis evening, Cunnel; 'pears like we couldn't bear it, to lose de Cap'n and de Lieutenant, all two togeder." Argument was useless; and I could only fall back on the general theory, that I knew what was best for them, which had much more effect; and I also could cite the instance of another company, which had been much improved by a new captain, as they readily admitted. So with the promise that the new officers should not be "savage to we," which was the one thing they deprecated, I assuaged their woes. Twenty-four hours have passed, and I hear them singing most merrily all down that company-street.

I often notice how their griefs may be dispelled, like those of children, merely by permission to utter them: if they can tell their sorrows, they go away happy, even without asking to have anything done about them. I observe also a peculiar dislike of all _intermediate_ control: they always wish to pass by the company officer, and deal with me personally for everything. General Saxton notices the same thing with the people on the plantations as regards himself. I suppose this proceeds partly from the old habit of appealing to the master against the overseer. Kind words would cost the master nothing, and he could easily put off any non-fulfilment upon the overseer. Moreover, the negroes have acquired such constitutional distrust of white people, that it is perhaps as much as they can do to trust more than one person at a time. Meanwhile this constant personal intercourse is out of the question in a well-ordered regiment; and the remedy for it is to introduce by degrees more and more of system, so that their immediate officers will become all-sufficient for the daily routine.

It is perfectly true (as I find everybody takes for granted) that the first essential for an officer of colored troops is to gain their confidence. But it is equally true, though many persons do not appreciate it, that the admirable methods and proprieties of the regular army are equally available for all troops, and that the sublimest philanthropist, if he does not appreciate this, is unfit to command them.

Another childlike attribute in these men, which is less agreeable, is a sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs, they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured city with them than with white troops, for they would be more subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have no fine sympathies. The cruel things they have seen and undergone have helped to blunt them; and if I ordered them to put to death a dozen prisoners, I think they would do it without remonstrance.

Yet their religious spirit grows more beautiful to me in living longer with them: it is certainly far more so than at first, when it seemed rather a matter of phrase and habit. It influences them both on the negative and the positive side. That is, it cultivates the feminine virtues first,--makes them patient, meek, resigned. This is very evident in the hospital; there is nothing of the restless, defiant habit of white invalids. Perhaps, if they had more of this, they would resist disease better. Imbued from childhood with the habit of submission, drinking in through every pore that other-world trust which is the one spirit of their songs, they can endure everything. This I expected; but I am relieved to find that their religion strengthens them on the positive side also,--gives zeal, energy, daring. They could easily be made fanatics, if I chose; but I do not choose. Their whole mood is essentially Mohammedan, perhaps, in its strength and its weakness; and I feel the same degree of sympathy that I should, if I had a Turkish command,--that is, a sort of sympathetic admiration, not tending towards agreement, but towards cooperation. Their philosophizing is often the highest form of mysticism; and our dear surgeon declares that they are all natural transcendentalists. The white camps seem rough and secular, after this; and I hear our men talk about "a religious army," "a Gospel army," in their prayer-meetings. They are certainly evangelizing the chaplain, who was rather a heretic at the beginning; at least, this is his own admission. We have recruits on their way from St. Augustine, where the negroes are chiefly Roman Catholics; and it will be interesting to see how their type of character combines with that elder creed.

It is time for rest; and I have just looked out into the night, where the eternal stars shut down, in concave protection, over the yet glimmering camp, and Orion hangs above my tent-door, giving to me the sense of strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish Border Minstrelsy":--

"I know moon-rise, I know star-rise; Lay dis body down. I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight, To lay dis body down. I'll walk in de graveyard, I'll walk through the graveyard, To lay dis body down. I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms; Lay dis body down. I go to de Judgment in de evening ob de day When I lay dis body down; And my soul and your soul will meet in de day When I lay dis body down."

_January 14._--In speaking of the military qualities of the blacks, I should add, that the only point where I am disappointed is one I have never seen raised by the most incredulous newspaper critics,--namely their physical condition. They often look magnificently to my gymnasium-trained eye; and I always like to observe them when bathing,--such splendid muscular development, set off by that smooth coating of adipose tissue which makes them, like the South-Sea Islanders, appear even more muscular than they are. Their skins are also of finer grain than those of whites, the surgeons say, and certainly are smoother and far more free from hair. Their weakness is pulmonary; pneumonia and pleurisy are their besetting ailments; they are easily made ill,--and easily cured, if promptly treated: childish organization again. Guard-duty injures them more than whites, apparently; and double-quick movements, in choking dust, set them coughing badly. But then it is to be remembered that this is their sickly season, from January to March, and that their healthy season will come in summer, when the whites break down. Still my conviction of the physical superiority of more highly civilized races is strengthened on the whole, not weakened, by observing them. As to availability for military drill and duty in other respects, the only question I ever hear debated among the officers is, whether they are equal or superior to whites. I have never heard it suggested that they were inferior, although I expected frequently to hear such complaints from hasty or unsuccessful officers.

Of one thing I am sure, that their best qualities will be wasted by merely keeping them for garrison duty. They seem peculiarly fitted for offensive operations, and especially for partisan warfare; they have so much dash and such abundant resources, combined with such an Indian-like knowledge of the country and its ways. These traits have been often illustrated in expeditions sent after deserters. For instance, I despatched one of my best lieutenants and my best sergeant with a squad of men to search a certain plantation, where there were two separate negro villages. They went by night, and the force was divided. The lieutenant took one set of huts, the sergeant the other. Before the lieutenant had reached his first house, every man in the village was in the woods, innocent and guilty alike. But the sergeant's mode of operation was thus described by a corporal from a white regiment who happened to be in one of the negro houses. He said that not a sound was heard until suddenly a red leg appeared in the open doorway, and a voice outside said, "Rally." Going to the door, he observed a similar pair of red legs before every hut, and not a person was allowed to go out, until the quarters had been thoroughly searched, and the three deserters found. This was managed by Sergeant Prince Rivers, our color-sergeant, who is provost-sergeant also, and has entire charge of the prisoners and of the daily policing of the camp. He is a man of distinguished appearance, and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort, in which capacity he once drove Beauregard from this plantation to Charleston, I believe. They tell me that he was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, offering two thousand dollars for his recapture, is still to be seen by the wayside between here and Charleston. He was a sergeant in the old "Hunter Regiment," and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring, where the _chevrons_ on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom he kept off till the police interfered. There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a daily report of his duties in the camp: if his education reached a higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, _wine-black_; his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and his figure superior to that of any of our white officers,--being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.

_January 15._--This morning is like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a butterfly; so this winter of a fortnight is over. I fancy a trifle less coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr. ---- is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales of the surgeon of a New York regiment, just from Key West, who has had two hundred cases of the fever. "I suppose he is a skilful, highly educated man," said I; "Yes," he responded with enthusiasm. "Why, he had seventy deaths!"--as if that proved his superiority past question.

_January 19._

"And first, sitting proud as a king on his throne, At the head of them all rode Sir Richard Tyrone."

But I fancy that Sir Richard felt not much better satisfied with his following than I to-day. J. R. L. said once that nothing was quite so good as turtle-soup, except mock-turtle; and I have heard officers declare that nothing was so stirring as real war, except some exciting parade. To-day, for the first time, I marched the whole regiment through Beaufort and back,--the first appearance of such a novelty on any stage. They did march splendidly: this all admit. M----'s prediction was fulfilled:

"Will not ---- be in bliss? A thousand men, every one black as a coal!" I confess it. To look back on twenty broad double-ranks of men, (for they marched by platoons,)--every polished musket having a black face beside it, and every face set steadily to the front,--a regiment of freed slaves marching on into the future,--it was something to remember; and when they returned through the same streets, marching by the flank, with guns at a "support," and each man covering his file-leader handsomely, the effect on the eye was almost as fine. The band of the Eighth Maine joined us at the entrance of the town, and escorted us in. Sergeant Rivers said ecstatically afterwards, in describing the affair,--"And when dat band wheel in before us, and march on,--my God! I quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to himself the many dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see marching up behind us, gathering shape out of the dim air.

I had cautioned the men, before leaving camp, not to be staring about them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man; and they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures. One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards,--"We didn't look to de right nor to de leff. I didn't see notin' in Beaufort. Eb'ry step was worth a half-a-dollar." And they all marched as if it were so. They knew well that they were marching through throngs of officers and soldiers who had drilled as many months as we had drilled weeks, and whose eyes would readily spy out every defect. And I must say, that, on the whole, with a few trivial exceptions, those spectators behaved in a manly and courteous manner, and I do not care to write down all the handsome things that were said. Whether said or not, they were deserved; and there is no danger that our men will not take sufficient satisfaction in their good appearance. I was especially amused at one of our recruits, who did not march in the ranks, and who said, after watching the astonishment of some white soldiers,--"De buckra sojers look like a man who been-a-steal a sheep,"--that is, I suppose, sheepish.

After passing and repassing through the town, we marched to the parade-ground and went through an hour's drill, forming squares and reducing them, and doing other things which look hard on paper and are perfectly easy in fact; and we were to have been reviewed by General Saxton, but he had been unexpectedly called to Ladies Island, and did not see us at all, which was the only thing to mar the men's enjoyment. Then we marched back to camp, (three miles,) the men singing the "John Brown Song," and all manner of things,--as happy creatures as one can well conceive.

It is worth mentioning, before I close, that we have just received an article about "Negro Troops," from the London "Spectator," which is so admirably true to our experience that it seems as if written by one of us. I am confident that there never has been, in any American newspaper, a treatment of the subject so discriminating and so wise.

_January 21._--To-day brought a visit from Major-General Hunter and his staff, by General Saxton's invitation,--the former having just arrived in the Department. I expected them at dress parade, but they came during battalion drill, rather to my dismay, and we were caught in our old clothes. It was our first review, and I dare say we did tolerably; but of course it seemed to me that the men never appeared so ill before,--just as one always thinks a party at one's own house a failure, even if the guests seem to enjoy it, because one is so keenly sensitive to every little thing that goes wrong. After review and drill, General Hunter made the men a little speech, at my request, and told them that he wished there were fifty thousand of them. General Saxton spoke to them afterwards, and said that fifty thousand muskets were on their way for colored troops. The men cheered both the Generals lustily; and they were complimentary afterwards, though I knew that the regiment could not have appeared nearly so well as on its visit to Beaufort. I suppose I felt like some anxious mamma whose children have accidentally appeared at dancing-school in their old clothes.

General Hunter promises us all we want,--pay when the funds arrive, Springfield rifled muskets, and blue trousers. Moreover, he has graciously consented that we should go on an expedition along the coast, to pick up cotton, lumber, and, above all, recruits. I declined an offer like this just after my arrival, because the regiment was not drilled or disciplined, not even the officers; but it is all we wish for now.

"What care I how black I be? Forty pounds will marry me,"

quoth Mother Goose. Forty _rounds_ will marry us to the American Army, past divorcing, if we can only use them well. Our success or failure may make or mar the prospects of colored troops. But it is well to remember in advance that military success is really less satisfactory than any other, because it may depend on a moment's turn of events, and that may be determined by some trivial thing, neither to be anticipated nor controlled. Napoleon ought to have won at Waterloo by all reasonable calculations; but who cares? All that one can expect is, to do one's best, and to take with equanimity the fortune of war.[D]

FOOTNOTES:

[D] In coming to the record of more active service, the Journal form must be abandoned. The next chapter will give some account of an expedition up the St. Mary's River.

THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS.

A little more than two centuries ago the site of New York City was bought by its first white owners for twenty-four dollars. The following tabular statement exhibits the steps of its progressive settlement since then.

Year. Population. Year. Population. 1656 1,000 1820 123,706 1673 2,500 1825 166,089 1696 4,302 1830 202,589 1731 8,628 1835 270,068 1756 10,381 1840 312,852 1773 21,876 1845 371,223 1786 23,614 1850 515,394 1790 33,131 1855 629,810 1800 60,489 1860 814,254 1810 96,373 1864 1,000,000+

Taking the first census as a point of departure, the population of New York doubled itself in about eleven years. During the first century it increased a little more than tenfold. It was doubled again in less than twenty years; the next thirty years quadrupled it; and another period of twenty years doubled it once more. Its next duplication consumed the shorter term of eighteen years. It more than doubled again during the fifteen years preceding the last census; and the four years since that census have witnessed an increase of nearly twenty-three per cent. This final estimate is of course liable to correction by next year's census, but its error will be found on the side of under-statement, rather than of exaggeration.

The property on the north-west corner of Broadway and Chamber Street, now occupied in part by one of Delmonico's restaurants, was purchased by a New York citizen, but lately deceased, for the sum of $1,000: its present value is $125,000. A single Broadway lot, surveyed out of an estate which cost the late John Jay $500 per acre, was recently sold at auction for $80,000, and the purchaser has refused a rent of $16,000 per annum, or twenty per cent on his purchase-money, for the store which he has erected on the property. In 1826, the estimated total value of real estate in the city of New York was $64,804,050. In 1863, it had reached a total of $402,196,652, thus increasing more than sixfold within the lifetime of an ordinary business-generation. In 1826, the personal estate of New York City, so far as could be arrived at for official purposes, amounted to $42,434,981. In 1863, the estimate of this class of property-values was $192,000,161. It had thus more than quadrupled in a generation.

But statistics are most eloquent through illustration. Let us look discursively about the city of New York at various periods of her career since the opening of the present century. I shall assume that a map of the city is everywhere attainable, and that the reader has a general acquaintance with the physical and political geography of the United States.

Not far from the beginning of the century, Wall Street, as its name implies, was the northern boundary of the city of New York. The present north boundary of civilized settlement is almost identical with the statutory limit of the city, or that of the island itself. There is no perceptible break, though there are gradations of compactness, in the settled district between the foot of the island and Central Park. Beyond the Park, Haarlem Lane, Manhattanville, and Carmansville take up the thread of civic population, and carry it, among metropolitan houses and lamp-posts, quite to the butment of High Bridge. It has been seriously proposed to legislate for the annexation of a portion of Westchester to the bills of mortality, and this measure cannot fail to be demanded by the next generation; but for the present we will consider High Bridge as the north end of the city. Let us compare the boundary remembered by our veterans with that to which metropolitan settlement has been pushed by them and their children. In the lifetime of our oldest business-men, the advance wave of civic refinement, convenience, luxury, and population has travelled a distance greater than that from the Westminster Palaces to the hulks at the Isle of Dogs. When we consider that the population of the American Metropolis lives better, on the average, than that of any earthly capital, and that ninety-nine hundredths of all our suffering poor are the overflow of Great Britain's pauperism running into our grand channels a little faster than we can direct its current to the best advantage,--under these circumstances the advance made by New York in less than a century toward the position of the world's metropolis is a more important one than has been gained by London between the time of Julius Caesar and the present century.

I know an excellent business-man who was born in his father's aristocratic residence in Beaver Street. Holborn is as aristocratic now. Another friend of mine still living, the freshest of sexagenarians, told me lately of a walk he took in boyhood which so much fatigued him, that, when he was a long way out in the fields, he sat down to rest on the steps of a suburban hospital. I guessed Bellevue; but he replied that it was the New York Hospital, standing in what we now call the lower part of Broadway, just opposite North Pearl Street. No part of the Strand or of the Boulevards is less rural than the vast settled district about the New York Hospital at this day. It stands at least four times farther within than it then did beyond the circumference of New York civilization. I remember another illustration of its relative situation early in the century,--a story of good old Doctor Stone, who excused himself from his position of manager by saying, that, as the infirmities of age grew on him, he found the New York Hospital so far out in the country that he should be obliged, if he stayed, to keep "a horse and _cheer_."

Many New-Yorkers, recognized among our young and active men, can recollect when Houston Street was called North Street because it was practically the northern boundary of the settled district. Middle-aged men remember the swamp of Lispenard's Meadow, which is now the dryest part of Canal Street; some recall how they crossed other parts of the swamp on boards, and how tide-water practically made a separate island of what is now the northern and much the larger portion of the city. Young men recollect making Saturday-afternoon appointments with their schoolfellows (there was no time on any other day) to go "clear out into the country," bathe in the rural cove at the foot of East Thirteenth Street, and, refreshed by their baths, proceed to bird's-nesting on the wilderness of the Stuyvesant Farm, where is now situate Stuyvesant Park, one of the loveliest and most elegant pleasure-grounds open to the New York public, surrounded by one of the best-settled portions of the city, in every sense of the word. Still younger men remember Fourteenth Street as the utmost northern limit of the wave of civilization; and comparative boys have seen Franconi's Hippodrome pitched in a vacant lot of the suburbs, where now the Fifth Avenue Hotel stands, at the entrance to a double mile of palaces, in the northern, southern, and western directions.

We may safely affirm, that, since the organization of the science of statistics, no city in the world has ever multiplied its population, wealth, and internal resources of livelihood with a rapidity approaching that shown by New York. London has of late years made great progress quantitively, but her means of accommodating a healthy and happy population have kept no adequate pace with the increase of numbers. During the year 1862, 75,000 immigrants landed at the port of New York; in 1863, 150,000 more; and thus far in 1864 (we write in November) 200,000 have debarked here. Of these 425,000 immigrants, 40 per cent have stayed in the city. Of the 170,000 thus staying, 90 per cent, or 153,000, are British subjects; and of these, it is not understating to say that five eighths are dependent for their livelihood on physical labor of the most elementary kind. By comparing these estimates with the tax-list, it will appear that we have pushed our own inherent vitality to an extent of forty millions increase in our taxable property, and contributed to the support of the most gigantic war in human annals, during the period that we received into our grand civic digestion a city of British subjects as large as Bristol, and incorporated them into our own body politic with more comfort both to mass and particles than either had enjoyed at home.

There are still some people who regard the settlement of countries and the selection of great capitals as a matter of pure romantic accident. Philosophers know, that, if, at the opening of the Adamic period, any man had existed with a perfect knowledge of the world's physical geography and the laws of national development, he would have been able to foretell _a priori_ the situations of all the greatest capitals. It is a law as fixed as that defining the course of matter in the line of least resistance, that population flows to the level where the best livelihood is most easily obtained. The brute motives of food and raiment must govern in their selection of residence nine tenths of the human race. A few noble enthusiasts, like those of Plymouth Colony, may leave immortal footprints on a rugged coast, exchanging old civilization for a new battle with savagery, and abandoning comfort with conformity for a good conscience with privation. Still, had there been back of Plymouth none of the timber, the quarries, the running streams, the natural avenues of inland communication, and to some extent the agricultural capabilities which make good subsistence possible, there would have been no Boston, no Lynn, no Lowell, no New Bedford, no healthy or wealthy civilization of any kind, until the Pilgrim civilization had changed its base. It may be generally laid down that the men who leave home for truth's sake exile themselves as much for the privilege to mere opportunity of living truly.

New York was not even in the first place settled by enthusiasts. Trade with the savages, nice little farms at Haarlem, a seat among the burgomasters, the feast of St. Nicholas, pipes and Schiedam, a vessel now and then in the year bringing over letters of affection ripened by a six months' voyage, some little ventures, and two or three new colonists,--these were the joys which allured the earliest New-Yorkers to the island now swarming from end to end with almost national vitalities. Not until 1836, when the Italian Opera was first domiciled in New York, on the corner of Leonard and Church Streets, could the second era of metropolitan life be said fully to have set in there,--the era when people flow toward a city for the culture as well as the livelihood which it offers them. About the same time American studios began to be thronged with American picture-buyers; and there is no need of referring to the rapid advance of American literature, and the wide popularization of luxuries, dating from that period.

Long prior to that, New York was growing with giant vitality. She possesses, as every great city must possess preeminent advantages for the support of a vast population and the employment of immense industries. If she could not feed a million of men better than Norfolk, Norfolk would be New York and New York Norfolk. If the products of the world were not more economically exchanged across her counter than over that of Baltimore, Baltimore would need to set about building shelter for half a million more heads than sleep there to-night. Perth Amboy was at one time a prominent rival of New York in the struggle for the position of the American Metropolis, and is not New York only because Nature said No!

Let us invite the map to help us in our investigation of New York's claim to the metropolitan rank. There are three chief requisites for the chief city of every nation. It must be the city in easiest communication with other countries,--on the sea-coast, if there be a good harbor there, or on some stream debouching into the best harbor that there is. It must be the city in easiest communication with the interior, either by navigable streams, or valleys and mountain-passes, and thus the most convenient rendezvous for the largest number of national interests,--the place where Capital and Brains, Import and Export, Buyer and Seller, Doers and Things to be Done, shall most naturally make their appointments to meet for exchange. Last, (and least, too,--for even cautious England will people jungles for money's sake,) the metropolis must enjoy at least a moderate sanitary reputation; otherwise men who love Fortune well enough to die for her will not be reinforced by another large class who care to die on no account whatever.

New York answers all these requisites better than any metropolis in the world. She has a harbor capable of accommodating all the fleets of Christendom, both commercial and belligerent. That harbor has a western ramification, extending from the Battery to the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil Creek,--a distance of fifteen miles; an eastern ramification, reaching from the Battery to the mouth of Haarlem River,--seven miles; and a main trunk, interrupted by three small islands, extending from the Battery to the Narrows,--a distance of about eight miles more. It is rather under-estimating the capacity of the East River branch to average its available width as low as eighty rods; a mile and a half will be a proportionately moderate estimate for the Hudson River branch; the greatest available width of the Upper Bay is about four miles, in a line from the Long Island to the Staten Island side. If we add to these combined areas the closely adjacent waters in hourly communication with New York by her tugs and lighters, her harbor will further include a portion of the channel running west of Staten Island, and of the rivers emptying into Newark Bay, with the whole magnificent and sheltered roadstead of the Lower Bay, the mouth of Shrewsbury Inlet, and a portion of Raritan Bay.

As this paper must deal to a sufficient extent with statistics in matters of practical necessity, we will at this stage leave the reader to complete for himself the calculation of such a harbor's capacity. In this respect, in that of shelter, of contour of water-front, of accessibility from the high seas, New York Harbor has no rival on the continent. The Bay of San Francisco more nearly equals it than any other; but that is on the Pacific side, for the present much farther from the axis of national civilization, and backed by a much narrower agricultural tract. We will not refer to disadvantages of commercial exchange, since San Francisco may at any time be relieved of these by a Pacific Railroad. On our Atlantic side there is certainly no harbor which will compare for area and convenience with that of New York.

It is not only the best harbor on our coast, but that in easiest communication with other parts of the country. To the other portions of the coast it is as nearly central as it could be without losing fatally in other respects. Delaware and Chesapeake Bays afford fine roadsteads; but the low sand barrens and wet alluvial flats which form their shores compelled Philadelphia and Baltimore to retire their population such a distance up the chief communicating rivers as to deprive them of many important advantages proper to a seaport. Under the influence of free ideas may be expected a wonderful development of the advantages of Chesapeake Bay. Good husbandry and unshackled enterprise throughout Maryland and Virginia will astonish Baltimore by an increase of her population and commerce beyond the brightest speculative dreams. The full resources of Delaware Bay are far from being developed. Yet Philadelphia and Baltimore are forever precluded from competing with New York, both by their greater distance from open water and the comparative inferiority of the interior tracts with which they have ready communication. Below Chesapeake Bay the coast system of great river-estuaries gives way to the Sea-Island system, in which the main-land is flanked by a series of bars or sandbanks, separated from it by tortuous and difficult lagoons. The rivers which empty into this network of channels are comparatively difficult of entrance, and but imperfectly navigable. The isolation of the Sea Islands is enough to make them still more inconvenient situations than any on the main-land for the foundation of a metropolis. Before we have gone far down this system, we have passed the centre where, on mathematical principles, a metropolis should stand.

Considered with regard to the tributary interior, New York occupies a position no less central than with respect to the coast. It is impossible to study a map of our country without momently increasing surprise at the multiplicity of natural avenues which converge in New York from the richest producing districts of the world. The entire result of the country's labor seems to seek New York by inevitable channels. Products run down to the managing, disbursing, and balancing hand of New York as naturally as the thoughts of a man run down to the hand which must embody them. From the north it takes tribute through the Hudson River. This magnificent water-course, permitting the ascent of the largest ships for a hundred miles, and of river-craft for fifty miles farther, has upon its eastern side a country averaging about thirty miles in width to the Taconic range, consisting chiefly of the richest grazing, grain, and orchard land in the Atlantic States. Above the Highlands, the west side of the river becomes a fertile, though narrower and more broken agricultural tract; and at the head of navigation, the Hudson opens into another valley of exhaustless fertility,--that of the Mohawk,--coming eastward from the centre of the State.

Thus, independent of her system of railroads, New York City possesses uninterrupted natural connection with the interior of the State, whence a new system of communications is given off by the Lakes to the extreme west and north of our whole territory.

To the northeast, New York extends her relations by the sheltered avenue of Long Island Sound,--alluring through a strait of comparatively smooth water not only the agricultural products which seek export along a double water-front of two hundred miles, but the larger results of that colossal manufacturing system on which is based the prosperity of New England. To a great part of this class of values Long Island Sound stands like a weir emptying into the net of New York.

The maritime position of New York makes her as easy an entrepot for Southern as for foreign products; and in any case her share in our Northern national commerce gives her the control of all trade which must pay the North a balance of exchange.

The Hudson, the Sound, and the line of Southern coasting traffic are the three main radii of supply which meet in New York. Another important district paying its chief subsidy to New York is drained by the Delaware River, and this great avenue is reached with ease from the metropolis by a direct natural route across the Jersey level. Though unavailable to New York as a navigable conduit, it still offers a means of penetrating to the southern counties of the State, and a passage to the Far West, of which New York capital has been prompt to avail itself by the Erie Railroad, with its Atlantic and Great Western continuation to St. Louis. This uniform broad-gauge of twelve hundred miles, which has just been opened by the energy and talents of Messrs. McHenry and Kennard, apparently decides the main channel by which the West is to discharge her riches into New York.--But we are trenching on the subject the capital's artificial advantages.

Finally, New York has been prevented only by disgraceful civic mismanagement from becoming long ago the healthiest city in the world. In spite of jobbed contracts for street-cleaning, and various corrupt tamperings with the city water-front, by which the currents are obstructed, and injury is done the sewage as well as the channels of the harbor, New York is now undoubtedly a healthier city than any other approaching it in size. Its natural sanitary advantages must be evident. The crying need of a great city is good drainage. To effect this for New York, the civil engineer has no struggle with his material. He need only avail himself dexterously of the original contour of his ground. Manhattan Island is a low outcrop of gneiss and mica-schist, sloping from an irregular, but practically continuous crest, to the Hudson and East Rivers, with a nearly uniform southerly incline from its precipitous north face on the Haarlem and Spuyten Duyvil to high-water mark at the foot of Whitehall Street. Its natural system of drainage might be roughly illustrated by radii drawn to the circumference of a very eccentric ellipse from its northern focus. Wherever the waste of the entire island may descend, it is met by a seaward tide twice in the twenty-four hours. On the East River side the velocity of this tide in the narrow passages is rather that of a mill-stream than of the entrance to a sound. Though less apparent, owing to its area, the tide and current of the Hudson are practically as irresistible. The two branches of the city-sewage, uniting at the Battery, are deflected a little to the westward by Governor's Island, and thus thrown out into the middle of the bay, where they receive the full force of the tidal impulse, retarded by the Narrows only long enough to disengage and drop their finer silt on the flats between Robin's Reef and the Jersey shore. The depurating process of the New World's grandest community lies ready for use in this natural drainage-system. If there be a standing pool, a festering ditch, a choked gutter, a malarious sink within the scope of the city bills of mortality, there is official crime somewhere. Nature must have been fraudulently obstructed in the benignest arrangements she ever made for removing the effete material of a vast city's vital processes. In the matter of climate, New York experiences such comparative freedom from sudden changes as belongs to her position in the midst of large masses of water. She enjoys nearly entire immunity from fogs and damp or chilly winds. Her weather is decided, and her population are liable to no one local and predominant class of disease. So far as her hygienic condition depends upon quantity and quality of food, her communications with the interior give her an exceptional guaranty. Despite the poverty which her lower classes share in kind, though to a much less degree, with those of other commercial capitals, there is no metropolis in the world where the general average of comfort and luxury stands higher through all the social grades. It is further to be recollected that health and the chief comforts of life are correlative,--that the squalid family is the unhealthy family, and that, as we import our squalor, so also we import the materials and conditions of our disease. This _a priori_ view is amply sustained by the statistics of our charitable institutions. Dr. Alanson S. Jones, whose position as President of the Board of Surgeons attached to the Metropolitan Police Commission combines with his minute culture in the sciences ministering to his profession to make him a first-class authority upon the sanitary statistics of New York, states that the large majority of deaths, and cases of disease, occur in that city among the recent foreign immigrants,--and that the same source furnishes the vast proportion of inmates of our hospitals, almshouses, asylums, and other institutions of charity; furthermore, that two thirds of all the deaths in New York City occur among children,--a class to which metropolitan conditions are decidedly unfavorable; and that, while the seven hundred thousand inhabitants of Philadelphia are distributed over an area of one hundred and thirty square miles, the one million inhabitants of New York are included within the limit of thirty-five square miles, yet the excess of proportionate mortality in the latter city by no means corresponds to its density of settlement. It is safe to affirm, that, taking all the elements into calculation, there is no city in the civilized world with an equal population and an equal sanitary rank.

Hydrographically speaking, either Liverpool or Bristol surpasses London in its claims to be the British metropolis. But as England's chief commerce flows from the eastward, to accommodate it she must select for her metropolis the shores of the most accessible, capacious, and sheltered water on that side of the island. The result is London,--a city backed by an almost imperceptible fraction of the vast interior which pays tribute to New York,--having a harbor of far less capacity than New York, and without any of its far-reaching ramifications,--provided with a totally inadequate drainage-system, operating by a river which New-Yorkers would shudder to accept for the purposes of a single ward,--and supporting a population of three million souls upon her brokerage in managing the world's commerce. New York has every physical advantage over her in site, together with an agricultural constituency of which she can never dream, and every opportunity for eventually surpassing her as a depot of domestic manufactures. London can never add arable acres to her suite, while only the destruction of the American people can prevent us from building ten up-country mills to every one which manufactures for her market. She has merely the start of us in time; she has advanced rapidly during the last fifty years, but New York has even more rapidly diminished the gap. No wonder that British capitalists will sacrifice much to see us perish,--for it is pleasanter to receive than to pay balance of exchange, even in the persons of one's prospective great-grandchildren.

Turning to the second great power of the Old World, we may assert that there is not a harbor on the entire French coast of capacity or convenience proportionate to the demands of a national emporium. Though the site of Paris was chosen by a nation in no sense commercial, and the constitutional prejudices of the people are of that semi-barbarous kind which affect at the same time pleasure and a contempt of the enterprises which pay for it, there has been a decided anxiety among the foremost Frenchmen since the time of Colbert to see France occupying an influential position among the national fortune-hunters of the world. Napoleon III. shares this solicitude to an extent which his uncle's hatred of England would never permit him to confess, though he felt it deeply. The millions which the present Emperor has spent on Cherbourg afford a mere titillation to his ambitious spirit. Their result is a handsome parade-place,--a pretty stone toy,--an unpickable lock to an inclosure nobody wants to enter,--a navy-yard for the creation of an armament which has no commerce to protect. No wonder that the discontented despot seeks to eke out the quality of his ports by their plenteous quantity,--seizing Algiers,--looking wistfully at the Red Sea,--overjoyed at any bargain which would get him Nice,--striking madly out for empire in Cochin China, Siam, and the Pacific islands,--playing Shylock to Mexico on Jecker's forged bond, that his own inconvenient vessels might have an American port to trim their yards in. Meanwhile, to forget the utter unfitness of Paris for the capital of any imaginary Commercial France, he plays ship with Eugenie on the gentle Seine, or amuses himself with the marine romance of the Parisian civic escutcheon.

No one will think for an instant of comparing Paris with New York in respect to natural advantages. The capitals of the other Continental nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest condition of individual liberty,--class servitude, sumptuary and travel restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the rudest necessaries of life from the area within which it is confined.

_A priori_, therefore, we might expect that the metropolis of America would arise on New York Island, and in process of time become one of the greatest capitals of the world.

The natural advantages which allured New York's first population have been steadily developed and reinforced by artificial ones. For the ships of the world she has built about her water-front more than three hundred piers and bulkheads. Allowing berth-room for four ships in each bulkhead, and for one at the end of each pier, (decidedly an under-estimate, considering the extent of some of these structures,)--the island water-front already offers accommodation for the simultaneous landing of eight hundred first-class foreign cargoes. The docks of Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken may accommodate at least as many more. Something like a quarter of all New York imports go in the first instance to the bonded warehouse; and this part, not being wanted for immediate consumption within the metropolis proper, quite as conveniently occupies the Long Island or Jersey warehouses as those on the New York shore. The warehouses properly belonging to New York commerce--containing her property and living on her business--received during 1861 imports to the value of $41,811,664; during 1862, $46,939,451; and during 1863, $61,350,432. During the year 1861, the total imports of New York amounted to $161,684,499,--paying an aggregate of duties of $21,714,981. During the year 1862, the imports amounted to $172,486,453, and the duties to $52,254,318. During 1863, the imports reached a value of $184,016,350, the duties on which amounted to $58,885,853. For the same years the exports amounted respectively to $142,903,689, $216,416,070, and $219,256,203,--the rapid increase between 1861 and 1862 being no doubt partly stimulated by the disappearance of specie from circulation under the pressure of our unparalleled war-expenses, and the consequent necessity of substituting in foreign markets our home products for the ordinary basis of exchange. In 1861, 965 vessels entered New York from foreign ports, and 966 cleared for foreign ports. In 1862, the former class numbered 5,406, and the latter 5,014. In 1863, they were respectively 4,983 and 4,466. These statistics, from which the immense wharfage and warehouse accommodation of New York may be inferred, are exhibited to better advantage in the following tabular statement, kindly furnished by Mr. Ogden, First Auditor of the New York Custom-House.

_Statistics of the Port of New York._

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | 1861. | 1862. | 1863. | |--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| | | | $ | $ | $ | |1 |Total value of Exports |142,903,689 |216,416,070 |219,256,203 | |2 |Total value of Imports |161,684,499 |172,486,453 |184,016,350 | |3 |Value of Goods | | | | | | warehoused during | | | | | | the entire year | 41,811,664 | 46,939,451 | 61,350,432 | |4 |Amount of Drawback | | | | | | allowed during the | | | | | | entire year | 57,326.55| 275,953.92| 414,041.44| |5 |Total amount of Duties | | | | | | paid during year | 21,714,981.10| 52,254,317.92| 58,885,853.42| |6 |No. of Vessels entered | | | | | | from Foreign Ports | | | | | | during year | 965 | 5,406 | 4,983 | |7 |No. of Vessels cleared | | | | | | to foreign Ports | | | | | | during year | 966 | 5,014 | 4,666 | |--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+

Besides the various berths or anchorages and the warehouses of New York, commerce is still further waited on in our metropolis by one of the most perfect systems of pilot-boat, steam-tug, and lighter service which have ever been devised for a harbor. No vessel can bring so poor a foreign cargo to New York as not to justify the expense of a pilot to keep its insurance valid, a tug to carry it to its moorings, and a lighter to discharge it, if the harbor be crowded or time press. Indeed, the first two items are matters of course; and not one of them costs enough to be called a luxury.

The American river-steamboat--the palatial American _steamboat_, as distinguished from the dingy, clumsy English _steamer_--is another of the means by which Art has supplemented New York's gifts of Nature. This magnificent triumph of sculpturesque beauty, wedded to the highest grade of mechanical skill, must be from two hundred and fifty to four hundred feet long,--must accommodate from five hundred to two thousand passengers,--must run its mile in three minutes,--must be as _rococo_ in its upholsterings as a bedchamber of Versailles,--must gratify every sense, consult every taste, and meet every convenience. Such a boat as this runs daily to every principal city on the Sound or the Hudson, to Albany, to Boston, to Philadelphia. A more venturous class of coasting steamers in peaceful times are constantly leaving for Baltimore, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Key West, Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston. The immense commerce of the Erie Canal, with all its sources and tributaries, is practically transacted by New York City. Nearly everything intended for export, plus New York's purchases for her own consumption, is forwarded from the Erie Canal terminus in a series of _tows_, each of these being a rope-bound fleet, averaging perhaps fifty canal-boats and barges, propelled by a powerful steamer intercalated near the centre. The traveller new to Hudson River scenery will be startled, any summer day on which he may choose to take a steamboat trip to Albany, by the apparition, at distances varying from one to three miles all the way, of floating islands, settled by a large commercial population, who like their dinner off the top of a hogshead, and follow the laundry business to such an extent that they quite effloresce with wet shirts, and are seen through a lattice of clothes-lines. Let him know that these floating islands are but little drops of vital blood from the great heart of the West, coming down the nation's main artery to nurse some small tissue of the metropolis; that these are "Hudson River tows"; and that, novel as that phenomenon may appear to him, every other fresh traveller has been equally startled by it since March, and will be startled by it till December. Another ministry to New York is performed by the _night-tows_, consisting of a few cattle, produce, and passenger barges attached to a steamer, made up semi-weekly or tri-weekly at every town of any importance on the Hudson and the Sound. We will not include the large fleet of Sound and River sloops, brigs, and schooners in the list of New York's artificial advantages.

Turning to New York's land communication with the interior, we find the following railroads radiating from the metropolitan centre.

1. A Railroad to Philadelphia. 2. A Railroad to the Pennsylvania Coal Region. 3. A Railroad to Piermont on the Hudson. 4. A Railroad to Bloomfield in New Jersey. 5. A Railroad to Morristown in New Jersey. 6. A Railroad to Hackensack in New Jersey. 7. A Railroad to Buffalo. 8. A Railroad to Albany, running along the Hudson. 9. Another Railroad to Albany, by an interior route. 10. A Railroad to New Haven. 11. A Railroad to the chief eastern port of Long Island. 12. The Delaware and Raritan Road to Philadelphia, connecting with New York by daily transports from pier. 13. The Camden and Amboy Railroad, connecting similarly. 14. The Railroad to Elizabeth, New Jersey.

The chief eastern radius throws out ramifications to the principal cities of New England, thus affording liberal choice of routes to Boston, New Bedford, Providence, and Portland, as well as an entrance to New Hampshire and Vermont. To all of these towns, except the more southerly, the Hudson River Road leads as well, connecting besides with railroads in every direction to the northern and western parts of the State, and with the Far West by a number of routes. The main avenue to the Far West is, however, the Atlantic and Great Western Road, with its twelve hundred miles of uniform broad-gauge. Along this line the whole riches of the interior may reasonably be expected to flow eastward as in a trough; for its position is axial, and its connection perfect. All the chief New Jersey railroads open avenues to the richest mineral region of the Atlantic States,--to the Far South and the Far West of the country. Two or three may be styled commuters' roads, running chiefly for the accommodation of city business-men with suburban residences. The Long Island Road is a road without important branches; but the majority of all the roads subsidiary to New York are avenues to some broad and typical tract of the interior.

Let us turn to consider how New York has provided for the people as well as the goods that enter her precincts by all the ways we have rehearsed. She draws them up Broadway in twenty thousand horse-vehicles per day, on an average, and from that magnificent avenue, crowded for nearly five miles with elegant commercial structures, over two hundred miles more of paved street, in all directions. She lights them at night with eight hundred miles of gas-pipe; she washes them and slakes their thirst from two hundred and ninety-one miles of Croton main; she has constructed for their drainage one hundred and seventy-six miles of sewer. She victimizes them with nearly two thousand licensed hackmen; she licenses twenty-two hundred car- and omnibus-drivers to carry them over twenty-nine different stage-routes and ten horse-railroads, in six hundred and seventy-one omnibuses and nearly as many cars, connecting intimately with every part of the city, and averaging ten up-and-down trips per day. She connects them with the adjoining cities of the main-land and with Staten and Long Island by twenty ferries, running, on the average, one boat each way every ten minutes during the twenty-four hours. She offers for her guests' luxurious accommodation at least a score of hotels, where good living is made as much the subject of high art as in the Hotel du Louvre, besides minor houses of rest and entertainment, to the number of more than five thousand. She attends to their religion in about four hundred places of public worship. She gives them breathing-room in a dozen civic parks, the largest of which both Nature and Art destine to be the noblest popular pleasure-ground of the civilized world, as it is the amplest of all save the Bois de Boulogne. Central Park covers an area of 843 acres, and, though only in the fifth year of its existence, already contains twelve miles of beautifully planned and scientifically constructed carriage-road, seven miles of similar bridle-path, four sub-ways for the passage of trade-vehicles across the Park, with an aggregate length of two miles, and twenty-one miles of walk. As an item of city property, Central Park is at present valued at six million dollars; but this, of course, is quite a nominal and unstable valuation. The worth of the Park to New York property in general is altogether beyond calculation.

New York feeds her people with about two million slaughter-animals per annum. How these are classified, and what periodical changes their supply undergoes, may be conveniently seen by the following tabular view of the New York butchers' receiving-yards during the twelve months of the year 1863. I am indebted for it to the experience and courtesy of Mr. Solon Robinson, agricultural editor of the "New York Tribune."

_Receipts of Butchers' Animals in New York during 1863._

+-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ |Month. | Beeves. | Cows. | Calves. | Sheep. | Swine. | |-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ |Jan. | 16,349 | 393 | 1,318 | 25,352 | 138,413 | |Feb. | 19,930 | 474 | 1,207 | 24,877 | 98,099 | |March | 22,187 | 843 | 2,594 | 29,645 | 79,320 | |April | 18,921 | 636 | 3,182 | 18,311 | 56,516 | |May | 16,739 | 440 | 3,510 | 20,338 | 39,305 | |June | 23,785 | 718 | 5,516 | 44,808 | 56,612 | |July | 20,224 | 396 | 2,993 | 41,614 | 40,716 | |August | 20,347 | 496 | 3,040 | 49,900 | 36,725 | |Sept. | 30,847 | 524 | 3,654 | 79,078 | 68,646 | |Oct. | 24,397 | 475 | 3,283 | 64,144 | 112,265 | |Nov. | 23,991 | 557 | 3,378 | 61,082 | 183,359 | |Dec. | 26,374 | 518 | 2,034 | 60,167 | 191,641 | |-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ |Total | | | | | | |of each| 264,091 | 6,470 | 35,709 | 519,316 |1,101,617 | |kind, | | | | | | |-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ | | |Total of all kinds, 1,927,203. | +----------------------------------------------------------+

Of the total number of beeves which came into the New York market in 1863, those whose origin could be ascertained were furnished from their several States in the following proportions:--

Illinois contributed 118,692 New York " 28,985 Ohio " 19,369 Indiana " 14,232 Michigan " 9,074 Kentucky " 6,782

Averaging the weight of the cattle which came to New York market in 1863 at the moderate estimate of 700 lbs., the metropolitan supply of beef for that year amounted to 189,392,700 lbs. This, at the average price of nine and a quarter cents per pound, was worth $17,518,825. Proportionably with these estimates, the average weekly expenditure by butchers at the New York yards during the year 1863 was $328,865.

It is an astonishing, but indubitable fact, that, while the population of New York has increased sixty-six per cent during the last decade, the consumption of _beef_ has in the same time increased sixty-five per cent. This increment might be ascribed to the great advance of late years in the price of pork,--that traditional main stay of the poor man's housekeeping,--were it not that the importation of swine has increased almost as surprisingly. We are therefore obliged to acknowledge that during a period when the chief growth of our population was due to emigration from the lowest ranks of foreign nationalities, during three years of a devastating war, and inclusive of the great financial crisis of 1857, the increase in consumption of the most costly and healthful article of animal food lacked but one per cent of the increase of the population. These statistics bear eloquent witness to the rapid diffusion of luxury among the New York people.

From the table of classification by States we may draw another interesting inference. It will be seen that by far the largest proportion of the bullocks came into the New York market from the most remote of the Western States contributing. In other words, New York City has so perfected her connection with all the sources of supply, that distance has become an unimportant element in her calculations of expense; and she can make all the best grazing land of the country tributary to her market, without regard to the question whether it be one or twelve hundred miles off.

The foregoing butchers' estimates are as exact as our present means of information can make them. Large numbers of uncounted sheep are consumed within the city limits, and the unreported calves are many more than come to light in statistics. Besides these main staples of the market which have been mentioned, there is consumed in New York an incalculable quantity of game and poultry, preserved meats and fish, cheese, butter, and eggs.

Mr. James Boughton, clerk of the New York Produce Exchange, has been good enough to furnish me with a tabular statement of the city's receipts of produce for the year ending April 30, 1864. Such portions of it as may show the amount of staples, exclusive of fresh meat, required for the regular supply of the New York market, are presented in the opposite column.

A less important, but still very interesting, class of products entered New York during the same period, in the following amounts:--

+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | COTTON. | SEED. | ASHES. | WHISKEY. | OIL CAKE. | |-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------| | _Bales._ | _Bush._ | _Pkgs._ | _Bbls._ | _Sacks._ | | 18,193 | 7,343 | 1,401 | 21,838 | 2,329 | | 16,299 | 3,196 | 1,657 | 26,925 | 14,040 | | 13,080 | 901 | 1,175 | 19,627 | 20,120 | | 11,043 | 892 | 1,551 | 18,083 | 19,583 | | 12,874 | 2,082 | 884 | 15,781 | 4,810 | | 19,332 | 1,189 | 790 | 17,656 | 17,500 | | 26,902 | 2,318 | 1,280 | 20,098 | 10,441 | | 24,870 | 8,193 | 1,393 | 39,594 | 4,973 | | 22,010 | 8,441 | 1,163 | 32,346 | 2,676 | | 28,242 | 24,216 | 1,498 | 34,475 | 2,115 | | 39,302 | 31,765 | 1,457 | 35,575 | 2,963 | | 33,538 | 5,686 | 1,044 | 22,873 | 4,536 | |-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------| | 265,685 | 96,222 | 15,293 | 304,871 | 106,356 | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

New York, during the same period, exported,--

Of Flour 2,571,744 bbls. " Wheat 15,842,836 bushels. " Corn 5,576,836 " " Cured Beef 113,061 pkgs. " " Pork 189,757 bbls. " Cotton 27,561 bales.

Deducting from the total supply of each of these six staples such amounts as were exported during the year, we

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MONTH. | FLOUR. | CORN | CORN | WHEAT. | CORN. | | | | MEAL. | MEAL. | | | |------------------+-----------+---------+---------+------------+------------| | | _Bbls._ | _Bbls._ | _Bags._ | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | | 1863.--May | 454,363 | 10,331 | 18,614 | 1,789,952 | 1,914,490 | | June | 636,501 | 19,283 | 7,989 | 2,853,755 | 2,262,825 | | July | 451,004 | 9,995 | 10,480 | 2,409,184 | 3,049,126 | | August | 298,097 | 9,875 | 9,226 | 1,989,839 | 2,343,899 | | September | 319,923 | 10,481 | 4,715 | 1,132,588 | 2,196,157 | | October | 451,762 | 8,673 | 13,020 | 3,052,968 | 1,265,793 | | November | 530,096 | 8,883 | 22,835 | 3,164,750 | 295,398 | | December | 429,641 | 16,301 | 45,627 | 1,396,608 | 135,907 | | 1864.--January | 266,240 | 7,987 | 43,990 | 10,244 | 145,557 | | February | 233,822 | 12,489 | 47,137 | 45,283 | 108,751 | | March | 190,785 | 14,135 | 40,510 | 108,407 | 259,547 | | April | 218,181 | 10,889 | 27,097 | 166,506 | 120,272 | |------------------+-----------+---------+---------+------------+------------+ | Total | 4,480,415 | 145,272 | 291,190 | 18,119,993 | 14,098,262 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MONTHS. | OATS. | RYE. | MALT. | BARLEY. | BEEF. | |------------------+------------+---------+---------+-----------+---------| | | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | _Bbls._ | | 1863.--May | 808,233 | 28,034 | 24,034 | 4,672 | 9,428 | | June | 1,442,979 | 23,038 | 22,508 | 1,643 | 2,386 | | July | 849,831 | 52,759 | 16,710 | none. | 1,285 | | August | 1,097,223 | 68,035 | 55,453 | .... | 892 | | September | 307,025 | 9,721 | 47,048 | 7,941 | 718 | | October | 1,319,985 | 41,912 | 13,461 | 753,893 | 7,420 | | November | 2,189,719 | 36,731 | 44,322 | 441,479 | 68,391 | | December | 1,882,344 | 45,727 | 59,494 | 275,568 | 74,031 | | 1864.--January | 305,690 | 6,532 | 42,608 | 6,972 | 22,988 | | February | 209,080 | 3,554 | 63,064 | 5,105 | 6,358 | | March | 258,685 | 5,308 | 69,578 | 18,386 | 4,319 | | April | 238,344 | 6,373 | 44,383 | 41,914 | 4,654 | |------------------+------------+---------+---------+-----------+---------+ | Total | 10,909,238 | 328,619 | 502,693 | 1,557,573 | 203,270 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | MONTHS. | PORK. | CUT | LARD. | DRESSED | | | | MEATS. | | HOGS. | |------------------+---------+---------+----------+---------| | | _Bbls._ | _Pkgs._ |100 _lbs._| _No._ | 1863.--May | 119,302 | 38,587 | 149,966 | .... | | June | 112,343 | 21,401 | 75,966 | .... | | July | 10,155 | 6,633 | 15,396 | .... | | August | 6,879 | 2,870 | 3,784 | .... | | September | 7,115 | 3,967 | 5,233 | .... | | October | 6,921 | 4,501 | 35,128 | 881 | | November | 6,916 | 11,066 | 35,997 | 755 | | December | 21,864 | 18,843 | 31,775 | 21,208 | | 1864.--January | 39,364 | 34,469 | 25,145 | 48,276 | | February | 32,144 | 42,593 | 43,245 | 59,894 | | March | 33,687 | 92,710 | 83,122 | 4,600 | | April | 12,346 | 49,399 | 90,496 | 67 | |------------------+---------+---------+----------+---------| | Total | 409,036 | 327,129 | 594,853 | 135,481 | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

find a remainder, for annual metropolitan consumption, amounting, in the case of

Flour to 1,908,671 bbls. Wheat " 2,276,257 bushels. Corn " 8,540,490 " Cured Beef " 89,209 pkgs. " Pork " 209,279 bbls. Cotton " 238,124 bales.

We have no room for the details--which would embarrass us, if we should attempt a statement--of the cost of clothing the New York people. We will merely remark, in passing, that one of the largest retail stores in the New York dry-goods trade sells at its counters ten million dollars' worth of fabrics per annum, and that another concern in the wholesale branch of the same trade does a yearly business of between thirty and forty millions. As for tailors' shops, New York is their fairy-land,--many eminent examples among them resembling, in cost, size, and elegance, rather a European palace than a republican place of traffic.

The most comprehensive generalization by which we may hope to arrive at an idea of the business of New York is that which includes in tabular form the statistics of the chief institutions which employ and insure property.

On the 24th of September, 1864, sixty-three banks made a quarterly statement of their condition, under the general banking law of the State. These banks are at present the only ones in New York whose condition can be definitely ascertained, and their reported capital amounts to $69,219,763. The national banks will go far toward increasing the total metropolitan banking capital to one hundred millions. The largest of the State banks doing business in the city is the Bank of Commerce, (about being reorganized on the national plan,) with a capital of ten millions; and the smallest possess capital to the amount of two hundred thousand dollars.

Mr. Camp, now at the head of the New York Clearing-House, has been kind enough to furnish the following interesting statistics in regard to the total amount of business transactions managed by the New York banks in connection with the Clearing-House during the two years ending on the 30th of last September. Figures can scarcely be made more eloquent by illustration than they are of themselves, I therefore leave them without other comment than the remark that the weekly exchanges at the Clearing-House during the past year have repeatedly amounted to more than the entire expenses of the United States Government for the same period.

_Clearing-House Transactions._

+-----------------------------------------------------++ | 1862. | EXCHANGES. | BALANCES. || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| |October | $ 1,081,243,214.07 | $ 54,632,410.57 || |November | 874,966,873.15 | 47,047,576.93 || |December | 908,135,090.29 | 44,630,405.43 || | | | || | 1863. | | || |January | 1,251,408,362.76 | 58,792,544.70 || |February | 1,199,249,050.07 | 51,583,913.88 || |March | 1,313,908,804.14 | 60,456,505.45 || |April | 1,138,218,267.90 | 53,539,812.46 || |May | 1,535,484,281.78 | 70,328,306.25 || |June | 1,252,116,400.20 | 59,803,975.44 || |July | 1,261,668,342.87 | 62,387,857.44 || |August | 1,466,803,012.90 | 53,120,821.99 || |September | 1,584,396,148.47 | 61,302,352.35 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | | $14,867,597,848.60 | $677,626,482.61 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | || | 306 Business days. || | || | _Average for day_, 1862-3. || | || | Exchanges $48,586,921.07 || | Balances 2,214,415.63 || +-----------------------------------------------------++

+-----------------------------------------------------++ | 1863. | EXCHANGES. | BALANCES. || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| |October | $ 1,900,210,522.77 | $ 74,088,419.08 || |November | 1,778,800,987.95 | 66,895,452.49 || |December | 1,745,436,325.73 | 60,577,884.19 || | | | || | 1864. | | || |January | 1,770,312,694.43 | 63,689,950.88 || |February | 2,088,170,989.48 | 65,744,935.13 || |March | 2,753,323,948.53 | 84,938,940.37 || |April | 2,644,732,826.34 | 93,363,526.16 || |May | 1,877,653,131.37 | 76,328,462.88 || |June | 1,902,029,181.42 | 88,187,658.93 || |July | 1,777,753,537.53 | 73,343,903.49 || |August | 1,776,018,141.53 | 69,071,237.16 || |September | 2,082,754,368.84 | 69,288,834.17 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | | $24,097,196,655.92 | $885,719,204.93 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | || | 306 Business days. || | || | _Average for day_, 1863-4. || | || | Exchanges $77,984,455.20 || | Balances 2,866,405.19 || +-----------------------------------------------------++

+------------------------------------------------------------+ | | |Aggregate Exchanges for Eleven Years $95,540,602,384.53 | | " Balances " " " 4,678,311,016.79 | | ------------------- | | Total Transactions $101,218,913,401.32 | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+

On the 31st day of December, 1863, there were 101 joint-stock companies for the underwriting of fire-risks, with an aggregate capital of $23,632,860; net assets to the amount of $29,269,423; net cash receipts from premiums amounting to $10,181,031; and an average percentage of assets to risks in force equalling 2.995. Besides these 101 joint-stock concerns, there existed at the same date twenty-one mutual fire-insurance companies, with an aggregate balance in their favor of $674,042. The rapidity with which mutual companies have yielded to the compacter and more efficient form of the joint-stock concern will be comprehended when it is known that just twice the number now in being have gone out of existence during the last decade. There are twelve marine insurance companies in the metropolis, with assets amounting to $24,947,559. The life-insurance companies number thirteen, with an aggregate capital of $1,885,000. We may safely set down the property invested in New York insurance companies of all sorts at $51,139,461. Add this sum to the aggregate banking capital above stated, and we have a total of $120,359,224. This vast sum merely represents New York's interest in the management of other people's money. The bank is employed as an engine for operating debt and credit. Its capital is the necessary fuel for running the machine; and that fuel ought certainly not to cost more than a fair interest on the products of the engine. The insurance companies guard the business-man's fortune from surprise, as the banks relieve him from drudgery; they put property and livelihood beyond the reach of accident: in other words, they manage the estates of the community so as to secure them from deterioration, and charge a commission for their stewardship.

It is a legitimate assumption in this part of the country that the money employed in managing property bears to the property itself an average proportion of about seven per cent. Hence it follows that the above-stated aggregate banking and insurance capital of $120,359,224 must represent and be backed by values to more than fourteen times that amount. In other words, and in round numbers, we may assert that the bank and insurance interests of New York are in relations of commerce and control with at least $1,685,029,136. This measure of metropolitan influence, it must be remembered, is based on the statistics attainable mainly outside of cash sales, and through only two of the metropolitan agencies of commerce.

I do not know how much I may assist any reader's further comprehension of the energies of the metropolis by stating that it issues fifteen daily newspapers, one hundred and thirty-three weekly or semi-weekly journals, and seventy-four monthly, semi-monthly, or weekly magazines,--that it has ten good and three admirable public libraries,--a dozen large hospitals, exclusive of the military,--thirty benevolent societies, (and we are in that respect far behind London, where every man below an attorney belongs to some "union" or other, that he may have his neighbors' guaranty against the ever-impending British poor-house,)--twenty-one savings-banks,--one theatre where French is spoken, a German theatre, an Italian opera-house, and eleven theatres where they speak English. In a general magazine-article, it is impossible to review the hundreds of studios where our own Art is painting itself into the century with a vigor which has no rival abroad. We can treat neither the aesthetic nor the social life of New York with as delicate a pencil as we would. Our paper has had to deal with broad facts; and upon these we are willing to rest the cause of New York in any contest for metropolitan honors. We believe that New York is destined to be the permanent emporium not only of this country, but of the entire world,--and likewise the political capital of the nation. Had the White House (or, pray Heaven! some comelier structure) stood on Washington Heights, and the Capitol been erected at Fanwood, there would never have been a Proslavery Rebellion. This is a subject which business-men are coming to ponder pretty seriously.

After all, New York's essential charm to a New-Yorker cannot express itself in figures, nor, indeed, in any adequate manner. It is the city of his soul. He loves it with a passionate dignity which will not let him swagger like the Cockney or twitter like the Parisian. His love for New York goes frequently unacknowledged even to himself, until a necessary absence of unusual length teaches him how hard it would be to lose the city of his affections forever.

It is a bath of other souls. It will not let a man harden in his own epidermis. He must affect and be affected by multitudinous varieties of temperament, race, character. He avoids grooves, because New York will not tolerate grooviness. He knows that he must be able, on demand, to bowl anywhere over the field of human tastes and sympathies. Professionally he may be a specialist, but in New York his specialty must be only the axis around which are grouped encyclopaedic learning, faultless skill, and catholic intuitions. Nobody will waste a Saturday afternoon riding on his hobby-horse. He must be a broad-natured person, or he will be a mere imperceptible line on the general background of obscure citizens. He feels that he is surrounded by people who will help him do his best, yes, who will make him do it, or drive him out to install such as will. If he think of a good thing to do, he knows that the market for all good things is close around him. Whatever surplus of himself he has for communication, that he knows to be absolutely sure of a recipient before the day is done. New York, like Goethe's Olympus, says to every man with capacity and self-faith,--

"Here is all fulness, ye brave, to reward you: Work, and despair not!"

Moreover, the moral air of New York City is in certain respects the purest air a man can breathe. This may seem a paradox. New York City is not often quoted as an example of purity. To the philosopher her atmosphere is cleaner than that of a country village. As the air of a contracted space may grow poisonous by respiration, while pure air rests over the entire surface of the earth in virtue of being the final solvent to all terrestrial decompositions, so it is possible that a few good, but narrow people may get alone together in the country, and hatch a social organism far more morbid than the metropolitan. In the latter instance, aberrations counterbalance each other, and the body politic, cursed though it be with bad officials, has more vitality in it than could be excited by any conclave of excellent men with one idea, meeting, however, solemnly, to feed it with legislative pap.

While no man can ride into metropolitan success on a hobby-horse, popular dissent will still take no stronger form than a quiet withdrawal and the permission to rock by himself. No amount of eccentricity surprises a New-Yorker, or makes him uncourteous. It is difficult to attract even a crowd of boys on Broadway by an odd figure, face, manner, or costume. This has the result of making New York an asylum for all who love their neighbor as themselves, but would a little rather not have him looking through the key-hole. In New York I share no dreadful secrets with the man next door. I am not in his power any more than if I lived in Philadelphia,--nor so much, for he might get somebody to spy me there. There is no other place but New York where my next-door neighbor never feels the slightest hesitation about cutting me dead, because he knows that on such conditions rests that broad individual liberty which is the glory of the citizen.

In fine, if we seek the capital of well-paid labor,--the capital of broad congenialities and infinite resources,--the capital of most widely diffused comfort, luxury, and taste,--the capital which to the eye of the plain businessman deserves to be the nation's senate-seat,--the capital which, as the man of forecast sees, must eventually be the world's Bourse and market-place,--in any case we turn and find our quest in the city of New York.

To-day, she might claim Jersey City, Hoboken, Brooklyn, and all the settled districts facing the island shore, with as good a grace as London includes her multitudinous districts on both sides of the Thames. Were all the population who live by her, and legitimately belong to her, now united with her, as some day they must be by absorption, New York would now contain more than 1,300,000 people. For this union New York need make no effort. The higher organization always controls and incorporates the lower.

The release of New York commerce from the last shackles of the Southern "long-paper" system, combined with the progressive restoration of its moral freedom from the dungeon of Southern political despotism, has left, for the first time since she was born, our metropolitan giantess unhampered. Let us throw away the poor results of our last decade! New York thought she was growing then; but the future has a stature for her which shall lift her up where she can see and summon all the nations.[E]

FOOTNOTES:

[E] In addition to the obligations elsewhere recognised, an acknowledgment is due to the well-known archaeologist and statistician of New York,--Mr. Valentine,--who furnished for the purpose of this article the latest edition of his Manual, in advance of its general publication, and to the great convenience of the writer.

NEEDLE AND GARDEN.

THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

INTRODUCTION.

I am very sure that nothing was ever farther from my thoughts than the writing of a book. The pages which follow were never intended for publication, but were written as an amusement, sometimes in long winter evenings, when it was pleasanter to be indoors, and sometimes in summer days, when most of the circumstances mentioned in them occurred. I was a long time in writing them, as they were done little by little. There was a point in them at which I stopped entirely. Then I lent the manuscript to several of my acquaintances to read. Some of these kept it only a few days, and I feel quite sure soon tired of it, as it afterwards appeared that they had read very little of it: they must have thought it extremely dull. But these probably borrowed it only out of compliment, and so I was neither surprised nor mortified. The only surprise was, that now and then there was one who did have patience to go over it all, as it was written in a common copy-book, not in a very nice hand, and with a great many erasures and alterations. But when one has a favorite, it is grateful to find even a single admirer for it. So it was with me. I wrote from love of the subject; and when any one was kind enough to give his approval, I felt exceedingly pleased, not because I had a high opinion of the matter myself, but only because I had written it. Then it must be acknowledged that my small circle of acquaintances comprised more workers than readers. Those who had a taste for reading found their time so occupied by the labor necessary to their support that but little was left to them for indulging in books; and the few who had leisure were probably such indifferent readers as to make the task of going over a blotted manuscript too great for their patience, unless it were more interesting than mine.

At last, after a very long time, and a great many strange experiences, the manuscript fell into the hands of one who was an entire stranger to me, but who has since proved himself the dearest friend I ever had. He read it, and said it must be published. But the thought of publication so frightened me that it almost deprived me of sleep. Still, after very long persuasion, I consented, and the whole was written over again, with a great many things added. When it was all ready, he told me I must write a preface. So I was persuaded even to this, though that was a new alarm, and I had scarcely recovered from the first. I have always been retiring,--indeed, quite out of sight; and nothing has reconciled me to this publicity but the knowledge that no one will be able to discover me, unless it be the very few who had patience to read my manuscript. Even they will find it so altered and enlarged as scarcely to remember it.

Yet there is another consideration which ought to reconcile me to coming forward in a way so contrary to what I had ever contemplated. I think the story of my quiet life may lead others to reflect more seriously on the griefs, the trials, and the hardships to which so many of my sex are constantly subjected. It may lead some of the other sex either to think more of these trials, or to view them in a new and different light from any in which they have heretofore regarded them. They may even think that I have suggested a new remedy for an old evil. I know that many such have labored to remove the wrongs of which poor and friendless women are the victims. But while they have already done much toward that humane end, as much remains to do. I make no studied effort to influence or direct them. The contrast between my first and last experience was so great, that, in rewriting, I added some facts from the experience of others to give force to the recital of my own. My hope is, that humane minds may be gratified by a narrative so uneventful, and that they, fortified by position and means, will be led to do for others, in a new direction, as much as I, comparatively unaided, have been able to do for myself.

CHAPTER I.

Having always had a great fondness for reading, I have gone through every book to which my very limited circle of acquaintance gave me access. Even this small literary experience was sufficient to impress upon my mind the superior value of personal memoirs. Of all my reading, they most interested me; and I have learned from others that such books have most interested them. Indeed, biography, and personal narrative of all kinds, seem to command a general popularity. Moreover, we like to know from the person himself what he does, how he thinks and feels, what fortunes or vicissitudes he encounters, how he begins his career, and how it ends. All biography gives us most of these particulars, but they are never so vividly recited as by the subject of the narrative himself. Accordingly what was once a kind of diary of the most unimportant events I have transformed into a personal history. I know the transformation will not give them any importance they did not originally possess, but it gives me at least one chance of making my recital interesting.

All who have any knowledge of the city of Philadelphia will remember that on its southern boundary there is a large district known as the township of Moyamensing. Much of it is now incorporated with the recently enlarged city, but the old name still clings to it. There are many thousand acres in this district, which stretches from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. The junction of the two rivers at its lower end makes it a peninsula, which has long been known as "The Neck." When the city was founded by William Penn, much of this and the adjoining land was in possession of the Swedes, who came first to Pennsylvania. They had settled on tracts of different sizes, some very large, and some very small, according to their ability to purchase. It was then covered by a dense forest, which required great labor to clear it.

My ancestors were among these early Swedes. They were so poor in this world's goods as to be able to purchase only forty acres of this extremely cheap land. Even that was not paid for in money, but in labor. In time they cleared it up, built a small brick house after the quaint fashion of those early days, the material for which was furnished from a superior kind of clay underlying the land all around them, and thenceforward maintained themselves from the products of the soil, then, as now, proverbial for its fruitfulness. It descended to their children, most of whom were equally plodding and unambitious with themselves. All continued the old occupation of looking to the soil for subsistence; and so long as the forty acres were kept together, they lived well. But as descendants multiplied, and one generation succeeded to another, so the little farm became subdivided among numerous heirs, all of whom sold to strangers, except my father, who considered himself happy in being able to secure, as his portion, the quaint old homestead, with its then well-stocked garden, and a lot large enough to make his whole domain an acre and a half.

I have many times heard him relate the particulars of this acquisition, and say how lucky it was for all of us that he secured it. The other heirs, who had turned their acres into money, went into trade or speculation and came out poor. With the homestead of the first settler my father seemed to have inherited all his unambitious and plodding character. His whole habit was quiet, domestic, and home-loving. He was content to cultivate his land with the spade, raising many kinds of fruits and vegetables for the family and for market, and working likewise in the fields and gardens of his neighbors; while in winter he employed himself in making nets for the fishermen.

But much of this work for others was done for gentlemen who had fine old houses, built at least a hundred years ago. The land in Moyamensing is so beautifully level, and is so very rich by nature, that at an early day in the settlement of the country a great many remarkably fine dwellings were built upon it, to which extensive gardens were attached. Father had been in and all over many of these mansions, and was fond of describing their wonders to us. They were finished inside with great expense. Some had curiously carved door-frames and mantels, with parlors wainscoted clear up to the ceiling, and heavy mouldings wherever they could be put in. These old-time mansions were scattered thickly over this beautiful piece of land. Such of them as were built nearest the city have long since been swept away by the extension of streets and long rows of new houses; but all through the remoter portion of the district there are many still left, with their fine gardens filled with the best fruits that modern horticulture has enabled the wealthy to gather around them.

I remember many of those that have been torn down. One or two of them were famous in Revolutionary history. The owners of such as remained in my father's time were glad to have him take charge of their gardens. He knew how to bud or graft a tree, to trim grapevines, and to raise the best and earliest vegetables. In all that was to be done in a gentleman's garden he was so neat, so successful, so quiet and industrious, that whatever time he had to spare from his own was always in demand, and at the highest wages.

When not otherwise occupied, my mother also worked at the art of net-making. At times she was employed in making up clothing for what some years ago were popularly called the slop-shops, mostly situated in the lower section of the city. These were shops which kept supplies of ready-made clothing for sailors and other transient people who harbored along the wharves. It was coarse work, and was made up as cheaply as possible. At that time the shipping of the port was much of it congregated in the lower part of the city, not far from our house.

When a little girl, I have often gone with my mother when she went on her errands to these shops, doing what I could to help her in carrying her heavy bundles to and fro; and more than once I heard her rudely spoken to by the pert young tailor who received her work, and who examined it as carefully as if the material had been silk or cambric, instead of the coarse fabric which constitutes the staple of such establishments. I thus learned, at a very early age, to know something of the duties of needle-women, as well as of the mortifications and impositions to which their vocation frequently subjects them.

My mother was a beautiful sewer, and I am sure she never turned in a garment that had in any way been slighted. She knew how rude and exacting this class of employers were, and was nice and careful in consequence, so as to be sure of giving satisfaction. But all this care availed nothing, in many cases, to prevent rudeness, and sometimes a refusal to pay the pitiful price she had been promised. Her disposition was too gentle and yielding for her to resent these impositions; she was unable to contend and argue with the rough creatures behind the counter; she therefore submitted in silence, sometimes even in tears. Twice, I can distinctly remember, when these heartless men compelled her to leave her work at less than the low price stipulated, I have seen her tears fall in big drops as she took up the mite thus grudgingly thrown down to her, and leave the shop, leading me by the hand. I could feel, young as I was, the hard nature of this treatment. I heard the rough language, though unable to know how harshly it must have grated on the soft feelings of the best mother that child was ever blessed with.

But I comprehended nothing beyond what I saw and heard,--nothing of the merits of the case,--nothing of the nature and bearings of the business,--nothing of the severe laws of trade which govern the conduct of buyer and seller. I did not know that in a large city there are always hundreds of sewing-women begging from these hard employers the privilege of toiling all day, and half-way into the night, in an occupation which never brings even a reasonable compensation, while many times the severity of their labors, the confinement and privation, break down the most robust constitutions, and hurry the weaker into a premature grave.

I was too young to reason on these subjects, though quick enough to feel for my dear mother. When I saw her full heart overflow in tears, I cried from sympathy. When we got into the street, and her tears dried up, and her habitual cheerfulness returned, I also ceased weeping, and soon forgot the cause. The memory of a child is blissfully fugitive. Indeed, among the blessings that lie everywhere scattered along our pathway, is the readiness with which we all forget sorrows that nearly broke down the spirit when first they fell upon us. For if the griefs of an entire life were to be remembered, all that we suffer from childhood to mature age, the accumulation would be greater than we could bear.

On one occasion, when with my mother at the slop-shop, we found a sewing-woman standing at the counter, awaiting payment for the making of a dozen summer vests. We came up to the counter and stood beside her,--for there were no chairs on which a sewing-woman might rest herself, however fatigued from carrying a heavy bundle for a mile or two in a hot day. And even had there been such grateful conveniences, we should not have been invited to sit down; and unless invited, no sewing-woman would risk a provocation of the wrath of an ill-mannered shopman by presuming to occupy one. Few employers bestow even a thought upon the comfort of their sewing-women. They seldom think how tired they become with overwork at home, before leaving it with a heavy load for the shop, nor that the bundle grows heavier and heavier with every step that it is carried, or that the weak and over-strained body of the exhausted woman needs rest the moment she sets foot within the door.

The woman whom we found at the counter was in the prime of life, plainly, but neatly dressed,--no doubt in her best attire, as she was to be seen in public, and she knew that her whole capital lay in her appearance. I judged her to be an educated lady. Though a stranger to my mother, yet she accosted her so politely, and in a voice so musical, that the gracefulness of her manner and the softness of her tones still linger in my memory. Looking down to me, then less than ten years old, and addressing my mother, she asked,--

"How many of them have you?"

"Only three, Ma'am," was the reply.

"I have six of them to struggle for," she said,--adding, after a moment's pause, "and it is hard to be obliged to do it all."

I saw that she was dressed in newly made mourning. I knew what mourning was,--but not then what it was to be a widow. My mother afterwards told me she was such, and was therefore in black. Other conversation passed between the two, during which I looked up into the widow's face with the unreflecting intensity of childish interest. Her voice was so remarkable, so kind, so gentle, so full of conciliation, that it won my heart. There was a sadness in her face which struck me most forcibly and painfully. There was an expression of care, of overwork, and great privation. Yet, for all this, the lines of her countenance were beautiful even in their painfulness.

While I thus stood gazing up into the widow's face, the shopkeeper came forward from a distant window, by whose light he had been examining the vests, threw them roughly down upon the counter in front of her, and exclaimed in a sharp voice,--

"Can't pay for such work as this,--don't want it in the shop,--never had the like of it,--look at that!"

He tossed a vest toward my mother, who took it up, and examined it. One end of it hung down low enough for me to catch, and I also undertook the business of inspection. I scanned it closely, and was a sufficient judge of sewing to see that it was made up with a stitch as neat and regular as that of my mother. She must have thought so, too; for, on returning it to the man, she said to him,--

"The work is equal to anything of _mine_."

Hearing a new voice, he then discovered, that, instead of tossing the vest to the poor widow, he had inadvertently thrown it to my mother. Then, addressing the former, he said, in the same sharp tone,--

"Can't pay but half price for this kind of work; don't want any more like it. There's your money; do you want more work?"

He threw down the silver on the counter. The whole price, or even double, would have been a mere pittance, the widow's mite indeed; but here was robbery of even that. What, in such a case, was this poor creature to do? She had six young and helpless children at home,--no husband to defend her,--no friend to stand between her and the man who thus robbed her. A resort to law were futile. What had she wherewith to pay either lawyer or magistrate? and was not continued employment a necessity? All these thoughts must have flashed across her mind. But in the terrible silence which she kept for some minutes, still standing at the counter, how many others must have succeeded them! What happy images of former comfort came knocking at her heart! what an agonizing sense of present destitution! what a contrast between the brightness of the one and the gloom of the other! and then the cries of hungry children ringing importunately in her ears! I noticed her all the time, and, child that I was, did so merely because she stood still and made no reply,--utterly unconscious that emotions of any kind were racking her grief-smitten heart. I felt no such emotions myself,--how should I suppose that they had even an existence?

She made no answer to the man who had thus wantonly outraged her, but, turning to my mother, looked up into her face as if for pity and advice. Were they not equally helpless victims on the altar of a like domestic necessity, and should not common trials knit them together in the bonds of a common sympathy? A new sadness came over her yet beautiful countenance; but no tear gushed gratefully to relieve her swelling heart. She took up the money,--I saw that her hand was trembling,--placed it in her purse, lifted from the counter a bundle containing a second dozen of vests, and, bidding my mother a graceful farewell, left the scene of this cruel imposition on one utterly powerless either to prevent it or to obtain redress. I have never forgotten the incident.

These labors of my mother were at no time necessary to the support of the family; but, though quiet and retiring in her habits, she had ambitious aspirations for supplying herself with pocket-money by the work of her own hands. As I said before, she was a beautiful sewer on the finest kinds of work, such as, if obtained from the families in which it is worn, would have yielded her remunerative wages. But we lived away beyond the thickly settled portion of the city, had no influential acquaintances from whom it could be procured, and hence my mother, with thousands who were really necessitous, resorted to the tailors, to the meanest as well as to the honorable. When my father heard of the indignities they practised on us, and of the shamefully low prices they paid us, he forbade my mother ever going to them again. He said their whole business was to grow rich by defrauding of their just dues the poor women who were thus competing with each other for work, and that we should do no more for any of them, until we could find an honest man and a gentleman to deal with.

But my father, always busy in his garden or in that of some wealthy neighbor, knew nothing even of the little outside world into which we had penetrated. His generous, unsuspecting nature thus led him to feel sure that the honest and the gentlemanly were to be found in abundance; but he overlooked the fact that it was only his quiet wife upon whom was devolved the task of discovering them, as well as that her explorations had never yet been rewarded with success.

Notwithstanding these discouragements, my mother was firmly of opinion that the needle was a woman's only sure dependence against all the vicissitudes of life. She believed, in a general way, that a good needlewoman would never come to want. The idea of diversifying employment for the sex had never crossed her mind; the vocation of woman was to sew. All must not only do it, but they must depend on it. She considered it of little use to think of anything beyond the needle. She could not see, that, if all the women of the country did the same thing, there must inevitably be more laborers than could find employment,--that the competition would be so great among them as to depress prices to a point so low that many women could not live on them,--and that those who did would drag out only a miserable existence.

Though a woman of excellent sense, with a tolerable education, and fond of all the reading she could find time to do, still she continued to plead for this supremacy of the needle, even after her humiliating experience at the slop-shops. She was the most industrious sewer I have ever known,--and not only industrious, but neat, conscientious, and rapid. Machines, with iron frames and wheels, had not then been invented; but since they have, I have never seen a better one than my mother. Her frame, if not of iron, seemed quite as indestructible, even if it did turn out fewer stitches. Times without number has she sat up till midnight, plying her needle by the dull light of a common candle: for there was no gas in our suburban district. While we children were sound asleep, there she sat, not from necessity, but from pure love of work. Yet she was up early, long before any of the dull sleepers of the household had stirred, and had more trouble to get us down to breakfast than to get up the meal itself. I scarcely thought of these things during the young years of my life, when they were occurring; but as I am writing this, they all come thronging before my memory with the freshness of yesterday. They will no doubt seem dull to others; but the recollection is very precious to me.

With this conviction of its being almost the sole mission of a woman to sew, she made the needle a vital point in my education, as well as in that of my sister. There were two girls of us, and a brother. I was the eldest, and my sister the youngest of the three. Thus, when I was quite a child, I learned to use the needle; and as I grew older, the utmost pains were taken to teach me every branch of sewing, from the commonest to the most difficult. My sister went through the same course of instruction.

At a very early age we were able to make and dress our own dolls, hem our handkerchiefs and aprons, and in due time were promoted to the darning of father's stockings and the patching of his working-clothes. We thought the being able to do these things for him a very great affair, and mother praised us for our work. But when sister Jane once put a patch over a hole in the knee of father's pantaloons, without covering all the rent,--she had let the patch slip down a little,--mother required her to rip it off and put it in the right place: but there was not a word of scolding for Jane; it was all softness, all kindness; she knew that Jane was a child. I think father, however, would never have noticed that the patch was a little out of place; and, indeed, I think it very likely he didn't care about having a patch of any kind put on, for his mind was on work, and not on appearances. But then it was my dear mother's way. We were taught that the needle was to be the staff of our future lives. Whatever we undertook must be done right; and then she had a just pride in making father always look respectable.

Thus in time we came to feel as much pride in being good seamstresses as did our mother. It was natural we should, for we believed all she taught us, and there was no one to controvert her positions,--except sometimes, when father heard her impressing her favorite dogma on our minds, he put in a word of doubt, saying, that, before the needle could be made so sure a dependence for poor women, there must be found a better market for female labor than the slop-shops, and a more honorable race of employers. To this questioning of her doctrine she made no reply, knowing that she had us all to herself, and that a doubt from father, only now and then uttered, would make no impression. But I remember it all now.

I can remember, too, how proud I felt when mother called me to her, one day, and gave me a piece of cotton cloth, of which she said I was to make father a shirt. It was of unbleached stuff, heavy and strong, but still nice and smooth. Father wore only one kind; and as it was to serve for best as well as for common wear, I was to make it as nicely as I could.

That afternoon all of us children were to go on a little fishing-excursion to the meadows on the Delaware, among the ditches which run all round the inside of the great embankment that has been thrown up to keep out the river. There was a vast expanse of beautiful green meadow inclosed by this embankment, on which great numbers of cattle were annually fatted. As viewed from the bank, it was luxuriant in the extreme; in fact, it was a prairie containing hundreds of acres, trimmed up and cared for with the utmost skill and watchfulness, and intersected with clean, open ditches, to secure drainage. Into these ditches the tide flowed through sluices in the bank, and thus they were always full of fish.

These beautiful meadows were the resort of thousands who resided in the lower section of the city, for picnics and excursions. The roads through them were as level as could possibly be, and upon them were continual trotting-matches. In summer, the wide flats outside the embankment were over-grown with reeds, among which gunners congregated in numbers dangerous to themselves, shooting rail and reed-birds. On Sundays and other holidays, the wide footpath on the high embankment was a moving procession of people, who came out of the city to enjoy the fresh breeze from the river. All who lived near resorted to these favorite grounds.

Several other little boys and girls were to come to our house and go with us. We had long been in the habit of going to the meadows to fish and play, where we had the merriest and happiest of times. Sometimes, though the meadows were only half a mile from us, we took a slice or two of bread-and-butter in a little basket, to serve for dinner, so that we could stay all day; for the meadows and ditches extended several miles below the city, and we wandered and played all the way down to the Point House. On these trips we caught sun-fish, roach, cat-fish, and sometimes perch, and always brought them home. We generally got prodigiously hungry from the exercise we took, and sat down on the thick grass under a tree to eat our scanty dinners. These dinner-times came very early in the day; and long before it was time to go home in the afternoon, we became even more hungry than we had been in the morning,--but our baskets had been emptied.

I think these young days, with these innocent sports and recreations, were among the happiest of my life. I do not think the fish we caught were of much account, though father was always glad to see them; and I remember how he took each one of our baskets, as we came into the kitchen, looked into it, and turned over and counted the fishes it contained. My brother Fred generally had the most, and I had the fewest: but it seems that even for other things than fishes I never had a taking way about me. Father was very fond of them, for mother had a way of frying their little thin bodies into a nice brown crisp, which made us all a good breakfast. So father had made us lines, with corks and hooks, tied them to nice little poles, and showed us how to use them and keep them in order, and had a corner in the shed in which he taught us to set them up out of harm's way. Occasionally he even went with us to the meadows himself.

But while I am speaking of these dear times, I must say that we always came home happy, though tired and dirty. Sometimes we got into great mud-holes along the ditch-bank, so deep as to leave a shoe sticking fast, compelling us to trudge home with only one. Then, when we found a place where the fish bit sharply, all of us rushed to the spot, and pushed into the wild rose-bushes that grew in clumps upon the bank: for I generally noticed, that, where the bushes overhung the water and made a little shade, the fish were most abundant. In the scramble to secure a good foothold, the briers tore our clothes and bonnets, sometimes so as to make us fairly ragged, besides scratching our hands and faces terribly. Occasionally one of us slipped into the ditch, and was helped out dripping wet; but we never mentioned such an incident at home. Then more than once we were caught in a heavy shower, with nothing but a rose-bush or a willow-tree for shelter; and there were often so many of us that it was like a hen with an unreasonably large brood of chickens,--some must stay out in the wet, and all such surplusage got soaked to the skin.

But we cared nothing for any of these things. Indeed, I am inclined to think that we were happy in proportion as we got tired, hungry, wet, and dirty. Mother never scolded us when we came home in this condition. Though we smelt terribly of mud and fish, and were often smeared over with the dried slime of a great slippery eel which had swallowed the hook, and coiled himself in knots all over our lines, and required three or four of the boys to cut off his head and get the hook out, yet all she did was to make us wash ourselves clean, after which she gave us a supper that tasted better than all the suppers we get now, and then put us to bed. We were tired enough to go right to sleep; but it was the fatigue of absolute happiness,--light hearts, light consciences, no care, nothing but the perfect enjoyment of childhood, such as never comes to us but once.

This is a long digression, but it could not be avoided. I said, that, when mother told me I was to make a shirt for father, we were that very afternoon to go down among these dear old meadows and dirty ditches to fish and play. Our lines were all in order, and a new hook had been put on mine, as on the last excursion the old one had caught in what the boys call a "blind eel," that is, a sunken log,--and there it probably remains to this day. Fred had dug worms for us, and they had coiled themselves up into a huge ball in the shell of an old cocoa-nut, ready to be impaled on our hooks. Everything was prepared for a start, and we were only waiting for dinner to be over: though I can remember, that, whenever we had such an afternoon before us, we had very little appetite to satisfy. The anticipation and glee were such that the pervading desire was not to eat, but to be off.

But when mother gave me the shirt to make, I felt so proud of the trust, that all desire to go to the meadows left me. I felt a new sensation, a new ambition, a new pride. It was very strange that I should thus suddenly give up the ditches, the fishing, the scratching, and the dirt; for none of us loved them more dearly than myself. But they were old and familiar, and father's shirt was a novelty; and novelty is one of the great attractions for the young. So they went without me, and after dinner I sat down to make my first shirt.

It was to be made in the plainest way; for father had no pride about his dress. I cut it out myself, basted it together, then sewed it with my utmost care. There was to be no nice work about collar or wristband,--no troublesome plaits or gussets,--no machine-made bosom to set in,--only a few gathers,--and all plain work throughout. My mother looked at me occasionally as the shirt progressed, but found no fault. She did not once stop me to examine it; but I feel sure she must have scrutinized it carefully after I had gone to bed. I was so particular in this, my first grand effort to secure the honors of a needlewoman, that quite two days were occupied in doing it.

When all done, I took it to mother, proud of my achievement, telling her, that, if she had more cotton, I was ready to begin another. She looked over it with a slowness that I am sure was intentional, and not at all necessary. The wristbands were all right, the buttons in the proper places, the hemming she said was done well. Then, taking it up by the collar, and holding the garment at full length before her, so that I could see it all, she asked me if I saw anything wrong. I looked closely, but could see no mistake. At last she exclaimed,--

"Why, my dear Lizzie, this is only a bag with arms to it! How is your father to get into it?"

She turned it all round before me, and showed me that I had left no opening at the bosom and neck,--father could never get it over his head! I cannot tell how astonished and mortified I felt. I cried as only such a child could cry. I sobbed and begged her not to show it to father, and promised to alter it immediately, if she would only tell me how. But, oh, how kind my dear mother was in soothing my excited feelings! There was not a word of blame. She made me comparatively calm by immediately opening the bosom as it should have been done, and showing me how to finish it. I hurried up to my chamber to be alone and out of sight. They called me to dinner, but my appetite had gone. Though my little heart was full, and my hand trembled, yet long before night the work was done.

Oh, how the burden rose from my spirits when my dear mother took me in her arms, kissed me tenderly, and said that my mistake was nothing but a trifle that I would be sure to remember, and that the shirt was far better made than she had expected! When father came in to supper, I took it to him and told him that _I_ had made it. He looked both surprised and pleased, kissed me with even more than his usual kindness,--I think mother must have privately told him of my blunder,--and said that he would surely remember me at Christmas.

I know that incidents like these can be of little interest to any but myself. But what more exciting ones are to be expected in such a history as mine? If they are related here, it is because I am requested to record them. Still, every poor sewing-girl will consider that the making of her first shirt is an event in her career, a difficulty to be surmounted,--and that, even when successfully accomplished, it is in reality only the beginning of a long career of toil.

MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

THOMAS MOORE.

More than forty years have passed since I first conversed with the poet Thomas Moore. Afterwards it was my privilege to know him intimately. He seldom, of late years, visited London without spending an evening at our house; and in 1845 we passed a happy week at his cottage, Sloperton, in the county of Wilts:--

"In my calendar There are no whiter days!"

The poet has himself noted the time in his diary (November, 1845).

It was in the year 1822 I made his acquaintance in Dublin. He was in the full ripeness of middle age,--then, as ever, "the poet of all circles, and the idol of his own." As his visits to his native city were few and far between, the power to see him, and especially to _hear_ him, was a boon of magnitude. It was, indeed, a treat, when, seated at the piano, he gave voice to the glorious "Melodies" that are justly regarded as the most valuable of his legacies to mankind. I can recall that evening as vividly as if it were not a sennight old: the graceful man, small and slim in figure, his upturned eyes and eloquent features giving force to the music that accompanied the songs, or rather to the songs that accompanied the music.

Dublin was then the home of much of the native talent that afterwards found its way to England; and there were some, Lady Morgan especially, whose "evenings" drew together the wit and genius for which that city has always been famous. To such an evening I make reference. It was at the house of a Mr. Steele, then High Sheriff of the County of Dublin, and I was introduced there by the Rev. Charles Maturin. The name is not widely known, yet Maturin was famous in his day--and for a day--as the author of two successful tragedies, "Bertram" and "Manuel," (in which the elder Kean sustained the leading parts,) and of several popular novels. Moreover, he was an eloquent preacher, although probably he mistook his calling when he entered the Church. Among his many eccentricities I remember one: it was his habit to compose while walking about his large and scantily furnished house; and always on such occasions he placed a wafer on his forehead,--a sign that none of his family or servants were to address him then, to endanger the loss of a thought that might enlighten a world. He was always in "difficulties." In Lady Morgan's Memoirs it is stated that Sir Charles Morgan raised a subscription for Maturin, and supplied him with fifty pounds. "The first use he made of the money was to give a grand party. There was little furniture in the reception-room, but at one end of it there had been erected an old theatrical-property throne, and under a canopy of crimson velvet sat Mr. and Mrs. Maturin!"

Among the guests at Mr. Steele's were the poet's father, mother, and sister,--the sister to whom he was so fervently attached. The father was a plain, homely man,--nothing more, and assuming to be nothing more, than a Dublin tradesman.[F] The mother evidently possessed a far higher mind. She, too, was retiring and unpretending,--like her son in features,--with the same gentle, yet sparkling eye, flexible and smiling mouth, and kindly and conciliating manners. It was to be learned long afterwards how deep was the affection that existed in the poet's heart for these humble relatives,--how fervid the love he bore them,--how earnest the respect with which he invariably treated them,--nay, how elevated was the pride with which he regarded them from first to last.

The sister, Ellen, was, I believe, slightly deformed; at least, the memory to me is that of a small, delicate woman, with one shoulder "out." The expression of her countenance betokened suffering, having that peculiar "sharpness" which usually accompanies severe and continuous bodily ailment.[G] I saw more of her some years afterwards, and knew that her mind and disposition were essentially lovable.

To the mother--Anastasia Moore, _nee_ Codd, a humbly descended, homely, and almost uneducated woman[H]--Moore gave intense respect and devoted affection, from the time that reason dawned upon him to the hour of her death. To her he wrote his first letter, (in 1793,) ending with these lines--

"Your absence all but ill endure, And none so ill as--THOMAS MOORE."

And in the zenith of his fame, when society drew largely on his time, and the highest and best of the land coveted a portion of his leisure, with her he corresponded so regularly that at her death she possessed (it has been so told me by Mrs. Moore) four thousand of his letters. Never, according to the statement of Earl Russell, did he pass a week without writing to her _twice_, except during his absence in Bermuda, when franks were not to be obtained, and postages were costly.

When a world had tendered to him its homage, still the homely woman was his "darling mother," to whom he transmitted a record of his cares and his triumphs, his anxieties and his hopes, as if he considered--as I verily believe he did consider--that to give her pleasure was the chief enjoyment of his life. His sister--"excellent Nell"--occupied only a second place in his heart; while his father received as much of his respect as if he had been the hereditary representative of a line of kings.

All his life long, "he continued," according to one of the most valued of his correspondents, "amidst the pleasures of the world, to preserve his home fireside affections true and genuine, as they were when a boy."

To his mother he writes of all his facts and fancies; to her he opens his heart in its natural and innocent fulness; tells her of each thing, great or small, that, interesting him, must interest her,--from his introduction to the Prince, and his visit to Niagara, to the acquisition of a pencil-case, and the purchase of a new pocket-handkerchief. "You, my sweet mother," he writes, "can see neither frivolity nor egotism in these details."

In 1806, Moore's father received, through the interest of Lord Moira, the post of Barrack-Master in Dublin, and thus became independent. In 1815, "Retrenchment" deprived him of this office, and he was placed on half-pay. The family had to seek aid from the son, who entreated them not to despond, but rather to thank Providence for having permitted them to enjoy the fruits of office so long, till he (the son) was "in a situation to keep them in comfort without it." "Thank Heaven," he writes afterwards of his father, "I have been able to make his latter days tranquil and comfortable." When sitting beside his death-bed, (in 1825,) he was relieved by a burst of tears and prayers, and by "a sort of confidence that the Great and Pure Spirit above us could not be otherwise than pleased at what He saw passing in my mind."

When Lord Wellesley, (Lord-Lieutenant,) after the death of the father, proposed to continue the half-pay to the sister, Moore declined the offer, although, he adds,--"God knows how useful such aid would be to me, as God alone knows how I am to support all the burdens now heaped upon me"; and his wife at home was planning how "they might be able to do with one servant," in order that they might be the better able to assist his mother.

The poet was born at the corner of Aungier Street, Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779, and died at Sloperton, on the 25th of February,[I] 1852, at the age of seventy-two. What a full life it was! Industry a fellow-worker with Genius for nearly sixty years!

He was a sort of "show-child" almost from his birth, and could barely walk when it was jestingly said of him, he passed all his nights with fairies on the hills. Almost his earliest memory was having been crowned king of a castle by some of his playfellows. At his first school he was the show-boy of the schoolmaster: at thirteen years old he had written poetry that attracted and justified admiration. In 1797 he was "a man of mark"; at the University,[J] in 1798, at the age of nineteen, he had made "considerable progress" in translating the Odes of Anacreon; and in 1800 he was "patronized" and flattered by the Prince of Wales, who was "happy to know a man of his abilities," and "hoped they might have many opportunities of enjoying each other's society."

His earliest printed work, "Poems by Thomas Little," has been the subject of much, and perhaps merited, condemnation. Of Moore's own feeling in reference to these compositions of his mere, and thoughtless, boyhood, it may be right to quote two of the dearest of his friends. Thus writes Lisle Bowles of Thomas Moore, in allusion to these early poems:--

"'----Like Israel's incense laid Upon unholy earthly shrines':--

Who, if, in the unthinking gayety of premature genius, he joined the sirens, has made ample amends by a life of the strictest virtuous propriety, equally exemplary as the husband, the father, and the man,--and as far as the muse is concerned, _more_ ample amends, by melodies as sweet as Scriptural and sacred, and by weaving a tale of the richest Oriental colors, which faithful affection and pity's tear have consecrated to all ages." This is the statement of his friend Rogers:--"So heartily has Moore repented of having published 'Little's Poems,' that I have seen him shed tears,--tears of deep contrition,--when we were talking of them."

I allude to his early triumphs only to show, that, while they would have spoiled nine men out of ten, they failed to taint the character of Moore. His modest estimate of himself was from first to last a leading feature in his character. Success never engendered egotism; honors never seemed to him only the recompense of desert; he largely magnified the favors he received, and seemed to consider as mere "nothings" the services he rendered and the benefits he conferred. That was his great characteristic, all his life. We have ourselves ample evidence to adduce on this head. I copy the following letter from Mr. Moore. It is dated "Sloperton, November 29, 1843."

"MY DEAR MR. HALL,--

"I am really and truly ashamed of myself for having let so many acts of kindness on your part remain unnoticed and unacknowledged on mine. But the world seems determined to make me a man of letters in more senses than one, and almost every day brings me such an influx of epistles from mere strangers that friends hardly ever get a line from me. My friend Washington Irving used to say, 'It is much easier to get a book from Moore than a letter.' But this has not been the case, I am sorry to say, of late; for the penny-post has become the sole channel of my inspirations. How _am_ I to thank you sufficiently for all your and Mrs. Hall's kindness to me? She must come down here, when the summer arrives, and be thanked _a quattr' occhi_,--far better way of thanking than at such a cold distance. Your letter to the mad Repealers was far too good and wise and gentle to have much effect on such rantipoles."[K]

The house in Aungier Street I visited so recently as 1864. It was then, and still is, as it was in 1779, the dwelling of a grocer,--altered only so far as that a bust of the poet is placed over the door, and the fact that he was born there is recorded at the side. May no modern "improvement" ever touch it!

"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground."

This humble dwelling of the humble tradesman is the house of which the poet speaks in so many of his early letters and memoranda. Here, when a child in years, he arranged a debating society, consisting of himself and his father's two "clerks." Here he picked up a little Italian from a kindly old priest who had passed some time in Italy, and obtained a "smattering of French" from an intelligent _emigre_, named La Frosse. Here his tender mother watched over his boyhood, proud of his opening promise, and hopeful, yet apprehensive, of his future. Here he and his sister, "excellent Nell," acquired music, first upon an old harpsichord, obtained by his father in discharge of a debt, and afterwards on a piano, to buy which his loving mother had saved up all superfluous pence. Hence he issued to lake country walks with unhappy Robert Emmet. Hither he came--not less proudly, yet as fondly as ever--when college magnates had given him honor, and the King's Viceroy had received him as a guest.

In 1835 he records "a visit to No. 12, Aungier Street, where I was born." "Visited every part of the house; the small old yard and its appurtenances; the small, dark kitchen, where I used to have my bread and milk; the front and back drawing-rooms; the bedrooms and garrets,--murmuring, 'Only think, a grocer's still!'" "The many thoughts that came rushing upon me, while thus visiting the house where the first nineteen or twenty years of my life were passed, may be more easily conceived than told." He records, with greater unction than he did his visit to the Prince, his sitting with the grocer and his wife at their table, and drinking in a glass of their wine her and her husband's "good health." Thence he went, with all his "recollections of the old shop about him," to a grand dinner at the Viceregal Lodge!

I spring with a single line from the year 1822, when I knew him first, to the year 1845, when circumstances enabled us to enjoy the long-looked-for happiness of visiting Moore and his beloved wife in their home at Sloperton.

The poet was then in his sixty-fifth year, and had in a great measure retired from actual labor; indeed, it soon became evident to us that the faculty for enduring and continuous toil no longer existed. Happily, it was not absolutely needed; for, with very limited wants, there was a sufficiency,--a bare sufficiency, however, for there were no means to procure either the elegances or the luxuries which so frequently become the necessities of man, and a longing for which might have been excused in one who had been the friend of peers and the associate of princes.

The forests and fields that surround Bowood, the mansion of the Marquis of Lansdowne, neighbor the poet's humble dwelling. The spire of the village church, beside the portals of which the poet now sleeps, is seen above adjacent trees. Laborers' cottages are scattered all about. They are a heavy and unimaginative race, those peasants of Wiltshire; and, knowing their neighbor had written books, they could by no means get rid of the idea that he was the writer of _Moore's Almanac_, and perpetually, greeted him with a salutation, in hopes to receive in return some prognostic of the weather, which might guide them in arrangements for seedtime and harvest. Once, when he had lost his way,--wandering till midnight,--he roused up the inmates of a cottage, in search of a guide to Sloperton, and, to his astonishment, found he was close to his own gate. "Ah, Sir," said the peasant, "that comes of yer skyscraping!"

He was fond of telling of himself such simple anecdotes as this; indeed, I remember his saying that no applause he ever obtained gave him so much pleasure as a compliment from a half-wild countryman, who stood right in his path on a quay in Dublin, and exclaimed, slightly altering the words of Byron,--"Three cheers for Tommy Moore, the pote of all circles, and the _darlint_ of his own!"

I recall him at this moment,--his small form and intellectual face, rich in expression, and that expression the sweetest, the most gentle, and the kindliest. He had still in age the same bright and clear eye, the same gracious smile, the same suave and winning manner I had noticed as the attributes of his comparative youth; a forehead not remarkably broad or high, but singularly impressive, firm, and full,--with the organ of gayety large, and those of benevolence and veneration greatly preponderating. Ternerani, when making his bust, praised the form of his ears. The nose, as observed in all his portraits, was somewhat upturned. Standing or sitting, his head was invariably upraised, owing, perhaps, mainly to his shortness of stature, with so much bodily activity as to give him the character of restlessness; and no doubt that usual accompaniment of genius was eminently his. His hair, at the time I speak of, was thin and very gray; and he wore his hat with the jaunty air that has been often remarked as a peculiarity of the Irish. In dress, although far from slovenly, he was by no means particular. Leigh Hunt, speaking of him in the prime of life, says,--"His forehead is bony and full of character, with 'bumps' of wit large and radiant enough to transport a phrenologist. His eyes are as dark and fine as you would wish to see under a set of vine-leaves; his mouth generous and good-humored, with dimples." He adds,--"He was lively, polite, bustling, full of amenities and acquiescences, into which he contrived to throw a sort of roughening cordiality, like the crust of old Port. It seemed a happiness to him to say 'Yes.'" Jeffrey, in one of his letters, says of him,--"He is the sweetest-blooded, warmest-hearted, happiest, hopefullest creature that ever set Fortune at defiance"; he speaks also of "the buoyancy of his spirits and the inward light of his mind"; and adds,--"There is nothing gloomy or bitter in his ordinary talk, but, rather, a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, much more like Nature than his poetry."

"The light that surrounds him is all from within."

He had but little voice; yet he sang with a depth of sweetness that charmed all hearers: it was true melody, and told upon the heart as well as the ear. No doubt much of this charm was derived from association; for it was only his own "Melodies" he sang. It would be difficult to describe the effect of his singing. I remember some one saying to me, it conveyed an idea of what a mermaid's song might be. Thrice I heard him sing, "As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow,"--once in 1822, once at Lady Blessington's, and once in my own house. Those who can recall the touching words of that song, and unite them with the deep, yet tender pathos of the music, will be at no loss to conceive the intense delight of his auditors.

I occasionally met Moore in public, and once or twice at public dinners. One of the most agreeable evenings I ever passed was in 1830, at a dinner given to him by the members of "The Literary Union." This club was founded in 1829 by the poet Campbell. I shall have to speak of it when I write a "Memory" of him. Moore was in strong health at that time, and in the zenith of his fame. There were many men of mark about him,--leading wits and men of letters of the age. He was full of life, sparkling and brilliant in all he said, rising every now and then to say something that gave the hearers delight, and looking as if "dull care" had been ever powerless to check the overflowing of his soul. But although no bard of any age knew better how to

"Wreathe the bowl with flowers of the soul,"

he had acquired the power of self-restraint, and could stop when the glass was circulating too freely. At the memorable dinner of the Literary Fund, at which the good Prince Albert presided, (on the 11th of May, 1842,) the two poets, Campbell and Moore, had to make speeches. The author of the "Pleasures of Hope," heedless of the duty that devolved upon him, had "confused his brain." Moore came in the evening of that day to our house; and I well remember the terms of true sorrow and bitter reproach in which he spoke of the lamentable impression that one of the great authors of the age and country must have left on the mind of the royal chairman, then new among us.

It is gratifying to record, that the temptations to which the great lyric poet, Thomas Moore, was so often and so peculiarly exposed, were ever powerless for wrong.

Moore sat for his portrait to Shee, Lawrence, Newton, Maclise, Mulvany, and Richmond, and to the sculptors Ternerani, Chantrey, Kirk, and Moore. On one occasion of his sitting, he says,--"Having nothing in my round potato face but what painters cannot catch,--mobility of character,--the consequence is, that a portrait of me can be only one or other of two disagreeable things,--_caput mortuum_, or a caricature." Richmond's portrait was taken in 1843. Moore says of it,--"The artist has worked wonders with unmanageable faces such as mine." Of all his portraits, this is the one that pleases me best, and most forcibly recalls him to my remembrance.

I soon learned to love the man. It was easy to do so; for Nature had endowed him with that rare, but happy gift,--to have pleasure in giving pleasure, and pain in giving pain; while his life was, or at all events seemed to be, a practical comment on his own lines:--

"They may rail at this life; from the hour I began it, I've found it a life full of kindness and bliss."

I had daily walks with him at Sloperton,--along his "terrace-walk,"--during our brief visit; I listening, he talking; he now and then asking questions, but rarely speaking of himself or his books. Indeed, the only one of his poems to which he made any special reference was his "Lines on the Death of Sheridan," of which he said,--"That is one of the few things I have written of which I am really proud." And I remember startling him one evening by quoting several of his poems in which he had said "hard things" of women,--then, suddenly changing, repeating passages of an opposite character, and his saying, "You know far more of my poems than I do myself."

The anecdotes he told me were all of the class of those I have related,--simple, unostentatious. He has been frequently charged with the weakness of undue respect for the aristocracy. I never heard him, during the whole of our intercourse, speak of great people with whom he had been intimate, never a word of the honors accorded to him; and, certainly, he never uttered a sentence of satire or censure or harshness concerning any one of his contemporaries. I cannot recall any conversation with him in which he spoke of intimacy with the great, and certainly no anecdote of his familiarity with men or women of the upper orders; although he conversed with me often of those who are called the lower classes. I remember his describing with proud warmth his visit to his friend Boyse, at Bannow, in the County of Wexford: the delight he enjoyed at receiving the homage of bands of the peasantry, gathered to greet him; the arches of green leaves under which he passed; and the dances with the pretty peasant-girls,--one in particular, with whom he led off a country-dance.[L] Would that those who fancied him a tuft-hunter could have heard him! They would have seen how really humble was his heart. Indeed, a reference to his Journal will show that of all his contemporaries, whenever he spoke of them, he had ever something kindly to say. There is no evidence of ill-nature in any case,--not a shadow of envy or jealousy. The sturdiest Scottish grazier could not have been better pleased than he was to see the elegant home at Abbotsford, or have felt prouder to know that a poet had been created a baronet. When speaking of Wordsworth's absorption of all the talk at a dinner-table, Moore says,--"But I was well pleased to be a listener." And he records, that General Peachey, "who is a neighbor of Southey, mentions some amiable traits of him."

The house at Sloperton is a small, neat, but comparatively poor cottage, for which Moore paid originally the princely sum of forty pounds a year, "furnished." Subsequently, however, he became its tenant under a repairing-lease at eighteen pounds annual rent. He took possession of it in November, 1817. Bessy was "not only satisfied, but delighted with it, which shows the humility of her taste," writes Moore to his mother; "for it is a small thatched cottage, and we get it furnished for forty pounds a year." "It has a small garden and lawn in front, and a kitchen-garden behind. Along two of the sides of this kitchen-garden is a raised bank,"--the poet's "terrace-walk," so he loved to call it. Here a small deal table stood through all weathers; for it was his custom to compose as he walked, and at this table to pause and write down his thoughts. Hence he had always a view of the setting sun; and I believe nothing on earth gave him more intense pleasure than practically to realize the line,--

"How glorious the sun looked in sinking!"--

for, as Mrs. Moore has since told us, he very rarely missed this sight.

In 1811, the year of his marriage, he lived at York Terrace, Queen's Elm, Brompton. Mrs. Moore tells me it was a pretty house: the Terrace was then isolated, and opposite nursery-gardens. Long afterwards (in 1824) he went to Brompton to "indulge himself with a sight of that house." In 1812 he was settled at Kegworth; and in 1813, at Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. Of Mayfield, one of his friends, who twenty years afterwards accompanied him there to see it, remarks on the small, solitary, and now wretched-looking cottage, where all the fine "orientalism" and "sentimentalism" had been engendered. Of this cottage he himself writes,--"It was a poor place, little better than a barn; but we at once took it and set about making it habitable."

As Burns was made a gauger because he was partial to whiskey, Moore was made Colonial Secretary at Bermuda, where his principal duty was to "overhaul the accounts of skippers and their mates." Being called to England, his affairs were placed in charge of a superintendent, who betrayed him, and left him answerable for a heavy debt, which rendered necessary a temporary residence in Paris. That debt, however, was paid, not by the aid of friends, some of whom would have gladly relieved him of it, but literally by "the sweat of his brow." Exactly so it was when the MS. "Life of Byron" was burned: it was by Moore, and not by the relatives of Byron, (neither was it by aid of friends,) the money he had received was returned to the publisher who had advanced it. "The glorious privilege of being independent" was, indeed, essentially his,--in his boyhood, throughout his manhood, and in advanced age,--always!

In 1799 he came to London to enter at the Middle Temple. (His first lodging was at 44, George Street, Portman Square.) Very soon afterwards we find him declining a loan of money proffered him by Lady Donegal. He thanked God for the many sweet things of this kind God threw in his way, yet at that moment he was "terribly puzzled how to pay his tailor." In 1811, his friend Douglas, who had just received a large legacy, handed him a blank check, that he might fill it up for any sum he needed. "I did not accept the offer," writes Moore to his mother; "but you may guess my feelings." Yet just then he had been compelled to draw on his publisher, Power, for a sum of thirty pounds, "to be repaid partly in songs," and was sending his mother a second-day paper, which he was enabled "to purchase at rather a cheap rate." Even in 1842 he was "haunted worryingly," not knowing how to meet his son Russell's draft for one hundred pounds; and a year afterwards he utterly drained his banker to send fifty pounds to his son Tom. Once, being anxious that Bessy should have some money for the poor at Bromham, he sent a friend five pounds, requesting him to forward it to Bessy as from himself; and when urged by some thoughtless person to make a larger allowance to his son Tom, in order that he might "live like a gentleman," he writes,--"If _I_ had thought but of living like a gentleman, what would have become of my dear father and mother, of my sweet sister Nell, of my admirable Bessy's mother?" He declined to represent Limerick in Parliament, on the ground that his "circumstances were not such as to justify coming into Parliament at all, because to the labor of the day I am indebted for my daily support." His must be a miserable soul who could sneer at the poet studying how he could manage to recompense the doctor who would "take no fees," and at his amusement when Bessy was "calculating whether they could afford the expense of a fly to Devizes."

As with his mother, so with his wife. From the year 1811, the year of his marriage,[M] to that of his death, in 1852, she received from him the continual homage of a lover; away from her, no matter what were his allurements, he was ever longing to be at home. Those who love as he did wife, children, and friends will appreciate, although the worldling cannot, such commonplace sentences as these:--"Pulled some heath on Ronan's Island (Killarney) to send to my dear Bessy"; when in Italy, "got letters from my sweet Bessy, more precious to me than all the wonders I can see"; while in Paris, "sending for Bessy and my little ones; wherever they are will be home, and a happy home to me." When absent, (which was rarely for more than a week,) no matter where or in what company, seldom a day passed that he did not write a letter to Bessy. The home enjoyments, reading to her, making her the depositary of all his thoughts and hopes,--they were his deep delights, compensations for time spent amid scenes and with people who had no space in his heart. Even when in "terrible request," his thoughts and his heart were there,--in

"That dear Home, that saving Ark, Where love's true light at last I've found, Cheering within, when all grows dark And comfortless and stormy round."

This is the tribute of Earl Russell to the wife of the poet Moore:--"The excellence of his wife's moral character, her energy and courage, her persevering economy, made her a better and even a richer partner to Moore than an heiress of ten thousand a year would have been, with less devotion to her duty, and less steadiness of conduct." Moore speaks of his wife's "democratic pride." It was the pride that was ever above a mean action, and which sustained him in the proud independence that marked his character from birth to death.

In March, 1846, his diary contains this sad passage:--"The last of my five children is gone, and we are left desolate and alone. Not a single relation have I in this world." His father had died in 1825; his sweet mother in 1832; "excellent Nell" in 1846; and his children one after another, three of them in youth, and two grown up to manhood,--his two boys, Tom and Russell, the first-named of whom died in Africa in 1846, an officer in the French service; the other at Sloperton in 1842, soon after his return from India, having been compelled by ill-health to resign his commission as a lieutenant in the Twenty-Fifth Regiment.

In 1835 the influence of Lord Lansdowne obtained for Moore a pension of three hundred pounds a year from Lord Melbourne's government,--"as due from any government, but much more from one some of the members of which are proud to think themselves your friends." The "wolf, poverty," therefore, in his latter years, did not prowl so continually about his door. But there was no fund for luxuries, none for the extra comforts that old age requires. Mrs. Moore now lives on a crown pension of one hundred pounds a year, and the interest of the sum of three thousand pounds,--the sum advanced by the ever-liberal friends of the poet, the Longmans, for the Memoirs and Journal edited by Lord John, now Earl, Russell,--a lord whom the poet dearly loved.

When his diary was published, as from time to time volumes of it appeared, slander was busy with the fame of one of the best and most upright of all the men that God ennobled by the gift of genius.[N] For my own part, I seek in vain through the eight thick volumes of that diary for any evidence that can lessen the poet in this high estimate. I find, perhaps, too many passages fitted only for the eye of love or the ear of sympathy; but I read _no one_ that shows the poet other than the devoted and loving husband, the thoughtful and affectionate parent, the considerate and generous friend.

It was said of him by Leigh Hunt, that Lord Byron summed up his character in a sentence,--"Tommy loves a lord!" Perhaps he did; but if he did, only such lords as Lansdowne and Russell were his friends. He loved also those who are "lords of humankind" in a far other sense; and, as I have shown, there is nothing in his character that stands out in higher relief than his entire _freedom from dependence_. To which of the great did he apply during seasons of difficulty approaching poverty? Which of them did he use for selfish purposes? Whose patronage among them all was profitable? To what Baael did the poet Moore ever bend the knee?

He had a large share of domestic sorrows; one after another, his five beloved children died; I have quoted his words, "We are left--alone." His admirable and devoted wife survives him. I visited, a short time ago, the home that is now desolate. If ever man was adored where adoration, so far as earth is concerned, is most to be hoped for and valued, it is in the cottage where the poet's widow lives, and will die.

Let it be inscribed on his tomb, that ever, amid privations and temptations, the allurements of grandeur and the suggestions of poverty, he preserved his self-respect; bequeathing no property, but leaving no debts; having had no "testimonial" of acknowledgment or reward,--seeking none, nay, avoiding any; making millions his debtors for intense delight, and acknowledging himself paid by the poet's meed, "the tribute of a smile"; never truckling to power; laboring ardently and honestly for his political faith, but never lending to party that which was meant for mankind; proud, and rightly proud, of his self-obtained position, but neither scorning nor slighting the humble root from which he sprang.

He was born and bred a Roman Catholic; but his creed was entirely and purely catholic. Charity was the outpouring of his heart; its pervading essence was that which he expressed in one of his Melodies,--

"Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side, In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree? Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried, If he kneel not before the same altar with me?"

His children were all baptized and educated members of the Church of England. He attended the parish church, and according to the ritual of the Church of England he was buried.

It was not any outward change of religion, but homage to a purer and holier faith, that induced him to have his children baptized and brought up as members of the English Church. "For myself," he says, "my having married a Protestant wife gave me opportunity of choosing a religion, at least for my children; and if my marriage had no other advantage, I should think this quite sufficient to be grateful for."

Moore was the eloquent advocate of his country, when it was oppressed, goaded, and socially enthralled; but when time and enlightened policy removed all distinctions between the Irishman and the Englishman, between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, his muse was silent, because content; nay, he protested in impressive verse against a continued agitation that retarded her progress, when her claims were admitted, her rights acknowledged, and her wrongs redressed.

Reference to the genius of Moore is needless. My object in this "Memory" is to offer homage to his moral and social worth. The world that obtains intense delight from his poems, and willingly acknowledges its debt to the poet, has been less ready to estimate the high and estimable character, the loving and faithful nature of the man. There are, however, many--may this humble tribute augment the number!--by whom the memory of Thomas Moore is cherished in the heart of hearts; to whom the cottage at Sloperton will be a shrine while they live,--that grave beside the village church a monument better loved than that of any other of the men of genius by whom the world is delighted, enlightened, and refined.

"That God is love," writes his friend and biographer, Earl Russell, "was the summary of his belief; that a man should love his neighbor as himself seems to have been the rule of his life." The Earl of Carlisle, inaugurating the statue of the poet,[O] bore testimony to his moral and social worth "in all the holy relations of life,--as son, as brother, as husband, as father, as friend"; and on the same occasion, Mr. O'Hagan, Q.C., thus expressed himself:--"He was faithful to all the sacred obligations and all the dear charities of domestic life,--he was the idol of a household."

Perhaps a better, though a far briefer, summary of the character of Thomas Moore than any of these may be given in the words of Dr. Parr, who bequeathed to him a ring:--

"To one who stands high in my estimation for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his independent spirit, and incorruptible integrity."

FOOTNOTES:

[F] Mrs. Moore--writing to me in May, 1864--tells me I have a wrong impression as to Moore's father; that he was "handsome, full of fun, and with good manners." Moore himself calls him "one of Nature's gentlemen."

[G] Mrs. Moore write me, that I am here also wrong in my impression. "She was only a little grown out in one shoulder, but with good health; her expression was feeling, not suffering." "Dear Ellen," she adds, "was the delight of every one that knew her,--sang sweetly,--her voice very like her brother's. She died suddenly, to the grief of my loving heart."

[H] She was born in Wexford, where her father kept a "general shop." Moore used to say playfully, that he was called, in order to dignify his occupation, "a provision merchant." When on his way to Bannow in 1835 to spend a few days with his friend Thomas Boyse,--a genuine gentleman of the good old school,--he records his visit to the house of his maternal grandfather. "Nothing," he says, "could be more humble and mean than the little low house that remains to tell of his whereabouts."

I visited this house in the summer of 1864. It is still a small "general shop," situate in the old corn-market of Wexford. The rooms are more than usually quaint. Here Mrs. Moore lived until within a few weeks of the birth of her illustrious son. We are gratified to record, that, at our suggestion, a tablet has been placed over the entrance-door, stating in few words the fact that there the mother was born and lived, and that to this house the poet came, on the 26th of August, 1835, when in the zenith of his fame, to render homage to her memory. He thus writes of her and her birthplace in his "Notes" of that year:--"One of the noblest-minded, as well as most warm-hearted, of all God's creatures was born under that lowly roof."

[I] I find in Earl Russell's memoir the date given as the 26th of February; but Mrs. Moore altered it in my MSS. to February 25.

[J] Trinity College, Dublin.--Thomas Moore, son of John Moore, merchant, of Dublin, aged 14, pensioner, entered 2d June, 1794. Tutor, Dr. Burrows.

[K] Alluding to a pamphlet-letter I had printed, addressed to Repealers, when the insanity of Repeal (now happily dead) was at fever-heat.

[L] "One of them (my chief muse) was a remarkably pretty girl; when I turned round to her, as she accompanied my triumphal ear, and said, 'This is a long journey for you,' she answered, with a smile that would have done your heart good, 'Oh, I only wish, Sir, it was three hundred miles!' There's for you! What was Petrarch in the Capitol to that?"--_Journal_, &c.--This "pretty girl's" name is ----, and, strange to say, she still keeps it.

[M] Moore was married to Miss Elizabeth Dyke, at St. Martin's Church, on the 25th of March, 1811.

[N] There were two who sought to throw filth upon the poet's grave, and they were his own countrymen,--Charles Phillips and John Wilson Croker. The former had written a wretched and unmeaning pamphlet, which he suppressed when a few copies only were issued; and I am proud to believe it was in consequence of some remarks upon it written by me, for which he commenced, but subsequently abandoned, proceedings against me for libel. The atrocious attack on Moore in the "Quarterly Review" was written by John Wilson Croker. It was the old illustration of the dead lion and the living dog. Yet Croker could at that time be scarcely described as living; it was from his death-bed he shot the poisoned arrow. And what brought out the venom? Merely a few careless words of Moore's, in which he described Croker "as a scribbler of all work," words that Earl Russell would have erased, if it had occurred to him to do so. Another countryman, Thomas Crofton Croker, assailed after his death the man whose shoe-latchets he would have been proud to unloose during his life. Moreover, his earliest slanderer was also of his own country,--an author named Quin. Of a truth it has been well said, A prophet is never without honor save in his own country. The proverb is especially true as regards Irish prophets. Assuredly, Moore was, and is, more popular in every part of the world than he was or is in Ireland. The reason is plain: he was, so to speak, of two parties, yet of neither: the one could not forgive his early aspirations for liberty, uttered in imperishable verse; the other could not pardon what they called his desertion of their cause, when he saw that England was willing to do, and was doing, justice to Ireland.

[O] A bronze statue of Moore has been erected in College Street, Dublin. It is a poor affair, the production of his namesake, the sculptor. Bad as it is, it is made worse by contrast with its neighbor, Goldsmith,--a work by the great Irish artist, Foley,--a work rarely surpassed by the art of the sculptor at any period in any country.

ON BOARD THE SEVENTY-SIX

[Written for Bryant's Seventieth Birthday.]

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side; Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide; Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, We lay, awaiting morn.

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair; And she that bore the promise of the world Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, At random o'er the wildering waters hurled; The reek of battle drifting slow a-lee Not sullener than we.

Morn came at last to peer into our woe, When lo, a sail! Now surely help is nigh; The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no, Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by And hails us:--"Gains the leak? Ah, so we thought! Sink, then, with curses fraught!"

I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, And my lids tingled with the tears held back; This scorn methought was crueller than shot; The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far Than such fear-smothered war.

There our foe wallowed like a wounded brute, The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best? Once more tug bravely at the peril's root. Though death come with it? Or evade the test If right or wrong in this God's world of ours Be leagued with higher powers?

Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs; Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 'Neath the all-seeing sun.

But one there was, the Singer of our crew, Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew; And couchant under brows of massive line, The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, Watched, charged with lightnings yet.

The voices of the hills did his obey; The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song; He brought our native fields from far away, Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm Old homestead's evening psalm.

But now he sang of faith to things unseen, Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust; And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, Matched with that duty, old as time and new, Of being brave and true.

We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,-- Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard and wooed The winds with loftier mood.

In our dark hour he manned our guns again; Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's store; Pride, honor, country throbbed through all his strain; And shall we praise? God's praise was his before; And on our futile laurels he looks down; Himself our bravest crown.

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.