Chapter I: HAVE been trying four hours to sleep. No dervish ever turned round

more times at a bout, than I have turned over in these four hours. I dined out to-day, at Judge King's, and afterwards we went to the celebrated Club 3 and, whether it is that I was seven consecutive hours in company, or that I drank a cup of coffee,

The reason why, I cannot tell, But this I know full well, [235] that here I am, at three o'clock in the morning, venting my rage on you.

It would do your heart good to see the generous and delighted interest which the G.'s and D.'s, and indeed many more, take in the phenomenon of the lectures. The truth is, that their attention to the matter, and the intelligence of the people, and the merits of the lecturer, must be combined to account for such an unprecedented and beautiful audience,-larger, and much more select, they say, than even Thackeray's. I'll send you a newspaper slip or two, if I can lay my hand upon them, upon the last lecture, which, assembled (the audience, I mean), under a clouded sky, and in face of a threatening thunder-gust, was a greater wonder, some one said, than any I undertook to explain.

Bah! what stuff to write I But all this is such an agreeable surprise to me, and will, I think, give me so much better a reward for this weary journey and absence than I expected, that you must sympathize what you can with my dotage.

As to the "Corruptions of Christianity," dear, if you don't find enough of them about you,--and you may not, as you live with your mother mostly,--you will find them in the library somewhere. There were, I think, two editions, one in one volume, and another in two. There are a hundred in the world.

The Club mentioned in this letter was that of which my father wrote in his Reminiscences: "This Charleston Club, then, I think, forty years old, was one of the most remarkable, and in some respects [236] the most improving, that I have ever known. An essay was read at every meeting, and made the subject of discussion. One evening at Dr. Gilman's was read for the essay a eulogy upon Napoleon III. It was written con amore, and was really quite sentimental in its admiration,--going back to his very boyhood, his love of his mother, and what not. I could not help touching the elbow of the gentleman sitting next me and saying, Are n't we a pretty set of fellows to be listening to such stuff as this? He showed that he thought as I did. When the reading was finished, Judge King, who presided, turned to me and asked for my opinion of the essay. I was considerably struck up,' to be the first person asked, and confessed to some embarrassment. I was a stranger among them, I said, and did not know but my views might differ entirely from theirs. I was not accustomed to think myself illiberal, or behind the progress of opinion, and I knew that this man, Louis Napoleon, had his admirers, and perhaps an increasing number of them; but if I must speak,--and then I blurted it out,--I must say that it was with inward wrath and indignation that I had listened to the essay, from beginning to end. There was a marked sensation all round the circle; but I defended my opinion, and, to my astonishment, all but two agreed with me."

The following winter he was invited to repeat his lectures in Charleston, and passed some time there, accompanied by his family. In March, 1856, he went with Mrs. Dewey to New Orleans, and, returning to Charleston at the end of April, went home in June.

[237] To his Daughters.

ON BOARD THE "HENRY KING," ON THE ALABAMA RIVER, March 18, 1856.

. . . Sum charming things cars are! No dirt,--no sp-tt-g, oh! no,--and such nice places for sleeping! Not a long, monotonous, merely animal sleep, but intellectual, a kind of perpetual solving of geometric problems, as, for instance,--given, a human body; how many angles is it capable of forming in fifteen minutes? or how many more than a crab in the same time? And then, no crying children,--not a bit of that,--singing cherubs, innocently piping,--cheering the dull hours with dulcet sounds.

I write in the saloon, on this jarring boat, that shakes my hand and wits alike. We are getting on very prosperously. Your mother bears the journey well. This boat is very comfortable-for a boat; a good large state-room, and positively the neatest public table I have seen in all the South.

There! that'll do,--or must do. I thought wife would do the writing, but I have "got my leg over the harrow," and Mause would be as hard to stop.

To Mrs. David Lane.

NEW ORLEANS, March 29, 1856.

DEAR FRIEND,--Yesterday I was sixty-two years old. After lecturing in the evening right earnestly on "The Body and Soul," I came home very tired, and sat down with a cigar, and passed an hour among the scenes of the olden time. I thought of my father, when, a boy, I used to walk with him to the fields. Something way-[238] ward he was, perhaps, in his moods, but prevailingly bright and cheerful,--fond of a joke,--strong in sense and purpose, and warm in affection,--steady to his plans, but somewhat impulsive and impatient in execution. Where is he now? How often do I ask! Shall I see him again? How shall I find him after thirty, forty years passed in the unseen realm? And of my mother you will not doubt I thought, and called up the scenes of her life: in the mid-way of it, when she was so patient, and often weary in the care of us all, and often feeble in health; and then in the later days, the declining years, so tranquil, so gentle, so loving,--a perfect sunshine of love and gentleness was her presence.

But come we to this St. Charles Hotel, where we have been now for a week, as removed as possible from the holy and quiet dreamland of past days. Incessant hubbub and hurly-burly are the only words that can describe it, seven hundred guests, one thousand people under one roof. What a larder! what a cellar! what water-tanks, pah! filled from the Mississippi, clarified for the table with alum. People that we have known cast up at all corners, and many that we have not call upon us,--good, kind, sensible people. I don't see but New Orleans is to be let into my human world.

You see how I blot,--I'm nervous,--I can't write at a marble table. Very well, however, and wife mainly so. Three weeks more here, and then back to Savannah, where I am to give four lectures. Then to Charleston, to stay till about the 25th May.

The lectures go here very fairly,--six hundred to hear. They call it a very large audience for lectures in New Orleans. . . . With our love to all your household,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[239]The Same

SHEFFIELD, Aug. 10, 1856.

DEAR FRIEND,--My time and thoughts have been a good deal occupied of late by the illness and death of Mr. Charles Sedgwick. The funeral was on last Tuesday, and Mr. Bellows was present, making the prayer, while I read passages, and said some words proper for the time. They were hearty words, you may be sure; for in some admirable respects Charles Sedgwick has scarcely left his equal in the world. His sunny nature shone into every crack and crevice around him, and the poor man and the stranger and whosoever was in trouble or need felt that he had in him an adviser and friend. The Irish were especially drawn to him, and they made request to bear his body to the grave, that is, to Stockbridge, six miles. And partly they did so. . . . It was a tremendous rain-storm, but the procession was very long.

But I must turn away from this sad affliction to us all,--it will be long before I shall turn my thought from it,--for the world is passing on; it will soon pass by my grave and the graves of us all. I do not wonder that this sweeping tide bears our thoughts much into the coming world,--mine, I sometimes think, too much.

But we have to fight our battle, perform our duties, while one and another drops around us; and one of the things that engages me just now, is to prepare a discourse to be delivered under our Elm Tree on the 21st.

The Elm Tree Association, before which the address just alluded to was made, was a Village Improvement Society, of which my father was [240] one of the founders, and which took its name from an immense tree, one of the finest in Massachusetts, standing near the house of his maternal grandfather. To smooth and adorn the ground around the Great Elm, and make it the scene of a yearly summer festival for the whole town, was the first object of the Society, extending afterwards to planting trees, grading walks, etc., through the whole neighborhood; and it was one of the earlier impulses to that refinement of taste which has made of Sheffield one of the prettiest villages in the country. With its fine avenue of elms, planted nearly forty years ago, its gardens and well-shaven turf, it shows what care and a prevailing love of beauty and order will do for a place where there is very little wealth. It was about this time that my father planted in an angle of the main street the Seven Pines, which now make, as it were, an evergreen chapel to his memory, and with the proceeds of some lectures that he gave in the town, set out a number of deciduous trees around the Academy, many of which are still living, though the building they were intended to shade is gone.

The Elm Tree Association, however, from one cause and another, was short-lived; but "It lived to light a steadier flame" in the Laurel Hill Association, of Stockbridge, which, taking the idea from the Sheffield plan, continues to develop it in a very beautiful and admirable manner. [241] The address at the gathering in 1856 was chiefly occupied with a review of the history of the town, and with the thoughts appropriate to the place of meeting; and at the close the speaker took occasion to explain to his townspeople his ideas upon the national crisis of the day, and the changed aspect that had been given to the slavery question by the fresh determination of the South to maintain the excellence of the system and to force it upon the acceptance of the North in the new States then forming. Against this he made earnest and solemn protest, with a full expression of his opinion as to the innate wrong to the blacks, and the destructive effects on the whites, of slavery; but at the same time he spoke with large and kindly consideration for the Southerners. After doing justice to the care and kindness of many of them for their slaves, he said, in close:--

"I have listened also to what Southern apologists have said in another view,--that this burden of slavery was none of their choosing; that it was entailed upon them; that they cannot immediately emancipate their people; that they are not qualified to take care of themselves; that this state of things must be submitted to for a while, till remedial laws and other remedial means shall bring relief. And so long as they said that, I gave them my sympathy. But when they say, 'Spread this system,--spread it far and wide,' I cannot go another step with them. And it is not I that has changed, but they. When they say, 'Spread it, --spread it over [242] Kansas and Nebraska, spread it over the far West, annex Mexico, annex Cuba, annex Central America, make slavery a national institution, make the compact of the Constitution carry it into all Territories, cover it with the national images, set it up as part of our great republican profession, stamp on our flag and our shield and our scutcheon the emblem of human slavery,' I say,--no--never-God forbid!"

It seems strange now that so temperate and candid a speech should have raised a storm of anger when read in Charleston. But the sore lace was too tender for even the friendliest such, and of all those who had greeted him here so cordially the winter before, but two or three maintained and strengthened their relations with him after this summer. It was one of many trials to which his breadth of view exposed him.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

SHEFFIELD, Aug. 11, 1856.

MY DEAR BELLOWS,--I do not complain of your Teter; but what if it should turn out that I cannot agree with you? What if my opinions, when properly understood, should displease many persons? Is it the first time that honest opinions have been proscribed, or the expression of them thought "unfortunate "?

I appreciate all the kindness of your letter, and your care for my reputation; but you are not to be told that here is something higher than reputation.

You write with the usual anti-slavery assurance that our opinion is the correct one. It is natural; it is the [243] first-blush, the impromptu view of the matter. But whether there is not a juster view, coming out of that same deliberateness and impartiality that you accuse me of,--whether there is not, in fact, a broader humanity and a broader politics than yours or that of your party, is the question.

I don't like the tendencies of your mind (I don't say heart) on this question; your willingness to bring the whole grand future of this country to the edge of the present crisis; your idea of this crisis as a second Revolution, and of the cause of liberty as equally involved; your thinking it so fatal to be classed with Tories, or with-, and-, and your regret that I should have gone down South to lecture. It all looks to me narrow.

I may address the public on this subject. But if I do, I shan't do it mainly for my own sake; at any rate, I shall write to you when I get leisure.

With love to E.,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. Ephraim Peabody, D.D.

SHEFFIELD, Nov. 10, 1856.

MY DEAR PEABODY,--I have written you several imaginary letters since I saw you, and now I'm determined (before I go to Baltimore to lecture, which is next week) that I will write you a real one. I desired H. T. to inquire and let me know how you are, and she writes that you are very much the same as when I was in Boston,--riding out in the morning, and passing, I fear, the same sad and weary afternoons. I wish I were near you this winter, that is, if I could help you at all through those heavy hours. [244] I am writing a lecture on "Unconscious Education;" for I want to add one to the Baltimore course. And is not a great deal of our education unconscious and mysterious? You do not know, perhaps, all that this long sickness and weariness and prostration are doing for you. I always think that the future scene will open to us the wonders of this as we never see them here.

Heine says that a man is n't worth anything till he has suffered; or something like that. I am a great coward about it; and I imagine sometimes that deeper trial might make something of me.

My dear friend, if I may call you so, I write to little purpose, perhaps, but out of great sympathy and affection for you. I do not know of a human being for whom I have a more perfect esteem than for you. And in that love I often commend you, with a passing prayer, or sigh sometimes, to the all-loving Father. We believe in Him. Let us "believe the love that God hath to us."

With all our affectionate regards to your wife and girls and to you,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

Within a few weeks the pure and lofty spirit to whom these words were addressed was called hence, and the following letter was written:--

SHEFFIELD, Dec. 17, 1856.

MY DEAR MRS. PEABODY,--Do you not know why I dread to write to you, and yet why I cannot help it? Since last I spoke to you, such an event has passed, that I tremble to go over the abyss and speak to you again. But you and your children stand, bereft and stricken, on [245] the shore, as it were, of a new and strange world,--for strange must be the world to you where that husband and father is not,--and I would fain express the sympathy which I feel for you, and my family with me. Yet not with many words, but more fitly in silence, should I do it. And this letter is but as if I came and sat by you, and only said, "God help you," or knelt with you and said, "God help us all;" for we are all bereaved in your bereavement.

True, life passes on visibly with us as usual; but every now and then the thought of you and him comes over me, and I exclaim and pray at once, in wonder and sorrow.

But the everlasting succession of things moves on, and we all take our place in it-now, to mourn the lost, and now, ourselves to be mourned--till all is finished. It is an Infinite Will that ordains it, and our part is to bow in humble awe and trust.

I had a letter once, from a most lovely woman, announcing to me the death of her husband, a worthless person; and she spoke of it with no more interest than if a log had rolled from the river-bank and floated down the stream. What do you think of that,--with affections, venerations, loves, sympathies, swelling around you like a tide?

I know that among all these there is an unvisited loneliness which nothing can reach. May God's peace and presence be there!

I could not write before, being from home. I do not write anything now, but to say to you and your dear children, "God comfort you."

From your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[246] To his Daughter Mary.

BALTIMORE, Nov. 24, 1856.

DEAREST MOLLY,--I must send you a line, though somehow I can't make my table write yet. I have just been out to walk in the loveliest morning, and yet my nerves are ajar, and I can't guide my pen. I preached very hard last evening. I don't know but these people are all crazy, but they make me feel repaid. The church was full, as I never saw it before. The lecture Saturday evening was crowded. So I go.

I am reading Dr. Kane's book. Six pages could give all the actual knowledge it contains; but that fearful conflict of men with the most terrible powers of nature, and so bravely sustained, makes the story like tragedy; and I read on and on, the same thing over and over, and don't skip a page. But Mrs.--has just been in, and sat down and opened her widowed heart to me, and I see that life itself is often a more solemn tragedy than voyaging in the Arctic Seas. Nay, I think the deacon himself, when he accepted that challenge (how oddly it sounds!), must have felt himself to be in a more tragic strait than "Smith's Strait," or any other that Kane was in.

Your letters came Saturday evening, and were, by that time, an indispensable comfort. . . .

This will be with you before the Thanksgiving dinner. Bless it, and you all, prayeth, giving thanks with and for you,

Your

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[247]Mr. Dewey had been asked repeatedly, since his retirement from New York, to take charge of Church Green, in Boston, a pulpit left vacant by the death of Dr. Young; and he consented to go there in the beginning of 1858, with the understanding that he should preach but once on a Sunday. He had an idea of a second service, which should be more useful to the people and less exhausting to the minister than the ordinary afternoon service, which very few attended, and those only from a sense of duty. He had written for this purpose a series of "Instructions," as he called them, on the 104th Psalm. Each was about an hour long, and they were, in short, simple lectures on religious subjects. To use his own words, "This was not preaching, and was attended with none of the exhaustion that follows the morning service. Many people have no idea, nor even suspicion, of the difference between praying and preaching for an hour, with the whole mind and heart poured into it, and any ordinary public speaking for an hour. They seem to think that in either case it is vox et preterea nihil, and the more voice the more exhaustion; but the truth is, the more the feelings are enlisted in any way, the more exhaustion, and the difference is the greatest possible."

[248] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

BOSTON, Sept. 7, 1858.

DEAR BRYANT,-You have got home. If you pronounce the charm-word four times after the dramatic (I mean the true dramatic) fashion, all is told. It makes me think of what Mrs. Kemble told us the other day. In a play where she acted the mistress, and her lover was shot,--or was supposed to be, but was reprieved, and came rushing to her arms,--instead of repeating a long and pretty speech which was set down for her, the dramatic passion made her exclaim: "ALIVE! ALIVE! alive! alive!"

Well, you are such a nomadic cosmopolitan, that I won't answer for you; but I will be bound it is so with. Mrs. Bryant, and I guess Julia too. How you all are, and how she is especially, is the question in all our hearts; and without waiting for forty things to be done, all working you like forty-power presses, pray write us three words and tell us.

. . . I hope that some time in the winter I shall get a sight of you. You and the Club would make my measure full. And yet Boston is great.

To Mrs. David Lane.

BOSTON, Sept. 20, 1858.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Dr. Jackson is fast turning me into a vegetable,-homo multi-cotyledonous is the species. My head is a cabbage--brain, cauliflower; my eyes are two beans, with a short cucumber between them, for a nose; my heart is a squash (very soft); my lungs--cut a watermelon in two, lengthwise, and you have them; [249]my legs are cornstalks, and my feet, potatoes. I eat nothing but these things, and I am fast becoming nothing else. I am potatoes and corn and cucumber and cabbage,--like the chameleon, that takes the color of the thing it lives on. Dr. Jackson will have a great deal to answer for to the world. Had n't you better come into town and see about it? Perhaps you can arrest the process. . . .

I declare I think it is too bad to send such a poor dish to you as this, and especially in your loneliness; but it is all. Dr. Jackson's fault.

Think of mosquito-bars in Boston! They must be very trying things--to the mosquitoes. You see they don't know what to make of it; and very likely their legs and wings get caught sometimes in the "decussated, reticulated interstices," as Dr. Johnson calls them. At any rate, from their noise, they evidently consider themselves as the most ill-treated and unfortunate outcasts upon earth. Paganini wrote the "Carnival of Venice." I wonder somebody does n't write the no-carnival of the mosquitoes.

To the Same.

BOSTON, Dec. 30, 1858.

DEAR MY FRIEND,--I cannot let the season of happy wishes pass by without sending mine to you and yours. But you must begin to gather up patience for your venerable friend, for the happy anniversaries somehow begin to gather shadows around them; they are both reminders and admonishers.

Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the "Happy New Year!" is never sounded out in the minor key; always it has a ring of joyousness and hope in it. Read that [250] little piece of Fanny Kemble's,{22} on the 179th page,--the "Answer to a Question." I send you the volume 1 by this mail. Ah! what a clear sense and touching sensibility and bracing moral tone there is, running through the whole volume! But I was going to say that that little piece tells you what I would write better than I can write it. We all send "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" to you all, in a heap; that is, a heap of us to a heap of you, and a heap of good wishes.

{FN 22: Mrs. Kemble's Poems}

My poor head is rather improving, but it is n't worth much yet, as you plainly see. Nevertheless, in the other and sound part of me I am,

As ever, your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To his Sister, Miss F. Dewey.

[Date missing. About 1859.]

So you remember the old New Bedford times pleasantly,--and I do. And I remember my whole lifetime in the same way. And even if it had been less pleasant, if there had been many more and greater calamities in it, still I hold on to that bottom-ground of all thanksgiving, even this, that God has placed in us an immortal spark, which through storm and cloud and darkness may grow brighter, and in the world beyond may shine as the stars forever. I heard Father Taylor last Sunday afternoon. Towards the close he spoke of his health as uncertain and liable to fail; "But," said he, "I have felt a little more of immortality come down into me today, and as if I should live awhile longer here."

[251]To Mrs. David Lane.

BOSTON, Saturday evening [probably Oct., 1859]

DEAR MY FRIEND,--I imagine you are all so cast down, forlorn, and desolate at my leaving you, and especially "At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill, And naught but the nightingale's song in the grove," that I ought to write a word to fill the void. I should have said, on coming away, like that interesting child who had plagued everybody's life out of them, "come again!"

Bah! you never asked me; or only in such a sort that I was obliged to decline. Am I such a stupid visitor? Did I not play at bagatelle with L.? Did I not read eloquently out of Carlyle to you and C.? Did I not talk wisdom to you by the yard? Did I not let drop crumbs of philosophy by the wayside of our talk, continually? Above all, am I not the veriest woman, at heart, that you ever saw? Why, I had like to have choked upon "Sartor Resartus." I wonder if you saw it. But, ahem!-a great swallow a man must have, to gulp down the "Everlasting Yea." And a great swallow implies a great stomach. And a great stomach implies a great brain, unless a man's a fool. "If not, why not?" as Captain Bunsby says; "therefore."

Oh, what a mad argument to prove swan sane,--and good company besides I Well, I am mad, and expect to be so,-at least I think I have a right to be so, in the proportion of one hour to twenty-four, being so rational the rest of the time. I think it's but a reasonable allowance. [252] You will judge that this is my mad hour to-day, and it is; nevertheless, I am, soberly,

Your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

In the winter of 1859 he writes to the same friend upon New York City politics with a passionate vivacity that old New Yorkers will sadly appreciate.

"I took up the paper this morning that announced Fernando Wood's election by two thousand plurality. If you had seen the way in which I brought down my hand upon the table,--minding neither muscle nor mahogany, you would know how people at a distance, especially if they have ever lived in New York, feel about it. I hope he will pay you well. I wish he would take out some of your rich, stupid, arms-folding, purse-clutching millionnaires into Washington Square and flay them alive. Something of the sort must be done, before our infatuated city upper classes will come to their senses."

To his Sister, Miss F. Dewey.

SHEFFIELD, Oct. 5, 1859.