Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

It is impossible here even to mention the important events that followed. For weary months and years the terribly destructive war continued. Many campaigns were planned and conducted with great energy. Battles were fought in which the carnage was fearful. Ships were burned or sunk—strongholds were taken by siege or assault, and the garrisons defending them cut to pieces, or, as in some instances, cruelly massacred after they were surrendered. Towns and hamlets were burned, and large sections of country laid waste. For a time the greatest destruction was in the East and North, but when the work of death fairly commenced in the South blood flowed not less freely. In 1779 the principal theater of the war was in Georgia and the Carolinas, and the heaviest engagements were adverse to the Americans. Savannah and Charleston were captured and the whole states overrun by detachments of British soldiers who at first met with but little opposition. Very soon, however, the patriots, though unable by reason of their losses to take the field in force, renewed the contest under Sumter, Marrion, Pickens, and other daring leaders who continually harassed not only the British, but also the Tories, of whom there were great numbers in that region.

In the North General Burgoyne, after two battles with General Gates, in both of which the Americans had the advantage, surrendered his whole army of seven thousand regulars, beside Indians and Canadians. This achievement, vastly important to the country, as it had influence in securing the powerful aid of France, gave Gates a standing higher than he deserved or could maintain. On account of his victory at Saratoga he was sent to recover South Carolina; but in his first encounter with Cornwallis at Camden, he was routed, with the loss of one thousand men, and with the remnant of his army fled to North Carolina.

After obtaining aid from France, though some serious disasters were suffered, and the faint-hearted were at times discouraged, the cause of the country gained strength till final success was assured.

In 1781, at Cowpens, S. C., on January 17th, General Morgan won a brilliant victory over the British under Tarleton; and the bloody battle at Eutaw Springs nearly terminated the war in South Carolina. In Virginia, Cornwallis, who was now opposed by La Fayette, Wayne and Steuben, had fortified himself at Yorktown, where he had a large army. Meanwhile, the American army of the North, under Washington, and the French army under Count de Rochambeau formed a junction on the Hudson which seemed to threaten an attack on Clinton in New York, and effectually prevented him from sending aid to the army shut up at Yorktown. By a sudden diversion, and before the movement was discovered, the allied armies, 12,000 strong, were far on their way toward Yorktown, and arrived without hindrance, on the 28th of September. The siege was but short. On the 19th of October Cornwallis surrendered, with his whole army of 7,000 men. This victory substantially terminated the conflict, and secured American independence. Thus ended the war which, in the language of Pitt, “Was conceived in injustice, nurtured in folly, and whose footsteps were marked with slaughter and devastation. The nation was drained of its best blood and its vital resources, for which nothing was received in return but a series of inefficient victories and disgraceful defeats; victories obtained over men fighting in the holy cause of liberty—defeats which filled the land with mourning for the loss of dear and valuable relations, slain in a detested and impious quarrel.”

During the seven years of blood Great Britain sent to the war she was waging to subdue her colonists 134,000 soldiers and seamen. The forces of the United States and their allies consisted of 230,000 regular soldiers, and some 56,000 militia. Those who perished in battle or otherwise, by reason of the war, reached some hundreds of thousands; other hundreds of thousands were made widows or orphans, while the cost in actual expenditures and property destroyed must be told by hundreds of millions. And yet, for America, the sacrifice was not too great. The heritage of freedom left us is more than worth it all.

[End of Required Reading for 1883-4.]

NIGHT.

By CHARLES GRINDROD.

The sunset fades into a common glow:
A deeper shadow all the valley fills:
The trees are ghostlier in the fields below:
The river runs more darkly through the hills:
Only the Night-bird’s voice the coppice thrills,
Stirring the very leaves into a sense.
A witching stillness holds the breath of things.
Earth has put on her garb of reverence,
As when a nun within a cloister sings
To mourn a passing soul before it wings.
Silent as dew now falls the straight-winged Night.
Clear overhead (God’s still imaginings),
Shining like Hope, through very darkness bright,
Star follows star, till heaven is all alight.

ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.

By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

VII.—THE WELL-BALANCED ECCENTRIC.

At length we have an Eccentric American who was practical, successful, useful, and happy; who was a conservative radical, a laughing philanthropist, a non-resisting hero, a lovely fighting Quaker, the popular champion of an unpopular cause, and—most singular of all!—a Christian in fact and act, though counted a heretic by evangelicals, and excommunicated by his own sect. It is just because his life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him, that Isaac T. Hopper takes rank as one of the grandest and rarest of Eccentrics. For, as the reader may know, we have declared from the outset of this series that the true man in a false world is necessarily eccentric; that uniformity is always at the expense of principle. “Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out often thousand.” And isn’t that odd?

The key to this symmetrical eccentricity of friend Hopper is found in the counterbalancing qualities of his character. A powerful will was offset by a conscience equally imperative. A native bravery was balanced by softness of heart, so that he was at once incapable of fear and of cruelty; combativeness was mollified by simplicity of manner and frankness of speech. A genius for finesse was by an all-pervading benevolence and love of justice enlisted in the service of the slave and the convict; a lively sense of humor sweetened the austerities of a formal religion, softened the asperities of a life of warfare and informed great natural pride with geniality. With less love of abstract justice, he might have been a great lawyer; with less conscience and benevolence he might have been a great soldier; with less earnestness and dignity he might have been a great comedian; with less philanthropy he might have been a great business man; with less executive will he might have been a great preacher. Balanced as these qualities were, he was a rare Eccentric—being lawyer, soldier, comedian, business man and minister combined.

“The boy was father of the man,” in his case. Born in 1771 to poor parents, farmers in New Jersey, he early made manifest extraordinary qualities.

_Bravery._—A cosset lamb which he had reared was seized by a foraging party of British soldiers from Philadelphia and cast bound into their wagon. The lad of ten years ran and climbed into the vehicle, cut the cords with a rusty jack-knife, and then stoutly resisted the captors, until the officer in command, attracted by the outcry, rode up and ordered the lamb restored, out of admiration for the wee patriot’s pluck and devotion. He would fight any man on behalf of all of his pet animals, of which he always had a menagerie, caught and tamed by aid of a certain brute free-masonry which he possessed.

_Justice._—Isaac and his brother trapped partridges. One day the former found one in his brother’s trap and none in his own; first removing the bird to his own trap he carried it home, saying he took it out of his trap—the little lawyer! But before morning conscience asserted itself, he confessed the deception and restored the game—the little justice!

_Humor._—His love of mischief kept him in continual disgrace, and the house and school in continual turmoil—albeit his love of justice usually led to reparation of damages; if he got others into scrapes he was quite willing to shoulder the consequences; he could fill a schoolmate’s dinner pail with sand, and then dry all tears by giving up his own lunch. One night he went to see old Polly milk. Fun soon got the better of the boy, he got a twig, the cow got a sensation, and Polly got a surprise. There was a lacteal cataclysm and a _tableau vivant_; mingled strains of wild juvenile laughter and wilder feminine screams, accompanied by a rude barbaric clangor of cow-bell and tin pail. The boy went slippered and supperless to bed, but he lay there hungry and happy, waking the wild echoes of his raftered chamber with shouts of laughter over the persisting vision of how the maid turned pale and flew, and the cow turned pail and ran, with altitudinous tail and head. The artless sports of our childhood are often our most enduring joys, and Father Hopper never forgot this _chef d’œuvre_ of his childhood, though he was only five years old when he thus essayed the part of _Puck_; for he afterward secured the cow’s bell, and for fifty years used it as a dinner bell, refusing to substitute a more melodious, but less memorial monitor. He immensely enjoyed reviving at once the household and his own thoughts with it, and often with a sedate Quaker chuckle told the story when he tolled the bell.

Not the least curious antithesis in this mixed character was his open-heartedness and cunning; his simplicity of speech and shrewdness of management. From the age of nine years he marketed the farm produce in Philadelphia, and there was known as “The Little Governor,” for his precocious dignity. When asked the price of a pair of fowls, he replied, “My father told me to sell them for fifty cents if I could, if not, to take forty.” He got the fifty before he would part with them, however—just as, years on, he would frankly give up his plans to an antagonist and still beat him.

Isaac’s sympathy with the enslaved was aroused as early as the age of nine by listening to the harrowing narrative of a native African captive; and he was only sixteen years old when he assisted to liberate a slave who had acquired the right of freedom by residence in Philadelphia. The lad was at that time apprentice to a tailor, his uncle, in the city. Slavery still existed in all the states of the union, though the movement for its gradual abolishment had been begun in several of them. Pennsylvania had taken a long step in this direction by enacting the gradual emancipation of her own citizens’ slaves, and decreeing that any slave from another state, coming by his owner’s consent into Pennsylvania and there abiding continuously for six months, should be free; and that any slave landing there from a foreign country should immediately become free by that fact. It was in enforcing this law, as also in preventing the kidnaping of free negroes from Pennsylvania, that Hopper soon distinguished himself. Philadelphia became a modern city of refuge, and Friend Hopper a recognized deliverer of fugitives and freedmen, from either Southern or Northern states. It is thus a fact, not often remarked as to the relation of human slavery to our government, that the first blows at the institution were the work of state rights; and that the remedy provided for this trenching of one state upon the institutions of another, in the fugitive slave law of Fillmore’s time, was an encroachment of federal power over the previously reserved rights of the states. The National Anti-Slavery Society was formed many years later; the national conscience was not yet quickened on this question; but Philadelphia had even then a local anti-slavery society, and with it Friend Hopper identified himself. He made himself master of all the laws, findings, decisions and proceedings relating to slavery and manumission, as well as, incidentally, an adept in the proverbially intricate Pennsylvania laws of contracts, property, evidence, and general processes, so that he soon became the best authority thereon in Philadelphia. In fact, he was the embodiment of that enigma which, it is alleged, could “puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer.” His standing in court became so well recognized that no lawyer was anxious to take a case against him. “You had better consult Mr. Hopper,” said a judge to a veteran counselor who asked his opinion on a slave case before him, “he knows more law on these cases than you and I both together.” “I thought I knew something of law, but it seems I do not,” said a magistrate petulantly, upon being tripped up in a slave case by Friend Hopper, a layman. The latter did not scruple to use in behalf of freedom all the technicalities and delays of law; and his craft in these devices was not the less effective because his openness of manner made him seem an unsophisticated and rather simple fellow. His dignity, simplicity and directness of speech in quaint Quaker phraseology, compelled the respect of courts and won the confidence of juries. If needs were he would procrastinate and continue a case in court three or four years, until the master would tire out and sell the manumission of the slave for a nominal sum. In case of attempted kidnaping he took the aggressive against the abductors, and forced them to pay roundly for the benefit of the negroes; generally those who came to carry off others were glad enough to escape themselves. Hopper and other friends advanced large sums of money for the purchase of manumissions, which were invariably repaid, in part or entire, from the subsequent earnings of the freedmen.

Unbroken success at length brought Friend Hopper a factitious reputation, insomuch that it was difficult to enlist Philadelphia officers of law heartily against him; if a magistrate reluctantly granted a process, the constables more timidly executed it. “Did you say I dared not grant a warrant to search your house?” demanded the Mayor upon one occasion.

“Indeed I did say so, and I now repeat it,” rejoined the imperturbable Quaker. “I am a man of established reputation; I am not a suspicious character.” (This was what the world calls “bluffing.” The slave was at that moment locked in his house.)

“Is not this man’s slave in your house?” asked the Mayor.

“Thou hast no right to ask that question, friend Mayor. A man is not bound to inform against himself. Thou well knowest the penalty for secreting a slave.”

Getting no evidence sufficient for a search-warrant, his house was watched day and night for a week. Friend Hopper, with perfect urbanity, tendered the planter the use of his warm parlor as a guard-house, for the nights were cold. This was surlily refused. In the morning he had a good hot breakfast prepared for the shivering men outside, but they dared not accept it. They had learned that Hopper was most dangerous when most agreeable, and feared a trick from the gift-bearing Greek. A ruse _was_ preparing for them. At night a free colored man was employed to run out of the house. The guard sprang out of their hiding and seized him, but immediately released him on perceiving their mistake. Hopper arrested them and put them under peace bonds. This made them cautious. The next night the same negro made another rush and was not stopped. The third night it was the slave who did the rushing; he ran past the irresolute guard and escaped to other hiding, until Hopper could negotiate his manumission with the discouraged master.

On one occasion he instituted a fictitious suit for debt against a freedman in order to gain time to secure evidence of his freedom. On another, he offered to become bound _to the United States_ for the return of a slave to court, and the simple magistrate so entered the recognizance. When the day came Hopper was there but the slave was not, and magistrate, owner and lawyer for the first time discovered that the bond was worthless, as the United States could not be a party to it. Again he entered into an undertaking to produce a slave or pay $500 for his freedom—after his master had once before agreed to free him for $150. He produced the slave, and professed to have failed in raising the $500, and demanded the return of his bond. The slave, previously instructed, as soon as the bond touched Hopper’s hand, bolted and escaped by a back door and an alley. The master was so furious at this trick that he assaulted several free colored people, for which he was arrested and threatened with such heavy penalties that he was glad to remit the $150 first promised him for a bill of manumission, and to pay some damages to the other negroes besides.

“There is no use trying to capture a runaway slave in Philadelphia,” exclaimed an irate and discouraged master. “I believe the devil himself could not catch them when they once get here.”

“That is very likely,” answered Friend Hopper with a twinkling eye; “but I think he would have less difficulty in catching the masters, being so much more familiar with them.”

In dealing with so desperate a class of men as usually made a business of man-chasing, incensed as they were by his successful tactics, Hopper was often in extreme peril, and he always showed a coolness and dexterity equal to the most daring of them. His adventures and escapes outdo romance. After making all allowance for supposed consciousness of the weakness of a bad cause on the part of his antagonists, and the moral effect of his name; after picturing his insensibility to fear, his calm, good-natured, and dignified bearing, and above all, that remarkable will-power, under which officers in the rightful discharge of their duties had been known to surrender to him—maugre all this, it seems wonderful that in the hundreds of cases he had to do with, he neither used force nor (save once) suffered by force. It seems as if there could have been found some one man in the United States cool enough to face down or reckless enough to strike down this man of peace—but there was not. It must have been the power of passiveness, the irresistibleness of non-resistance. “The weak alone are strong.” This is Scriptural eccentricity. Even in this world of force he who, when smitten on one cheek, can turn the other, may conquer—though this is a definition of success by cheek that is not usually accepted.

The solitary occasion upon which Friend Hopper suffered violence was when a posse of kidnapers guarding a negro threw him bodily from a second story window. Though severely hurt, as it afterward turned out, he gained a reëntrance, and while the guard were yet congratulating themselves on being well rid of him, he walked into the room, cut the captive’s bonds and secured his escape. He seemed to bear a charmed life, and when years later he went to Europe, he found the reputation of a wizard had preceded him.

These efforts lasted during his forty years’ residence in Philadelphia, and continued after his removal to New York (1829). Not less than one thousand persons owed their escape from servitude to him, some of them becoming useful members of society. One was a missionary to Sierra Leone, one a bishop, several were preachers and teachers. So this one tailor made nine men multiplied an hundred fold.

He made other than black men. His labors in behalf of prison reform and for the raising of fallen men and abandoned women, and the relief of the unfortunate, if less exciting, were not less apt to draw our admiration and sympathy. The story of “The Umbrella Girl,” which has traveled the rounds of the press for forty years, is a good example of his tact in conducting a delicate case to a happy end; one hardly knows which most to admire, the goodness or the shrewdness of the philanthropist. His biography, by Lydia Maria Child, abounds in narratives of these acts; it would make an admirable Sunday-school library volume.

His success in reclaiming the lost and despairing was largely due to two beautiful traits, viz.: his confidence in human nature and his patient long-suffering. Seventy and seven times could he forgive and lift again a brother, because he believed there was an imperishable spark of the divine there. He was accustomed to say that there was not one among the prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary with whom he would be afraid to trust himself alone by night with large sums of money in his pocket.

His biographer tells the following in point:

One of the prisoners, who had been convicted of manslaughter,
became furious, in consequence of being threatened with a
whipping. When they attempted to bring him out of his dungeon
to receive punishment, he seized a knife and a club, rushed
back again, and swore he would kill the first person who came
near him. Being a very strong man, and in a state of madness,
no one dared to approach him. They tried to starve him into
submission, but finding he was not to be subdued that way, they
sent for Friend Hopper, as they were accustomed to do in all such
difficult emergencies. He went boldly into the cell, looked the
desperado calmly in the face, and said, “It is foolish for thee
to contend with the authorities, thou wilt be compelled to yield
at last. I will inquire into thy case. If thou hast been unjustly
dealt by, I promise thee it shall be remedied.” This kind and
sensible remonstrance had the desired effect. From that time
forward he had great influence over the ferocious fellow, who was
always willing to be guided by his advice, and finally became one
of the most reasonable and orderly inmates of the prison.

Charity for convicts was truly eccentric in that day. The general sentiment regarding prisoners and prison management was far different from what it now is. It was with great difficulty that consent could be got to even hold religious services in prison; the authorities declaring that the prisoners would rise, kill the minister, escape in a body, and burn and kill indiscriminately. At the first service (1787) they had a loaded cannon mounted on the rostrum, by the side of the messenger of Christ, a man standing by with lighted match during the prayer and preaching, the prisoners being carefully arranged in a solid column in front of the cannon. Thus was accompanied the first preaching to prisoners in this country. Deplorable as was their situation behind the bars, their punishment was hardly less after their release. “Who passes here leaves hope behind” might have been written over the prison door outside and inside. (Was the North then more humane in its regard of convicts than the South was in its regard of slaves? In which respect has public sentiment more improved, and in what states most?)

Among the insane, too, he was a missionary. He had the clairvoyant sense to understand, and the mysterious power to control them, such as made him when a boy a tamer of wild animals. In fact, among all the depraved and unfortunate elements of society his face was a benediction, his tones pulsated hope, his hand lifted to better lives. I fancy that his cheery, hearty, homely, sympathetic presence came from the feminine side of his nature, while the strong uplift and commanding presence came from the masculine side; and that he seemed both mother and father to the unfortunate; to be a representative of both home and heaven. The grandest natures that walk the earth are these congenital marriages, combinations of the two sexes in one person. The weakest, those which are only masculine or only feminine.

“The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring.”

Friend Hopper’s appearance was much in his favor in this work. His erect form, jet black, curly hair, plain, rich Quaker costume, and dignified port made him conspicuous in a crowd. But his face was the study. Its lines mingled of strength and tenderness gave it that representation of benign efficiency which sculptors and limners try to give to their personifications of divine attributes. Humboldt’s was one of those faces—and I remember once seeing some children, constructing a “play” world, paste a likeness of Humboldt to the ceiling. When asked what that was for, they explained with perfect sincerity and reverence, “That is God.” Happy the childhood that hath received such beautiful conceptions of the All Father! It was often remarked that Hopper’s face bore a strong resemblance to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Joseph Bonaparte, when he resided at Bordentown, frequently commented on the remarkable likeness, and declared that Isaac T. Hopper could easily excite a revolution in Paris.

In 1829 Friend Hopper had reduced himself to insolvency by the expenditure of money and time on behalf of others, and he closed his tailoring business at Philadelphia, removed to New York, and accepted the agency for the publications of the Anti-Slavery Society. Here his activity in behalf of slaves got him worse enmity than in Philadelphia it did. New York’s commercial interests made her a Northern stronghold of pro-slavery sentiment. The press was violent against the Abolitionists, the courts were unfriendly, and “Judge Lynch” more than once summarily adjudicated their cases. One of these mobs directed their attack toward Friend Hopper’s store, after having sacked several places. He was apprised of the danger but refused to budge, to call in help, to close his doors, or to put up his shutters. He received the howling rioters, standing impassively on the steps. Not a word was uttered on either side; the mob stopped its course there, because the sight of its master compelled it to pause, and presently it passed on to other spoliation. It was quite fit that in the same city twenty-five years later, the mob which hung negroes to lamp posts and burned colored orphan asylums should single out the house of Isaac T. Hopper’s daughter for destruction, while she was away nursing soldiers in the hospitals!

The commercial spirit of slavery invaded every interest of society and every church. Even the Quakers became infected, insomuch that Friend Hopper and others were tried and expelled the society for their connection with anti-slavery publications. Thus the persecuted sect of old turned persecutors. This was the severest penalty this Eccentric was called on to pay for his adherence to his work; for he loved the faith and associations of his fathers. It was he who remained orthodox and regular, however, and the society which became eccentric to true Quakerism; they narrowed and declined. “His character grew larger and his views more liberal, after the bonds which bound him to a sect were cut asunder,” says his Quaker biographer; “it is astonishing how troublesome a living soul proves to be when they try to shut it up within the narrow limits of a drowsy sect.” He lived to be solicited to return to the society, and to decline a connection with a church which he thought had abandoned its own faith and practice.

In New York Friend Hopper also continued his work on behalf of prisoners and offenders. Public interest at length awoke; the Prison Association was formed, and organized efforts began in that direction. Father Hopper was made its agent, and he became a very active one, for though seventy-four years old, his movements were as elastic, his spirit as young, and his hair as unstreaked of white as ever. In the legal relations of this work, Friend Hopper was frequently before the legislature and the governor of the state, and his appeals uniformly secured ameliorations of law or pardon of convicts. “Friend Hopper, I will pardon any convict whom you say you conscientiously believe I ought to pardon,” said Governor Young. Hopper always addressed his excellency as “Esteemed friend, John Young,” and the Governor in reply adopted the Quaker “thou” and “thee.” When he was seventy-eight years old the Prison Association struck a bronze medallion likeness of Hopper, from the fine portrait by the artist Page, representing him raising a prisoner from the ground, and bearing the striking text:

“To seek and save that which was lost.”

No one this side of the White Throne knows how many he was instrumental in rescuing from worse than death. One whom he had lifted from prison, from the insane asylum, from the gutter many times, and at last made a safe, good, and happy woman, thus wrote him:

“Father Hopper, you first saw me in prison, and visited me. You
followed me to the asylum. You did not forsake me. You have
changed a bed of straw to a bed of down. May heaven bless and
reward you for it. No tongue can express the gratitude I feel.
Many are the hearts you have made glad. Suppose all you have
dragged out of one place and another were to stand before you at
once! I think you would have more than you could shake hands with
in a month; and I know you would shake hands with them all.”

Isaac T. Hopper’s democratic spirit was one of the most conspicuous of his minor traits. It was founded in his natural lack of reverence and intense love of justice, and fostered by his religious training and political experience. He came honestly by it. His mother revealed it in her parting injunction to him upon his leaving home: “My son, you are now going forth to make your own way in the world. Always remember that you are as good as any other person; but remember also that you are no better.” Fowler, the phrenologist, made a happy guess when he said of Hopper:

“He has very little reverence, and stands in no awe of the powers
that be. He is emphatically republican in feeling and character.
He has very little credulity; he understands just when and where
to take men and things.”

How remarkable was the benevolence of a man thus keen-sighted for human defects, and immovable by human excellence, that he became so great a philanthropist; but for this counterbalance of sympathy and justice he would have been a cynic—with his keen wit, a satirist. His democratic manners showed more conspicuously in the old country than here. The following incidents illustrate his irreverence and coolness:

When in Bristol, he asked permission to look at the interior of
the cathedral. He had been walking about some little time when
a rough looking man said to him in a very surly tone, “Take off
your hat, sir!”

He replied very courteously, “I have asked permission to enter
here to gratify my curiosity as a stranger. I hope there is no
offense.”

“Take off your hat!” rejoined the rude man. “If you don’t, I’ll
take it off for you.”

Friend Hopper leaned on his cane, looked him full in the face,
and answered very coolly, “If thou dost, I hope thou wilt send
it to my lodgings; for I shall have need of it this afternoon. I
lodge at No. 35, Lower Crescent, Clifton.” The place designated
was about a mile from the cathedral. The man stared at him as
if puzzled whether he were talking to an insane person or not.
When the imperturbable Quaker had seen all he cared to see, he
deliberately walked away.

At Westminster Abbey he paid the customary fee of two shillings
sixpence for admission. The doorkeeper followed him, saying, “You
must uncover yourself, sir.”

“Uncover myself,” exclaimed the Friend, with an affectation of
ignorant simplicity. “What dost thou mean? Must I take off my
coat?”

“Your coat!” responded the man, smiling. “No, indeed, I mean your
hat.”

“And what should I take off my hat for?” he inquired.

“Because you are in a church, sir,” answered the doorkeeper.

“I see no church here,” rejoined the Quaker. “Perhaps thou
meanest the house where the church assembles. I suppose thou
art aware that it is the _people_, not the _building_, that
constitutes a church, sir?”

The idea seemed new to the man, but he merely repeated, “You must
take off your hat, sir.”

But the Friend inquired, “What for? On account of these images?
Thou knowest Scripture commands us not to worship graven images.”

The man persisted in saying that no person could be permitted
to pass through the church without uncovering his head. “Well,
friend,” rejoined Isaac, “I have some conscientious scruples on
that subject; so give me back my money and I will go out.”

The reverential habits of the doorkeeper were not quite strong
enough to compel him to that sacrifice; and he walked away
without saying anything more on the subject.

When Friend Hopper visited the House of Lords, he asked the
sergeant-at-arms if he might sit on the throne. He replied, “No,
sir. No one but his majesty sits there.”

“Wherein does his majesty differ from other men?” inquired he.
“If his head were cut off, wouldn’t he die?”

“Certainly he would,” replied the officer.

“So would an American,” rejoined Friend Hopper. As he spoke he
stepped up to the gilded railing that surrounded the throne,
and tried to open the gate. The officer told him it was locked.
“Well, won’t the same key that locked it unlock it?” inquired he.
“Is this the key hanging here?”

Being informed that it was, he took it down and unlocked the
gate. He removed the satin covering from the throne, carefully
dusting the railing with his handkerchief before he hung the
satin over it, and then seated himself in the royal chair.
“Well,” said he, “do I look anything like his majesty?”

The man seemed embarrassed, but smiled as he answered, “Why, sir,
you certainly fill the throne very respectably.”

There were several noblemen in the room, who seemed to be
extremely amused by these unusual proceedings.

Father Hopper lived verily to a “green old age.” On his eightieth birthday he thus wrote to his youngest daughter, Mary:

“My eye is not dim, nor my natural force abated. My head is well covered with hair, which still retains its usual glossy, dark color, with but few gray hairs sprinkled about. My life has been prolonged beyond most, and has been truly a chequered scene. Mercy and kindness have followed me thus far, and I have faith that they will continue with me to the end.”

A few months later, going to visit a discharged convict for whom the association had built a shop far up in the city, Friend Hopper took a fatal cold. It was a long and painful sickness, but he restrained his tendency to groan by singing, and said: “There is no cloud. There is nothing in the way. Nothing troubles me.” His heart was with his past work. His son-in-law wrote: “Reminiscences are continually falling from his lips, like leaves in autumn from an old forest tree; not, indeed green, but rich in the colors that are of the tree, and characteristic. I have never seen so beautiful a close to a good man’s life.” On the last day he said: “I seem to hear voices singing, ‘We have come to take thee home.’” And again he spoke low to his daughter, “Maria, is there anything peculiar in this room?” “No; why do you ask that question?” “Because,” said the dying patriarch, “you all look so beautiful; and the covering on the bed hath such glorious colors as I never saw. But perhaps I had better not have said anything about it.”

His last act was characteristic. Calling for his box of private papers he took out one and asked to have it destroyed, lest it should do some injury. He confided to his eldest daughter as a precious keepsake a little yellow paper, fastened by a rusty pin; it was the first love letter of his first love, her mother, written when she and he were fourteen years old, children in school. Love of justice and love of love in his last breath!

* * * * *

Truth is the source of every good to gods and men. He who expects to be blest and fortunate in this world should be a partaker of it from the earliest moment of his life, that he may live as long as possible a person of truth; for such a man is trustworthy. But that man is untrustworthy who loveth a lie in his heart; and if it be told involuntary, and in mere wantonness, he is a fool. In neither case can they be envied; for every knave and shallow dunce is without real friends. As time passes on to morose old age, he becomes known, and has prepared for himself at the end of his life a dreary solitude; so that, whether his associates and children be alive or not, his life becomes nearly equally a state of isolation.—_Plato._

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE INEBRIATES?

Synopsis of a lecture delivered on Saturday, April 12, in the
National Museum, at Washington, D. C., by Dr. W. W. Godding, in
charge of the Government Hospital for the Insane at Washington,
D. C.

The profound interest which I feel for this subject is in sympathy with certain words of Terence: “I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.” This sentiment is to be commended to the scientists of the Christian era. Entitled, then, to the grave consideration of humanity, is the miserable inebriate. The study of this subject has both a biological and anthropological bearing. The former defines the protoplasm—the wonderful beginning of existence—the subject in hand demonstrates the destructive oxidation of the soul in the presence of alcohol, the deterioration of vital energy, and a misspent life. Again, the anthropologist studies man in his present and primeval existence, delving into burial mounds and bone cases to spell out the lessons learned by each succeeding generation in the great struggle for existence.

Of man it has been written: “How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God!” But by saturating his brain with whiskey, how soon would the godlike man become debased lower than the meanest brute. Truly here in the nineteenth century—not in the old red sandstone or in the silurian beds—but right here in this day appears what might be called the “missing link” in anthropological studies.

What is to be done with the inebriate? Prohibition, total abstinence, and women’s crusades have struggled with the demon of drunkenness, but its throne has not yet been demolished. Its dominion was set up among men long before the Macedonian conqueror, with heel planted upon the neck of a prostrate world, was vanquished by it, and its temples were already hoary when the old Roman worshiped Bacchus under the vines. In the history of the world it has been more potent than Christianity in winning the savage tribes, and at the same time has done more to depauperize Christian nations than all other calamities put together. The subject of intemperance and its cure present the most important social problem of the day for both philanthropist and legislator. However, much good has been brought about by the moral forces of society and the benevolent organizations, toward the extinction of the vice, yet it seems that its utter annihilation is entirely beyond the reach of all influences. Shakspere well described this lurking remnant of a vice not wholly to be controlled, when he said, “I have lost the immortal part, sir, of myself, and what remains is bestial.” There has been too much nonsense in dealing with the inebriate. The world has laughed too long at the noisy, reeling comedy daily enacted on our streets, and is unmindful too often of the corresponding silent tragedy taking place at home. Patient women are not unfrequently found wearing away in gloom what might have been a happy life, looking for the daily return of a drunken husband. Many a death is attributed in the obituary columns of our papers to Bright’s disease, or pneumonia, when in reality whiskey should take all the blame.

The indiscriminate commitment of the inebriate to the hospital for the insane is a grievous wrong. Genuine cases of a real insanity, resulting from dipsomania, are indeed to be found, but it is absurd to class any considerable portion of the inebriates in this category. The hospital for the insane is, however, preferred to the workhouse, as announcing less publicly the disgrace of the victim, and therefore it is that dipsomania is so often stretched into insanity. With some physicians inebriety is confounded with insanity, while others deny the existence of an insanity whose sign is a passion for drink, and accordingly fail to distinguish dipsomania from drunkenness or crime. These points need not, however, be discussed in a lecture intended to treat the subject socially. Social science asks whether this inebriety is a crime or a disease. The law classes drunkenness among crimes, and sends the offenders to penal institutions; but how often do friends, unwilling to see the victims of intemperance committed with the felons, bring to bear on the case powerful arguments to show that the mind is diseased, and thus have him transferred from the gaol to the lunatic asylum, where he is evidently out of place as soon as the fumes of alcohol have left the brain. Inebriety is both a crime and a disease, and owing to a want of recognition of this truth on the part of philanthropists, much work and intended good have been wasted. When it is regarded by the law as an _iniquitous disease_, and provided for by the law with a _curative punishment_, then will the community at large be afforded a relief which might also effect the recovery of the victim.

As to the vices of drunkenness and opium consumption, women are probably as much addicted to the latter as men, while drunkenness counts many more victims among the males. The former is a social vice, the latter a solitary evil. The latter injures none but the consumer, leaving out of consideration its power to unfit the mind for business, and thus injure the other members of the family. Through persistent indulgence in opium the mind at last suffers more surely than from alcohol. The love of opium often originates in a physician’s prescription of an opiate for the relief of pain. That is a grave responsibility, but it is inexcusable that the patient is allowed to renew the prescription at will, and long after the immediate necessity for its use has passed away. The antidotes so commonly used as “opium cures” are nothing but disguised morphine, and the poor wretch instead of conquering his love for opiates allows them to get a firmer and surer hold upon him. Such nostrums as “Collins’s cure” and “Hoffman’s antidote” should be analyzed by a chemist directed by state authorities, and the amount of morphine contained in them be published to the world. Prolonged treatment in proper homes, where the victims of opium can be protected against themselves, is the only radical cure.

The dipsomaniac is often to be found in the full vigor of youth; a man rejoicing in a magnificent physique, and showing no external signs of impairment. He may have talent and wit, and be high in the social scale. But behind the mask something is found to be lacking. His liver, clogged with fatty deposit, is disordered, the coats of the stomach are more or less burnt out, dyspeptic symptoms are apparent. The man becomes moody and irritable if deprived of his stimulant, while gout and neuralgia perhaps add themselves to the list of symptoms. The most marked result probably is the utter absence of the natural instincts of rectitude and morality. His whole confession of faith might be summed up in the words of Byron: “Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.”

If the dipsomaniac be sent to the hospital, it is noticed that, while recovering from the immediate effects of his revels there is a condition of unstrung nerves, with marked depression of mind. As his normal activity is restored through rest, proper food and abstinence from stimulants, there appear peculiar intellectual and moral phases characteristic of the inebriate. He speaks of his indulgence as a thing of the past; blames everybody but himself for his excess; declares that it is the result of a dose of Plantation Bitters (perhaps) taken as a cure for an attack of cholera morbus, at the suggestion of a friend who declared they contained no alcohol; treats the matter as something which could never possibly happen again—in fact, regards it as an unfortunate mistake. He declares that the idea of being detained as a lunatic is absurd, and repugnant to his feelings, and probably will soon actually have the effect of converting him into a lunatic; that it is absolutely necessary for him to go and attend to his business. He will never forget the physician’s kindness, and departs apparently cured. His actions remind me of the poor Indian who came to the missionary and began repeating the names of the twelve apostles, adding those of the patriarchs and Old Testament worthies, and anxious to enlarge upon Biblical literature; but when the astounded missionary exclaimed, “What does all this mean?” the Indian promptly replied “Whiskey.”

I have pictured the dipsomaniac as I myself have known him. There are, of course, cases in which the victim is thoroughly convinced of his folly and sin, and radically cured. That is the exception, however, and not the rule. The grave question then has to be considered—“What shall we do with the inebriates?” Are they to be sent back to their families, because the law allows a man’s house to be his castle, in which he has a right to do as he pleases? The inebriate has no such right. Whether sick or criminal, such a man is a nuisance, and should be put down. The law should confine him, however, not as a disturber of the peace, not as a terror to wife and children, nor as a dangerous man to the community, but he should be restrained and punished because he is a confirmed inebriate, with the hope that the punishment will cure his disease and depravity. If sent to the insane hospital it should be as an inebriate, not as a lunatic, and a separate building and enclosed grounds should be provided for this class. The law should provide for his prolonged detention and compulsory labor. The victim, if a minor, should be sentenced for the remainder of his minority. It is an open question whether the will power of a drunkard ever, indeed, attained its majority. If over twenty-one years of age, the first offense should be limited to perhaps one year; but should a second commitment be necessary, then for a term of years, discretionary power being left with the court, under the advice of the authorities of the institution.

Insufficient period of detention, lack of legal power to detain, and absence of authority to inflict compulsory labor, has prevented much good being done by inebriate asylums. It is the province of legislation to invest the court and authorities of inebriate asylums with these powers. Unfortunately, there is a fourth drawback to the permanent cure of the inebriate—one which is outside of the control of legislation—namely: a general indisposition to reform, a perfect atrophy of moral sense, an instinctive return, like “the dog to his own vomit,” of the inebriate to his cups. After the law has endued the authorities of inebriate asylums with all desired power, the essential element of their cure then comes in, and that is sound medical treatment. Asylums conducted in this manner would be able to record quite as large a proportion of good recoveries as the insane hospitals. Would there be anything cruel in subjecting the patient to compulsory labor, or in detaining him for a long period? Surely not; his freedom before the right time would only mean a return to vice and sloth, while his labor could probably be made to pay for his maintenance in the asylum. Not until savants take an interest in this subject will public sentiment be gained, legislation in its behalf enacted and, in fine, a glad release from this state of bondage be attained.

* * * * *

It is a foe invisible which I fear—an enemy in the human breast which opposes me—by its coward fear alone made fearful to me; not that which, full of life, instinct with power, makes known its present being; that is not the perilously formidable. Oh, no! it is the common, the quite common, the thing of an eternal yesterday, which ever was and evermore returns—sterling to-morrow for it was sterling to-day; for man is made of the wholly common, and custom is his nurse. Woe then to them who lay irreverent hands on his old house furniture, the dear inheritance from his forefathers! For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion. Be in possession, and thou hast the right, and sacred will the many guard it for thee.—_Schiller._

CLIMATE-SEEKING IN AMERICA.

By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND.

As nations rise in wealth, comfort and communications, they discover that the simplest of all things, mere climate or air, is of the greatest value. The English race paid early attention to this question and seized upon the sheltered positions, the _spas_ and baths as places of resort both for weak systems and for luxurious existence. Religion itself conveniently placed its miracles and chapels where the best climate or the most healing waters were found.

Soon after America was discovered there spread through the most successful nations a belief in a Golden Spring, an El Dorado, and this was pursued notably in Florida, where many yet believe that the most golden spring is to be found, as its season hardly begins till February or March, and is used to offset a lingering winter and the angry winds of the northern sea coast country.

One of the most notable instances of seeking a climate in our colonial history is that of Sir William Johnson, who lived among the six nations of Indians about the Mohawk, and being a portly man with European habits of life, he found his old age, in spite of his active and military youth, affected by gouts and by the heavy stagnant air of the limestone valleys in which he lived, and he was one of the first Americans to select at once a seacoast resort and the mineral springs. We need not repeat the story of how the Indians, among whom he married, concluded in their affection for him to show him their celebrated mineral spring, and took him on a litter through hidden paths to the Tufa rock of Saratoga, where he, the first of white men, saw the reflection of his face in the meteoric water there. It is not as well known that Sir William Johnson also made himself a road to the sea beach, near New London, where he went in summer, not for mineral water, but for sea air, which he esteemed so much more valuable.

Climate, indeed, is one of the most important subjects to be considered by superior men, and the earliest travelers in this country noted down where they escaped the insects, where the nights were cool, where the trade winds blew, etc. The oranges of Florida, for instance, were noted by the old Spanish chroniclers as the finest that grew in their immense dominions, and that perfection is kept up to the present time.

General Washington, a man of good condition, was one of the early annual seekers for a pleasant climate, which he found west of the North Mountain, about Berkeley Springs, where he had a hut built, and for years repaired there with his chicken cocks and horses. When he went through Virginia as a young surveyor, he observed the differences in the temperature, and in the humidity, and located some of the best springs and resorts in the Old Dominion. When Washington first visited Saratoga he endeavored, at once, to purchase the tract enclosing the few sources at that time known, so much was he impressed with the superiority of the climate of New York in summer over that of Virginia.

Mr. Jefferson, who was one of the best amateurs in the country at all sorts of subjects, although he lived on the top of a mountain above the tidewater region, and in sight of other peaks, would not spend his summers at home about Charlottsville, but had a road cut far into the west and built himself a sort of lodge called Poplar Forest, in the high country about Lynchburgh; it was a brick house on a slope, one story high in front and two stories high in the rear, of octagon shape, with a portico in front and a veranda in the rear. To this spot Jefferson went both in summer and in autumn to escape his political followers, and to think, read and sleep.