Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the dead forms of mediæval preciseness. No established church makes with them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general--the increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our regard--and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life, yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be multiplied Ephraims given to their idols, who had best be let alone.

The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague, and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piræus as a meat-market of Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in aiming at practical life.

Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of our most important universities will better set forth the habits and customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality.

The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn--the dead summer lain in state--and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year. Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student) loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and warehouses--ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of continental struggle--rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and schooners--suggestive of lobsters or pineapples--bow their big heads meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut,

'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.'

Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn, favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed hillside and sail-dotted sea; or threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword:

'RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.'

Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley--

'Where storm and lightning from that huge gray wall,
Had tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments.'

Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like a liquid crystal in the emerald hills--an eyesore to luckless piscatory students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer refrigerators.

In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of college, colonial and revolutionary worthies--a collection of rare historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone, its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone, which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material, occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial Examination--make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.

Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from the six weeks' torpor, (the _long_ vacation of hurried Americans who must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots, re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand miles in the interior--from the prairies of the West or the bayous of the South--has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to storm with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of student-humanity within--a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing that his as yet undeveloped character is '_summâ integritate et innocentiâ_;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a _hard_ student in the worse sense, with much of the '_fortiter in re_' in his bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical '_suaviter in modo_;' a Senior, whose '_otium cum dignitate_' at once distinguishes him from the vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms; students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical standing. In which state of things the various employés of college, including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor _Paley_, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply their efforts.

But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of students--

'The igneous men of Georgia,
The ligneous men of Maine,'

the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan, with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of their respective members which gives great promise for political life. Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors, according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is _one_ vacancy left in our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which, after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort, the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are preädmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents; which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night.

Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors. With more quiet, but with busy effort, their members are carefully chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones, are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they each form an _imperium in imperio_ in the large societies much used by ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls. The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters, and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters. Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft.

Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having _ad mores majorum_ given the challenge and received its acceptance, on some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the 'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is _warned_; then a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both

'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,'

until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening the victors sing pæans of victory by torch-light on the State House steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the balconies, are presented and received with great glorification.

Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a patriotic continental. Here is a reïnforcement of 'Labs,' (students of chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of 'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down from the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' 'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the following opening stanza may serve as a specimen:

'Fundite nunc lacrymas,
Plorate Yalenses:
Euclid rapuerunt fata,
Membra et ejus inhumata
Linquimus tres menses.'

The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, and music by the band--'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted, and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.

So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President _pro tempore;_ of the _noctes ambrosianæ_ of the secret societies; of appointments, prize essays, and the periodical issue of the _Yale Literary_, now a venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson, review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: '_Dum vivimus vivamus_.'

Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,

[Greek: 'kouroi anarriptein ala pêdô,']

in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows, where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again:

'Many the mile we row, boys,
Merry, merry the song;
The joys of long ago, boys,
Shall be remembered long.
Then as we rest upon the oar,
We raise the cheerful strain,
Which we have often sung before,
And gladly sing again.'

But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is 'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals of _viva voce_ and written examinations, are presented by the senior tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,) long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus':

'Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus:
Post jucundam juventutem,
Post molestam senectutem,
Nos habebit humus.'

* * * * *

'Pereat tristitia,
Pereant osores,
Pereat diabolus,
Quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.'

Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:

* * * * *

'Count not the tears of the long-gone years,
With their moments of pain and sorrow;
But laugh in the light of their memories bright,
And treasure them all for the morrow.
Then roll the song in waves along,
While the hours are bright before us,
And grand and hale are the towers of Yale,
Like guardians towering o'er us.

* * * * *

'Clasp ye the hand 'neath the arches grand
That with garlands span our greeting.
With a silent prayer that an hour as fair
May smile on each after meeting:
And long may the song, the joyous song,
Roll on in the hours before us,
And grand and hale may the elms of Yale
For many a year bend o'er us.'

Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep our memories green!'

So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'

'They come ere life departs,
Ere winged death appears.
To throng their joyous hearts
With dreams of sunnier years:
To meet once more
Where pleasures sprang,
And arches rang
With songs of yore.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not to distract the attention of the students.']

[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 392.]

[Footnote 3: Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.]

[Footnote 4: The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.]

GO IN AND WIN.

Will nothing rouse the Northmen
To see what they can do?
When in one day of our war-growth
The South are growing two?
When they win a victory it always counts a pair,
One at home in Dixie, and another _over there_!

North, you have spent your millions!
North, you have sent your men!
But if the war ask billions,
You must give it all again.
Don't stop to think of what you've done--it's very fine and true--
But in fighting for our _life_, the thing is, _what we've yet to do_.

Who dares to talk of party,
And the coming President,
When the rebels threaten 'bolder raids,'
And all the land is rent?
How _dare_ we learn 'they gather strength,' by every telegraph,
If an army of a million could have scattered them like chaff!

What means it when the people
Are prompt with blood and gold,
That this devil-born rebellion
Is growing two years old?
The Nigger feeds them as of old, and keeps away their fears,
While 'gayly into battle' go the 'Southern cavaliers.'

And the Richmond _Whig_, which lately
Lay groveling in mud,
Shows its mulatto insolence,
And prates of 'better blood:'
'We ruled them in the Union; we can thrash them out of bounds:
Ye are mad, ye drunken Helots--cap off, ye Yankee hounds!'

Yet the Northman has the power,
And the North would not be still!
Rise up! rise up, ye rulers!
Send the people where ye will!
Don't organize your victories--fly to battle with your bands--
If you can find the brains to lead, _we'll find the willing hands!_

JOHN NEAL.

John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine, where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided whether he or his twin sister was the elder.

He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher. From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.' That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, _fought_ his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with Oliver Twist--to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole life.

Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where, in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal, and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's somersets in business--from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he went into on his own hook with a capital of _one hundred and fifty dollars_, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'--may not be any more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles.

At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own weapons.

This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when he began, _and maintaining himself_ by writing, either as editor of _The Telegraph_, coëditor of _The Portico_, (for which he wrote near a volume octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's _Revolution_, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years, we find: for the _Portico_ and _Telegraph_, and half-a-dozen other papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes. He could no more have gone leisurely and carefully through this amount of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from an old letter of his, which we will give by and by.

A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no weeds.

His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom--there are the thorny points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again into our literary currency.

The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and 'Goldau,' and by the _nom de plume_ he thought proper to publish them under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing waters.

We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'--or this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember, twelve years ago.

The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee' was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself.

Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did, is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man! He had traveled through England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo. It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else.

Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for his papers in Miller's _European Magazine_ were attributed to Washington Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised above, and which we received years since:

'The papers I wrote for Miller's _European Magazine_ have been
generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving--a
man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my
writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and
steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of
which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead
languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial
blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether--but never mind. He is
a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that
'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the _literary_'.

Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on the enemy. He took heavy tribute from _Blackwood_ and others for his articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and read. His article for _Blackwood_ on the Five Presidents and the Five Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too characteristic to remain unread by the public:

'For my paper on the Presidents, _Blackwood_ sent me five guineas,
and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be.
But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him;
whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high,
recalled an article in type for which he had paid me _fifteen_
guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I
hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: _Blackwood_
behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small
exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward '_my
beloved_ country' while I was at the helm of that department, than
any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain.
Give the devil his due, I say!'

This escapade with _Blackwood_ might have been a national loss; but happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose--vindicated his country by telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation, and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at _Blackwood's_, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this time.

In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains of some extinct species of animal.

About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved _literati_ above mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob _pro tem._, and expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who, some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to _swear_ that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have thought of setting up a _Daily Advertiser_ in the Isle of Shoals three months before.'

His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world. The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop through the mind's meshes.

Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years; we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in place--an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been combined--the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the Lake for purposes of navigation.

Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a Portland Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has sometimes given facts to base the fictions on.

We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule thus _democratically_ established, is now, after a lapse of more than thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed.

That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us; though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of noble birth.

Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether they fulfill the promise of the name.

Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways, besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights. He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest, encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed, has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct periodicals in this country--probably no great sin, if it really lay at his door.

In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the character.

John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall, with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to his family in the practice of it--training his wife and children to take the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully developed in himself--all this has inevitably contributed to the health and beauty of his beautiful family.

Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we last saw him, some ten years since--when he had lived more than half a century--his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before us, a noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and unexhausted land.

NOTE,--The foregoing must have been written years ago, if
one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now
abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put
into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted
with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish
the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on
what he calls a 'snapper.'

Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly trust and no indecorum to be charged.

'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought, although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of ourselves--the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my ancestors--if I ever had any--'came from Scotland,' must know something that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief. Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always felt so much at home in the graveyards--among my own household, as it were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw in Portsmouth and Dover, England.

'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and strengthens every position with armorial bearings--which only goes to show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are concerned--that we are of the '_red_ O'Neals,' not the _learned_ O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who '_bearded_' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand clutching the hilt of his dagger.

'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him--on my father's side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers and great-grandfathers--and furthermore this deponent sayeth not--up to the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging for themselves, and taking the consequences.

'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am quite sure.'