Chapter III: Part I: (Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in Rome) (2)

And so they caught me,
And brought me home and set me to the law.
And here I am, who never lost the dream
And named you Junius Brutus. Oh, my son,
Leave off this actor calling, stay with me,
I who was nipped would see you grow to flower,
Fulfill my vision. What, you promise me,
If I will let you act this time, to come
And let me mould you, teach you what I know,
Fill full your spirit with the hope I had,
That you may do what I have failed to do?
You promise that? Well, Junius Brutus, go
And may you fail at acting and return.

A MAN CHILD IS BORN

(_July 14th, 1839. The Farm._)

(_Mrs. Booth is speaking._)

After such pain this child against my breast!
Oh what a cunning head and little face!
What coal black hair! You have begun to feed!
Look, doctor, how he feeds--why look at him,
He is a little man! Is not God good
To give me such a baby? Well, I think
You will be something noble in this world,
And something great, you precious little man!
His daddy wants to name him John Wilkes. I
Would name him Junius Brutus to hand down
His father’s glory and perhaps his art.
Look, doctor, is it not a miracle
That God performs, this little life from mine,
This beauty out of love! I pray to God
To bless you, little John, if that’s your name.
A colored mammy read the coffee grounds,
And says he will be famous, rich and great--
He may be so. I know he will be good.
Look at that darling face--it must be so!

SQUIRE BOWLING GREEN

(_Rutledge’s Tavern, New Salem, July 14th, 1839._)

You missed it--case all over! Lincoln’s gone.
He’s just had time about to reach the mill.
He couldn’t wait until the stage arrived.
Had business in the courts of Springfield--well,
You can believe he has become a lawyer.
He borrowed Mentor Graham’s horse to ride.
John Yoakum is in Springfield and to-morrow
Will bring it back.

Who won the case? Why, Abe.
He won it by his horse-sense and his wit.
You must have met the jury down the road.
What were they laughing at? About the case.
We started yesterday on the evidence
And finished up this morning. An appeal?
The verdict satisfies both parties, and
My judgment stands.

Abe is a natural lawyer,
Knows things that can’t be found in books, although
He knows the books. And why not? You recall
When he was boarding with me how he studied?
It’s just four years ago or so, that he
Came home one night with Blackstone. Well, I’ve noticed
A man attracts what’s his, just like a magnet
Draws bits of steel. You can’t make me believe
That Blackstone came to him unless ’twas meant
That he should be a lawyer. Don’t you know?
He read this Blackstone in his store all day
And half the night as well. He said to me
Not Volney’s “Ruins,” Shakespeare, Burns, had taken
His interest like this Blackstone. Yes, he took it
When he went fishing with Jack Kelso, read,
And let jack row the boat and bait the hooks....

I think he knows this Blackstone all by heart.
But anyway, he knows the human heart.
Well, now here is the case: Here is a colt.
George Cameron says the colt is his--John Spears
Says no, the colt is mine, and Cameron sues,
And Spears defends, and sixty witnesses
Come here to testify, on my word it’s true,
On my judicial oath it is the fact.
The thirty swear the colt is Cameron’s;
And thirty swear the colt belongs to Spears;
And not a man impeached, these witnesses
Are everyone good men, and most of them
I know as I know you. Well, what’s to do?
The scales are balanced. And besides all this,
Here’s Cameron who swears the colt is his,
And Spears who swears the opposite, and both
Are credible, I know them both. So I
Sit like a fellow trying to decide
What happens when a thing impenetrable
Is struck by something irresistible--
I’m stumped, that’s all.

You see the facts were these:
Each of these fellows owns a mare, the mares
Look pretty much alike, each had a colt
In April. But the other day one colt--
Which colt, that is the question--strayed away
And can’t be found. George Cameron has a colt--
These men are neighbors--but John Spears comes over
And sees the colt at Cameron’s in the field;
And says, “That is my colt.” “Not on your life,”
George Cameron replies, “The colt is mine--
Your colt has strayed, not mine.” They come to law.
John Spears gets Lincoln, and they come to court
With sixty witnesses; and here this noon
With all the evidence put in, I sit
And eye the jury, know the jury’s stumped,
As I am stumped.

Then Lincoln says: “Your honor,
Let’s have a trial on view.” I’d heard of that,
But never sat on such a trial before.
“Let’s bring the colt, the two mares over here,
And let the jury see which mare the colt
Resembles, let the jury use their eyes
As witnesses use theirs.”

That seemed fair.
And so we sent one fellow for the mares,
Another for the colt. For Lincoln said:
“Your honor, bring them separate, so the jury
Can have the sudden flash of seeing them
Separate, to study them.”

For an hour
Abe sat here in the shade and told us stories.
And pretty soon we heard the horses whinney,
And heard the colt. And Lincoln said, “Your honor,
Let’s have the mares led past the jury, trotting,
Let’s see their pace.” And so they trotted them.
“Now trot the colt,” said Lincoln--we did that.
The jury watched to see the look of legs,
And movement, if you please, to catch a likeness.
But nothing came of this. Then Lincoln said:
“Now turn the colt loose”--and they turned it loose.
It galloped to the mare of Spears and sucked!
Well, now it’s true a colt’s a silly thing,
And may mistake its mother, but a mare
Will never let a colt that’s not her own
Put under flanks its nose. Of course the jury,
And all of us know that--and so did Abe.
The jury yelled and all the witnesses
Began to whoop. And when I rapped for order
And got things quiet--Lincoln rose and said,
“I rest, your honor.”

So I entered judgment
For Spears. They went to Berry’s for the drinks--
There! hear them laughing.

Lincoln took his fee,
Ten dollars, I believe, and went to Springfield.

LINCOLN SPEAKING IN CONGRESS

(_January 12th, 1848._)

“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a sacred right. A right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and may make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.”

JOHN WILKES BOOTH AT THE FARM

(_January 12th, 1848._)

Mother, I’m breathless! I have seen a man,
The strangest man I ever saw. I’m scared!
I went down to the hollow, was at play,
Was marching with my broomstick gun--and then
While I stood there and said “attention,” playing
Soldier, you know, reciting to my soldiers,
I heard a voice--looked round and saw this man.
He was enormous with a frightful face,
Black eyes, black hair, a voice that sounded like
Low thunder, though it could be soft and sweet.
And he said to me, “What’s your name, my boy?”
I told him. Then he said, “Where is your father?”
I said, “My father’s gone.” “Where is your mother?”
“Up at the house,” I answered. Then he asked,
“What are you doing here?” “Why, playing soldier.”
“Are you a patriot?” And I said yes.
“Oh, no,” he said, “your father was an actor;
I saw him play the part of Brutus often,
And you will be an actor, you’ve the look.”
How did he know these things, do you suppose?
And then he said, “Recite for me.” “I can’t,”
I said to him. “O yes, you can,” he said.
“You must recite for me.” And I was scared,
Began to cry, and he said, “Hush, my boy,
I will not hurt you, but you must recite,
I want to see what you have memorized.”
So I was choking, but I tried to do it:
“The tyrannous and bloody deed is done,
The most arch act of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of.” ...

“No Richard III,” he said. “Here look at me!
Why do you dodge? Why not recite some words
From Brutus, for you know them, why, my boy?
You’ve heard your father speak the words of Brutus.
Why do you hide your knowledge? Look at me!”
He terrified me so that I began:
“It must be by his death: and for my part
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crowned:
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder.”
I got so far and saw him looking down,
As if he saw--I don’t know what--and then
I stopped and looked--and there I saw an adder
Coiled close to me. I jumped and screamed. He laughed--
I ran away, and left him standing there.
Mother, I am afraid. Who was this man?
My head hurts. I’m afraid. Keep close to me--
I am so frightened.

JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH

(_On a steamboat bound for Cincinnati from New Orleans, November 30th, 1852_.)

You are a doctor? Ill? I’m very ill.
My soul is worn, it is a ghastly life,
This acting, traveling, living through the passions
Of Brutus, and Orestes, Richard III.
My father tried to make a lawyer of me,
But fate is fate. My age is fifty-six,
But counting by the moments I have lived
A thousand years were nearer truth. Oh, well,
What if this talking tire me, I am tired
With such fatigue that nothing adds to it.
And if I die, why what will be, will be.
I’d like to see “The Farm” in Maryland
Just once again, see Mary, that’s my wife,
John Wilkes, my boy, and Junius Brutus, too--
Edwin I left in California,
Shall never see him more I fear--but then
What comes to us must come.

That brandy helps,
I’m better now.

Oh, yes, it’s true my father
Would make a lawyer of me, couldn’t do it--
I am a better lawyer than he was
For acting parts and living other lives,
Thus finding laws of life--but what’s the good?
You can’t find happiness, all is vanity.
If you’re a strolling player, vanity;
Vexation too and jealousy and strife.
If all the house goes mad to see you rage
As life-like as the Moor did, do they know
What realest envy stalks behind the scenes,
What you have done to keep your golden voice,
Your strength to paint the frenzy of Othello?

After one greatest triumph I sat alone,
Was playing solitaire, who should come in?
Chief Justice Marshall, friend of mine? Oh, yes.
He said, “I think you’d be the happiest
Of men, why not enjoy what you’ve achieved?”
“Judge,” I replied, “you see me here alone,
There is no ecstasy, no drop of joy
For me save in that moment when I see,
Both through my genius glowing and the cries
And plaudits from the house, that I have struck.
The fateful note that thrills--all other hours
Are spent in saving power and making ready
For just that moment. What’s an actor, poet?
A medium round whom the spirits swarm
Like bats in Tartarus and shrill Me! Me!
Take now and write, speak for me--make it clear,
You are our hope of truth, of being known
For what we are. And so you’re never done.
The spirits dash about you with their cries;
Men note your eyes turned inward--move away.
And you must keep in vigor. Hoarseness rasps
The voice of Brutus, you must catch no cold.
You drink sometimes to deafen ears against
The spirits’ crying, but you pay for it,
Must climb back into strength, but while you’re weak
The spirits are a-crying, there you are,
Ambitious but enfeebled, can’t respond,
And tortured for it. There is no escape.
And so you play at solitaire.”
The Judge
Replied: “A judge is lonely, for his reasons
Must keep himself aloof.”
Yes, I knew Kean.
He played Othello to my great Iago,
And I say great, for I was twenty-one,
And made the London English shout and howl:
“Great Booth forever,” though they shouted, too,
“No Booth” and “down with Booth,” the partisans
Of Kean, the envious. And on a time
It’s Drury Lane, and what an audience!
Hazlitt is there and Godwin, Shelley’s friend,
John Howard Payne, who wrote “The Fall of Tarquin.”
He saw that Kean was envious, would not be
Excelled by me and wrote as much.

My friend,
Another drink of brandy!

Well, at last
I make America my home. ’Twere well
If I am spared to write my memories,
They throng so at this moment. God be praised,
I knew Old Hickory and supped with him,
A man from top to toe! And I have lived,
Fought, suffered, triumphed, lived through self and lived
Through Brutus, Lear, and Richard.

Look at me,
Am I a man you’d ever take for mad?
Mad-men have struck at me, a lunatic
Struck at me with an ax, I cowed his hate
And fixed him with my eye. But as for me,
Here have I been for life a lover of home,
A husband blest with happiness in a wife,
And yet reputed mad. For little things
Like this reputed mad: I’m playing Shylock,
The call boy searches me, my time has come,
Where was I? In a closet. Was it queer?
A symptom? No! I hid to shut the light
Of other things external from the mind
Of Shylock’s mood. Why, is it strange at all
For a soul that incarnates itself with souls
Like Brutus’ and Lear’s to lose itself,
Seem sometimes naked, trembling, swaying too
With such exhaustion, such tremendous change?
These common minds see not the genius mind
For what it is, forget the strength and wisdom
That makes the genius, in my case, forget
My books and scholarship, my toil, who learned
Greek, Latin, German, French and Arabic,
Hebrew and Spanish; the philosophies,
I’ve mastered in my life.

I tremble too
For thinking of my little son, John Wilkes,
So beautiful and gifted, has the touch;
Is full of dreams, goes charging on his horse,
Spouting heroic speeches, lance in hand
There on “The Farm,” a patriot and a lover
Of liberty even now. What will he be,
A statesman or an actor, warrior, what?
God knows alone, and what his fate God knows.
I named him after John Wilkes, patriot
And English libertarian--but no matter,
He’ll do what he will do. They named me Brutus
And I became an actor, not a statesman,
Warrior, no tyrannicide.

Hold there!
What is this? Take my hand! Sharp pain again--
Pray! pray! pray!

(_He dies._)

A CERTAIN POET ON THE DEBATES

(_At Alton, Illinois, October 15th, 1858._)

(_Arguing with a group at the hotel._)

Why do I speak with such authority?
I know this matter through from A to Z;
I know it just as well as Lincoln knows it.
There’s not a document I have not studied
From Elliott’s Debates to this Le Compton
Kansas constitution that has escaped
My mind’s analysis. And you will see
Lincoln is beaten now. You are absurd
To think he’ll win the presidency for losing
The senatorship--clean crazy all of you!

Who am I? Well, it makes no difference.
I am a mind, a mere intelligence
Going about this year of fifty-eight
An observer and a listener. Gabriel
Could be no more impersonal than I.
I’ve followed up these fellows like the boy
That trails the circus, clear from Ottawa
To Freeport, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton;
And made my way at first with sawing wood,
Later by selling razors, soap and strops;
And just to hear the speaking, see the crowds--
These crowds that leave the shop and farms, these crowds
Solemn and noisy, rapt, tumultuous,
Sober and drunk, who carry whips and spit
Tobacco juice around and drink and eat.
The babies squall, wagons and democrats
Befog the air with dust, and oh, the heat!
Yet though these crowds will settle like the dust
In graves all over Illinois, nothing leave
Of what, or who they were, no less these crowds
Have reason at the centre like the sun;
Dimmed to the eyes this side; the sun is there!
But yet the sun knows it is there--the dust
Rises and shows the sun--there you have thought
Which is now, will be handed down of this--
These days. Oh, yes, the dust will rise at last
When evening--that’s reflection, settles down;
And then you’ll see a star--first magnitude,
The name is Lincoln!

I have read. I know.
Never in Rome or Greece were such debates,
Never in all this world. Look at the theme:
Slavery in a republic! As for men,
Where is their equal? Is it Pericles,
Demosthenes or Cicero, here with us,
Great Webster? And the setting, think of that!
Here in this western prairie state they pass
From town to town, stand up before the mass,
And battle with their wits--set falcons loose
Of swift and ravenous logic to devour
The other’s flights. The crowds perceive the trend,
Gather enough to guide them and persuade,
But much of it is over them. You heard
Lincoln to-day, when he had subtilized
The point to deadly ether, say to them:
“An audience like this will scarcely see
The force of what I say, but minds well trained
Will follow me and see.” That is the point.
Out of this popular oratory rises
A durable spire of truth. This Lincoln leaves
Great thought and beauty to the race. And yet
Douglas will be our senator, and Seward
Our President two years from now. As Webster
Could never win the prize, this Lincoln too
Will fail to win it.

Why, you silly fools!
Lincoln has sprained his arms and back for good--
But he has laid the South out flat and cold,
And broken the slavocracy in two.
He did it with one question; asking that
He made the Little Giant cough and stammer,
And blush his guilt before America.
Oh, yes, he answered well enough to win
This contest here in Illinois; but look,
The Southern press is after him already,
They scent the carcass moved, withdrawn a little;
They croak like buzzards--and there will be war
Between the eagles and the buzzards now,
Perhaps when Seward is elected; truly
If Lincoln should be chosen, as he won’t.
It isn’t that this Douglas isn’t a master.
It is that he is caught between the mill-stones.
The upper is this Kansas and Nebraska,
The lower is Dred Scott--and I am glad!
Why did he father Kansas and Nebraska?
Why did he flout the ancient ordinance
Of 1787, which kept out
This curse of slavery, out of Illinois,
But brought us liberty of press and speech,
The bill of rights? Did Congress have the power
To pass this ordinance of ’87?
Or did it lack the power, because the states
That came into the union with their slaves
Might keep their slaves, reclaim as fugitive
Their slaves on freedom’s soil? Well, if it be
That Congress had the power to plaster down
The ordinance of 1787
Upon this Illinois, this great Northwest,
It had the power to say the western land
Of Kansas and Nebraska should be free
As territories ruled from Washington
And no imperialism! So, I say again
It serves this Douglas right to be destroyed,
And ground to powder for this act of his,
This Kansas and Nebraska.

Well, all right.
It sounds all right, it makes the idiots whoop
To hear the Little Giant say he favors
The people’s rule in Kansas and Nebraska.
Their right to say they’ll have this slavery
Or have it not--yes, popular sovereignty!--
But why not let the people vote on God,
Or choose a king, or take me, all the whites,
And make us slaves? It may be so, if truth
Is just a mockery and there’s nothing real
In human thought at all--one thing is true
As anything, and everything is false.

Thus ruin smites the temple of our life,
And all of us lie down as beasts and grunt
Around its broken arches and its columns!

All right! He gets his Kansas and Nebraska.
That makes him president! Not on your life!
Momus is watching, growls a horrid laugh
And whispers something to Slavocracy,
Which whispers it to Taney--and behold
The prophets and the guardians of the ark
Of the covenant declare a slave’s a slave,
And can be taken to a territory,
And kept there in the face of national law
That makes the territory free. Or else,
Were this not so, the Congress is supreme,
Has slipped the chain of the organic law,
Which recognizes slavery. What is this
But just imperialism?

God Almighty!
They’re all for freedom, a republic too.
Kansas, Nebraska--let the people rule.
Dred Scott:--the Congress is a Parliament
Like England has, unless it pins and tucks
The constitution round its pocky body.
That may be true, but then the question is:
Is slavery charactered upon the robe,
And must the figure of the slave be seen
Wherever Congress walks?

I’ll come to that.
The point is now that Douglas has been caught
Between his Kansas and Nebraska act,
And Dred Scott never his. And being lawful,
Obedient to the law and to the courts--
You heard him hammer Lincoln as a man
Who flouted courts--while he, the Little Giant,
Obeyed the laws--oh, yes!--So, being lawful,
As I began, must hold in level hands
Dred Scott in one, and in the other hand
This Kansas and Nebraska.

Very good.
Lincoln has got him now, and out of all
This rhetoric, these sorties half successful,
These scrimmages with Lincoln, half perplexed,
You find your Little Giant on his back
With Lincoln over him and pinning shoulders
Down to the floor.

Here is the wrestling trick:
Can any territory keep this slavery
Out lawfully, that is, against the wish
Of any citizen? What is the answer?
If you say yes, where is Dred Scott? If no,
How do the people rule?

What is his answer?
Why, yes, he says, a territory can
Keep slavery out. Dred Scott still sends it there,
But then the people rule, and if the people
There in Nebraska make it hot for slavery
By local law and custom, frowns and blows,
It will not thrive. That satisfied the crowd;
Enough at least, elects him Senator,
But loses him the South, the golden prize,
Splits up the country, gives us war in time,
When argument is silenced cannon boom--
And when your Seward comes to Washington
The South secedes.

Now, listen for a moment!
What is Abe Lincoln’s genealogy
In faith political? Sired by the Federalists,
And mothered by the Whigs. A tariff man;
Believes too in the Bank--tariffs and banks
Filched from the plenary stores of privilege
By hands that break the shackles of the law.
He’s born a Whig, has turned Republican,
What is his blood? Why, liberal construction,
Twisting the constitution out of shape,
And tearing holes in it to let the Congress
Escape and wander--where? Why, anywhere!
And though it be that touching slavery
There’s nothing which forbids the Congress acting
In freedom’s way--and that’s the very point--
And granting that the Constitution’s over
The territories, still the Congress can
Bring freedom there--this theory is akin
To loose construction, scarcely can be told
From loose construction. For you see, if freedom,
Since Congress is not hampered, can be brought,
Why not then slavery, if it be not hampered?
And why not colonies, dependencies,
Ruled just as Congress wills, if never a word
Lies in our charter to forbid or grant
The power to do it.

Well, there’ll be a war,
And hell thereafter. So you like my talk!
What is my name? Why, Satan is my name--
And I go wandering on the earth to see,
Walk to and fro and laugh and drop a tear
In spite of all my laughter. Tears and laughter
For ideas in the heads of men that seethe,
Pop, crackle, ferment, blow up bottles, kegs,
Spill and destroy bacteria on the floor
Of epochs, ruin wisdoms, cultures, faiths.
Time scrubs the floor of all such verses--Time
Matures fresh grapes, new ferments, and repeats
The old catastrophes; and hence I laugh,
And drop a tear on all the sorry waste.