/ A 0^ 7 m 'V^y^^^-^-^, /J^n-^^^ i^f^^d. apiece for 'em. I reckon we are worth more, and will prove it directly. If not, Molly Stark sleeps a widow to-night ! " There have been more elegant and far longer speeches ; but this went as straight to its mark as a bullet. The danger to his State having thus been averted. Stark hastened to join General Gates on the Hudson, was in the council which fixed the terms of Burgoyne's surrender, and was soon thereafter restored to position in the Continental line, — Congress making reparation for its oversight by pub- licly thanking him for his victory at Bennington, and ap- pointing him a Brigadier-General in the regular service. He remained in the army till the close of the war, and lived forty years thereafter, — dying May 8, 1822, in his ninety- fourth year. Colonel Eeed, though not awarded his rank in the Conti- nental line, also served through the war, — taking part in the battles of Long Island, AVliite Plains, Trenton, Saratoga, Still- water, Brandywine, Germantown, and in Sullivan's Indian expedition. Having at length risen to a Continental colonelcy, he was in command at Albany in 1782, when he was favored with several letters from Washington, of whose mihtary and political character he was evermore a passionate admirer. Having left his family in haste, on the tidings of the first shot, he paid it but two or three hurried visits in midwinter till honorably mustered out of service after the close of the war, in the Summer of 1783. Meantime his wife, Mary, sister of my grandfather Woodburn, was the ruler of his household, the manager of his farm and business, and the sharer in full measure of his fervid, unwearying patriotism. He lived to fill several public stations, including those of Brigadier-Gen- 32 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. eral and Sheriff of his county ; dying in 1815, aged eighty-two years. His wife survived him; dying in 1823, at the ripe age of eighty-eight. Never was a war more essentially popular than that waged in support of American Independence, and never were the issues involved more thoroughly debated or more clearly understood by a people. Congress having, early m 1776, requested the authorities of each township to ascertain and to disarm all persons "who are notoriously disaffected to the cause of America," the selectmen of Londonderry reported the names of 374 adult males in that town who had severally signed the following pledge : — " We, the subscribers, do hereby solemnly engage and promise that we will, to the utmost of our power, at the risk of oiu- lives and fortunes, with arms, oppose the hostile proceedings of the British fleets and armies against the United American Colonies." Of course, those who had already enlisted, and were then absent in the Continental service, should be added to the above list, raising it nearly to five hundred; wliile barely fifteen men in that entire community refused to sign. Several " Tories," however, had already left, finding the place too hot for them : among them. Major Robert Eogers, of the " Ran- gers," raised in 1756, who had served with distinction through- out the French war ; but who now, taking the wrong side, was proscribed, and fled to England, where he died. Colonel Stephen Holland, who had been one of the most eminent and popular citizens, and had held several important public trusts, after concealing and denying his Toryism so long as he could, finally proclaimed it by fleeing to General Gage at Boston ; whereupon his property was confiscated. Nowhere was Tory- ism more execrated ; and the suggestion in the Treaty of Paris that the Loyalists should be permitted to return to the communities they had, to serve the king, deserted, was unani- mously scouted and defied in full town meeting. Dr. Matthew Thornton, whose name heads the list of signers to the pledge aforesaid, soon afterward aflixed his signature to the immortal Declaration of American Independence. He "THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS." 33 was born in Ireland in 1714, but brought over when but three years old ; early commenced the practice of medicine in Londonderry, and steadily rose to esteem and competence. He was a surgeon of the New Hampshire forces in the expe- dition against Cape Breton, in 1745, and was a colonel of militia at the breaking out of the Eevolution. He was Presi- dent of the first Provincial Convention assembled in New Hampshire after the retirement of the royal Governor Went- worth, and was chosen by it a delegate to Congress, in which he did not take his seat till November, 1776, when — though it was the darkest hour of the struggle — he at once signed the Declaration. After peace was restored, though no la^vyer, he was chosen a judge of the Superior Court, and afterward Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. He died in 1803, aged eighty-nine. From first to last, Londonderry furnished 347 soldiers to the Eevolutionary armies, while her whole number of adult males cannot, as we have seen, have much exceeded 500. Some of these served but for short terms ; yet, after making every deduction, this record, from a purely rm^al township, whose youth had for forty years been constantly dra"s\Ti away to pioneer new settlements, not only in different parts of New Hampshire, but in Londonderry and Windham, Vermont, Truro, Nova Scotia, Cherry Valley, N. Y., &c., &c., is one which her children have a right to regard with affectionate pride. And not only were town bounties — liberal, considering the value of money in those days — paid to her volunteers, but their families were shielded from want by the provident care of her authorities and people. Food was scarce and dear; clothing was scarcer and dearer ; but those who fought their coimtry's battles were consoled by the thought that, whatever might befall them, their wives and little ones should not famish or freeze while bread or cloth remained. And, when independence and peace were at length achieved, it was a proud reflection that they had been won by the constancy and devotion, not of a class or a portion, but of the entire people. IV. RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO. THREE brothers named Greeley (spelled five different ways) migrated to America in 1640. One settled in Maine, where he has many living descendants ; another in Rhode Island, where he soon died ; a third in Salisbury, Mass., near the south line of New Hampshire, into which his de- scendants soon migrated, if he did not. One large family of them hail from Gilmanton ; another, to whom I am less remotely related, from Wilton ; my own great-grandfather (named Zaccheus, as was his son my grandfather, and Ids son my father) lived in or on the verge of Londonderry, in what was in my youth Nottingham-West, and is now Hudson, across the Merrimac from Nashua (which was then Dunstable or nothing). I never heard of a Woodburn of our stock who was not a farmer ; but the Greeleys of our clan, while mainly farmers, are in part blacksmiths. Some of them have in this century engaged in trade, and are presumed to have acquired considerable property ; but these are not of the tribe of Zac- cheus. My grandfather Greeley was a most excellent, though never a thrifty citizen. Kind, mild, easy-going, honest, and unam- bitious, he married young, and reared a family of thirteen, — nine sons and four daughters, — of whom he who died youngest was thirty years old ; while a majority lived to be seventy, and three are yet living, — at least two of them having seen more than eighty summers. So many cliildren in the house of a poor and by no means driving farmer, in an age when food and cloth cost twice the RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YE^iRS AGO. 35 labor they now do, made economy rather a necessity than a vu^tue ; but I presume none of those children ever suffered protractedly from hunger, while all of them obtained such education as was afforded by the common schools of sixty to eighty years ago ; or, if not, the fault was their own. Still, the school-houses were ruder and rarer, the teachers less com- petent, and the terms much shorter, than now ; while attend- ance was quite irregular, being suspended on slight pretexts ; so that I have heard my father say that his winter's schooling after he came of age — when for three months he hired his board, attended constantly, and studied diligently — was worth more to him than all that preceded it. My grandfather owned and worked small farms successively in Hudson, Pelham, Nottingham, and Londonderry, and was living in the latter town for a second or third tune when, on the death of his wife, when he was about seventy-five years old, he sold out, and went to spend his remaining days with his son Gilbert, living in Manchester; but, that son dying before him, he foimd a home thenceforth in Londonderiy, with his older son John, whose farm all but joins that of the Woodburns in "the High Eange," — the respective houses being but a hundred rods apart, — and here, in his fulness of days, he died, aged ninety-four. (My grandfather Woodburn had died at eighty-fi^'e, nearly thirty years before.) A de- voted, consistent, life-long Christian, — originally of the Bap- tist, but ultimately of the Methodist persuasion, — exemplary in deportment and blameless in life, I do not believe that my grandfather Greeley ever made an enemy; and, while he never held an office, and his property was probably at no time worth $ 2,000, and generally ranged from $ 1,000 to zero, I think few men were ever more sincerely and generally es- teemed than he by those who knew him. My father — married at twenty-five to Mary "Woodburn, aged nineteen — went first to live with his father, whose farm he was to work, and inherit, supporting the old folks and their still numerous minor children ; but he soon tired of this, and seceded ; migrating to and purchasing the farm whereon six of his seven children were born. 36 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. The old road to Amherst from the Merrimac, at what in my childhood was Amoskeag Falls, crossed by a rickety old bridge, with but two or three houses in sight, and is now the manufacturing city of Manchester, with twenty-five thou- sand inhabitants, passes through the little village of Piscata- quoag, near the mouth of the creek of like name ; thence through the township and village of Bedford, and, zigzagging over the jjentler hills, descends, when about five miles from "Amhsrst Plain," or village, and just on the verge of the township, into the deep valley of a brook, not yet quite large enough for a mill-stream. (The road now travelled is far smoother and better, and passes a mile or two southward of the old one.) The " Stewart farm," of some forty acres (en- larged by my father to fifty), covers the hillside and meadow north of the road, with a few acres south of it, and lies partly in Bedford, but mainly in Amherst. The soil is a gravelly loam, generally strong, but hard and rocky ; grass, heavy at first, " binds out " the third or fourth year, when the land must be broken up, manured, tilled, and seeded down again ; and a breaking-up team, in my early boyhood, was made up of four yoke of oxen a"nd a horse, whereby an acre per day was seldom ploughed. Across the brook were two or three little knolls, of an acre or so each, in good part composed of water- worn pebbles, — the debris of I know not what antedi- luvian commotion and collision of glaciers and marine cur- rents, — which, when duly fertilized and tilled, produced freely of corn or potatoes; but which, being laid down to grass, utterly refused to respond, deeming itself better adapted to the growth of son^el, milk-weed, or mullein. The potato yielded more bounteously then than it does now, and was freely grown to be fed into pork ; but I reckon that Indian corn cost treble, if not quadruple, the labor per bushel that our Western friends now give for it; while wheat yielded meagrely and was a very uncertain crop. Eye and oats did much better, and were favorite crops to " seed down " upon ; " rye and Indian " were the bases of the farmer's staff of life ; and, when well made, no bread is more palatable or whole- RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 2>1 some. The hop culture was then common in our section ; and, though fearfully hazardous, — there being no yield one year and no price the next, — was reckoned inviting and pro- ductive. My father estimated hops at ten cents per pound as profitable a crop as corn at one dollar per bushel. My father bought and removed to this farm early in 1808 ; " The cot where I was born." here his first two children died ; here I was born (February 3, 1811), and my only surviving brother on the 12th of June, 1812. The house — a modest, framed, unpainted structure of one story — M'as then quite neM' ; it was only modified in our time by filling up and making narrower the old-fash- ioned kitchen fireplace, which, having already devoured all the wood on the farm, yawned ravenously for more. Tliis dwelling faces the road from the north on a bench, or narrow plateau, about two thirds down the hill ; the orchard of natural fruit covers two or three acres of the hillside northeast of the house, with the jjatch of garden and a small frog-pond between. 38 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. It" seemed to me that sweeter aud more spicy apples gi-ew in that neglected orchard than can now be bought in market ; and it is not a mere notion that most fruits attain their highest and best flavor at or near the coldest latitude in which they can be grown at all. That orchard was not young fifty years ago ; and, having been kept constantly in pasture, never tilled nor enriched, and rarely pruned, must be nearly run out by this time. Being the older son of a poor and hard-working farmer, struggling to pay off the debt he had incurred in buying his high-priced farm, and to support his increasing family, I was early made acquainted with labor. I well remember the cold summer (1816) when we rose on the eighth of June to find the earth covered with a good inch of newly fallen snow, — when there was frost every month, aud corn did not fill till October. Plants grew very slowly that season, while burrow- ing insects fed and fattened on them. My task for a time was to precede my father as he hoed his corn, dig open the hills, and kill the wire-worms and grubs that were anticipating our dubious harvest. To " ride horse to plough " soon became my more usual -s^ocation ; the horse preceding and guiding the oxen, save when furrowing for or tilling the planted crops. Occasionally, the plough would strike a fast stone, and bring up the team all standing, pitching me over the horse's head, aud landing me three to five feet in front. In the frosty autumn mornings, the working teams had to be " baited " on the rowen or aftermath of thick, sweet grass beside the luxuriant corn (maize) ; and I was called out at sunrise to watch and keep them out of the corn while the men ate their breakfast before yoking up and going afield. My bare feet imbibed a prejudice against that line of duty ; l)ut such premature rising induced sleepiness ; so, if my feet had not ached, the oxen would have had a better chance for corn. Burning charcoal in the woods south and southwest of us was a favorite, though very slow, method of earning money in those days. The growing wood, having then no commercial value, could usually be had for nothing ; but the labor of RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 39 cutting it down and reducing it to the proper length, piling it skilfully, covering the heap with sods, or with straw and earth, and then expelling every element but the carbon by smothered combustion, is rugged and tedious. I have known a pit of green wood to be nine days in burning ; and every pit must be watched night and day till the process is complete. Mght- watching by a pit has a fascination for green boys, who have hitherto slept soundly and regularly through the dark hours ; but a little of it usually suffices. To sit or lie in a rude forest- hut of boards or logs, located tliree or four rods from the pit, with a good fire burning between, and an open, flaring front looking across the fire at the pit, is a pleasant novelty of a mild, quiet evening ; and many a jovial story has been told, many a pleasant game of cards, fox-and-geese, or checkers played, and (I fear) some watermelons lawlessly purveyed from neighboring fields and gardens by night-watching charcoal- burners. But the taste for turning out, looking for and stopping the holes that are frequently burnt through the covering -of the pit, is easily sated ; while a strong wind that drives the smoke of fire and pit into the open mouth of your shanty, and threatens to set fire to the straAv flooring on which you recline, is soon regarded as a positive nuisance, especially if accompanied by a pelting storm. In a wild night, your pit breaks out far oftener than in calm weather ; requiring con- stant attention and effort to keep it from burning up altogether ; thus consuming the fruits of weeks of arduous toil. And, after a week of coal-burning, you find it hard to return to regular sleep, but hastily wake every hour or so, and instinc- tively jump up to see how the pit is going on. Picking stones is a never-ending labor on one of those rocky New England farms. Pick as closely as you may, the next ploughing turns up a fresh eruption of boulders and pebbles, from the size of a hickory-nut to that of a tea-kettle ; and, as this work is mainly to be done in March or April, when the earth is saturated with ice-cold water, if not also whitened with falling snow, youngsters soon learn to regard it with de- testation. I filially love the " Granite State," but could well excuse the absence of sundry subdivisions of her granite. 40 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. " Hop-picking " was the rural carnival — the festive harvest- home — of those old times ; answering to the vintage of south- ern Fraxice or Italy. The hop matures about the first of Sep- tember, when the vines are cut near the ground, the poles pulled up and laid successively across forked sticks lengthwise of a large bin, into which busy fingers from either side rapidly strip the hops — each pole, when stripped, being laid aside and replaced by another. The bin having been filled, the hops are drawn to the kiln, wherein they are cured by exposure for hours to a constant, drying heat from a charcoal fire below ; after which, they are pressed, like cotton, into bales so com- pact and dense as to defy easy disintegration. The pickers are mainly young women — the daughters of neighboring farmers — and the older children of both sexes ; while the handling of the poles demands masculine strength and energy; the work is pushed with ardor, often by rival groups employed at different bms, racing to see which will first have its bin full. The evenings are devoted to social companionship and rustic merry-making ; friends drop in to enjoy and increase the festivity ; and, if hop-jDicking is not now an agreeable labor, despite the sore eyes sometimes caught from it, then rural life in hop-growing districts has lost what was one of its pleas- antest features haK a century ago. V. MY EARLY SCHOOL-DAYS. MY mother, having lost her mother when but five years old, was, for the next few years, the especial protdg^e and favorite of her aged grandmother, already mentioned, who had migrated from Ireland when but fourteen years old, and whose store of Scottish and Scotch-Irish traditions, songs, anecdotes, shreds of history, &c., can have rarely been equalled. These she imparted freely to her eager, receptive granddaughter, who was a glad, easy learner, whose schooling was better than that of most farmers' daughters in her day, and who naturally became a most omnivorous and retentive reader. There were many, doubtless, whose literary acqui- sitions were more accurate and more profound than hers ; but few can have been better qualified to interest or to stim- ulate the unfolding mind in its earliest stages of develop- ment. I was for years a feeble, sicldy child, often under medical treatment, and unable to watch, through a closed window, the fallino; of rain, without incurrinj^ an instant and violent attack of illness. Having suddenly lost her two former chil- dren, just before my birth, my mother was led to regard me even more fondly and tenderly than she otherwise might have done ; hence, I was her companion and confidant about as early as I could talk ; and her abundant store of ballads, stories, anecdotes, and traditions was daily poured into my willing ears. I learned to read at her knee, — of course, longer ago than I can remember ; but I can faintly recollect her sitting spinning at her " little wheel," with the book in 42 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. her lap whence I was taking my daily lesson ; and thus I soon acquired the facility of reading from a book sidewise or upside down as readily as in the usual fashion, — a knack which I did not at first suppose peculiar ; but which, being at length observed, became a subject of neighborhood wonder and fabulous exaggeration. Two months before I had attained the age of three years, I was taken home by my grandfather Woodburn to spend a few weeks with him, and sent to school from his house, — the My First School-House. school-house of his district being but fifty rods from his door ; whereas, our proper school-house in Amherst was two miles, and the nearest school-house (in Bedford) over a mile, from my father's. Hence, I lived at my grandfather's, and went thence to school, most of each Winter and some months in Summer during the next three years. My first schoolmaster was David Woodburn Dickey, a nephew of my grandfather, a college graduate, and an able, MY EARLY SCEOOL-DAYS. 43 worthy man, tliougli ratlier a severe than a successful gov- ernor of youth. The district was large ; there were ninety names on its roll of pupils, — many of them of full-grown men and women, not well broken to obedience and docility, — with an average attendance of perhaps sixty ; all to be instructed in various studies, as well as ruled, by a single teacher, who did his very best, which included a liberal ap- phcation of birch and ferule. He was a cripple ; and it was aU he could do, mth his high spirit and unquestioned moral superiority, to retain the mastery of the school. Our next teacher in Winter was C}tus Winn, from Massa- chusetts, — a tall, muscular, thoroughly capable young man, who rarely or never struck a blow, but governed by moral force, and by appeals to the nobler impulses of his pupils. They were no better, when he took charge of them, than his predecessor's had been, — in fact, they were mainly the same, — yet his sway was far more complete, and the revolts against it much rarer ; and when he left us, at the close of his second term, a general attendance of parents on his last afternoon, with a rural feast of boiled cider and doughnuts, attested the emphatic appreciation of his worth. For my o^^^l part, I could enjoy nothing, partake of nothing, so intense was my grief at parting with him. It was the first keen sorrow of my life. I never saw him again, but learned that he was drowned the next Winter. There was an unruly, frolicsome custom of " barring out " in our New Hampshire common schools, which I trust never obtained a wider acceptance. On the first of January, and perhaps on some other day that the big boys chose to consider or make a holiday, the forenoon passed off as quietly as that of any other day ; but, the moment the master left the house in quest of his dinner, the little ones were started homeward, the door and windows suddenly and securely barricaded, and the older pupils, thus fortified against intrusion, proceeded to spend the afternoon in play and hilarity. I have known a master to make a desperate struggle for admission ; but I do not recollect that one ever succeeded, — the odds being too 44 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. great. If be appealed to the neighboring fathers, they were apt to recollect that they had been boys themselves, and advise him to desist, and let matters take their course. I recoUect one instance, however, wliere a youth was shut out who thought he ought to have been numbered with the elect, and resolved to resent his exclusion. Procuring a piece of board, he mounted from a fence to the roof of the school- house, and covered the top of the chimney nicely with his board. Ten minutes thereafter, the house was filled with smoke, and its inmates, opening the door and windows, were glad to make terms with the outsider. The capital start given me by my mother enabled me to make rapid progress in school, — a progress monstrously exaggerated by gossip and tradition. I was specially clever in spelling, — an art in which there were then few even tolerably pro- ficient, — so that I soon rose to the head of the " first class," and usually retained that position. It was a custom of the school to " choose sides " for a " spelling-match " one afternoon of each week, — the head of the first .class in spelling, and the pupil standing next, being the choosers. In my case, however, it was found necessary to change the rule, and con- fide the choice to those who stood second and third respec- tively ; as I — a mere infant of four years — could spell, but not choose, — often preferring my playmates, who could not spell at all. These spelling-matches usually took place in the evening, when I could not keep my eyes open, and should have been in bed. It was often necessary to rap me sharply when "^ the word " came around to me ; but I never failed to respond ; and it came to be said that I spelled as well asleep as awake. I apprehend that this was more likely to be tnie of some others of the class ; who, if ever so sound asleep, could scarcely have spelled worse than they did. We very generally complain of frequent changes in our school-books, and with reason. Yet we ought to consider that these frequent changes have resulted in signal improve- ment ; that our school-books of to-day are not only far MY EARLY SCHOOL-DAYS. 45 better than those of fifty years ago, but that their improve- ment has not been fully paralleled elsewhere. Wlien I first went to school, Webster's Spelling-Book was just supplant- ing Dilworth's ; " The American Preceptor " was pushing aside " The Art of Eeading " ; and the only grammar in use was " The Ladies' Accidence," by Caleb Bingham, — as poor an affair as its name would indicate. Geography was scarcely studied at all ; while chemistry, geology, and other depart- ments of natural science, had never been heard of in rural school-houses. " Morse's Geogmphy," which soon came into vogue, was a valuable compend of political and statistical information ; but, having barely one map, would scarcely pass for a school geography now. Very soon, Lindley Mur- ray's Grammar and English Reader came into fashion, — sohd works, but not well adapted to the instruction of children of eight to fourteen years. In fact, I spent considerable time on grammar to little purpose, and made no decided progress therein, till I had learned to scan my authorities critically, and repudiate their errors. When I had pondered myself into a decided conviction that Murray did not fully under- stand his subject, and that his giving "Let me be" as an example of the first, and " Let him be " as its correlative in the third person singular of the imperative mood, were simply blunders, which a deeper knowledge of grammar would have taught him to avoid, I had broken loose from the shackles of routine and iteration, and was prepared to accept all the light from any quarter that might irradiate the science. Daniel Adams (a New Hampshire man, now lately deceased) had not then published his lucid and favorite Arithmetic, or, if he had, it had not reached us ; Pike's far more difficult work was in general use. I cannot say what progress has very recently been made ; but Greenleaf, some thirty or forty years since, shortened the time and effort required to gain a decent knowledge of English grammar by at least one half. I believe like progress has been made in elementary treatises in other departments of knowledge. The first book I ever owned was " The Columbian Orator," 46 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. given to me by my uncle Perry (husband of my father's old- est sister), as I lay very sick of the measles at my maternal grandfather's, when about four years of age. Those who happen to have been familiar, in its day, with that volume, will recollect it as a medley of dialogues, extracts from ora- tions, from sermons, from speeches in Parliament, in Congress, and at the Bar, with two or three versified themes for decla- mation, such as " Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise ! " and the lines (since attributed to Edward Everett,^ but who must have written them very young, if he wrote them at all) beginning, " You 'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage," — lines which I was dragged forward to recite incessantly, till I fairly loathed them. This " Orator " was my prized text-book for years, and I became thoroughly familiar with its contents ; though I cannot say that I ever learned much of value from it, — certainly not oratory. The first large work that I ever read consecutively was the Bible, under the guidance of my mother, when I was about five years old. I attended school, rather irregularly, during the brief term of my fifth and sixth summers, in the western district of Bedford, about a mile from my father's. For the next two years, we lived in that township, — my father having rented his own farm to a brother, and himself removed to the much larger " Beard Farm," in the eastern part of that town, which he had undertaken to work on shares. Here we were again nearly equidistant from two school-houses ; living in the northeastern district, but often attending the school at the centre of the town, which was much larger, and generally better taught. Here I first learned that this is a world of hard work. Often called out of bed at dawn to " ride horse to ploiigh " among the growing corn, potatoes, and hops, we would get as much ploughed by 9 to 10 A. M. as could be hoed that day ; when I would be allowed to start for school, where I some- 1 Their author, I have learned since the above was first printed, was Moses Everett, a Massachusetts teacher of sixty to eighty years ago. MY EARLY SCHOOL-DAYS. 47 times arrived as the forenoon session was half through. In Winter, our work was lighter ; but the snow was often deep and drifted, the cold intense, the north wind piercing, and our clothing thin ; beside which, the term rarely exceeded, and sometimes fell short of, two months. I am grateful for much — schooling included — to my native State ; yet I trust her boys of to-day generally enjoy better facilities for educa- tion at her common schools than they afforded me half a century ago. The French have a proverb importing that in age we re- turn to the loves of our youth. I have asked myself, " How would you like to return to that cot on the hillside, and spend the rest of your days there ? " My answer, is that I would not like it, — that, though adversity drove me inexorably thence, I have been so thoroughly weaned that I have no wish to go back " for good." The cot stiU looks friendly and kindly when I (too seldom) pass it ; the farm and the orchard are stiU familiar objects, and I would gladly muse a sunny, genial Autumn day there ; but my heart no longer recognizes that spot as its home. The last Summer that we lived in New Hampshire, an offer was made by the leading men of our neighborhood to send me to Phillips Academy at Exeter, and thence to col- lege, — the expense being so defrayed that no part of it should fall on my parents. They listened thoughtfully to the pro- posal, briefly deliberated, then firmly, though gratefully, de- clined it ; saying that they would give their children the best education they could afford, and there stop. I do not remember that I had then any decided opinion or wish in the premises ; but I now have ; and, from the bottom of my heart, I thank my parents for their wise and manly decision. Much as I have needed a fuller, better education, I rejoice that I am indebted for schooling to none but those of whom I had a right to ask and expect jt. VI. ADIEU TO NEW HAMPSHIRE. OUE tenancy of the " Beard Farm," in Bedford, answered very nearly to my seventh and eighth years. That was a large and naturally good farm, but in a state of dilapidation : overgrown with bushes and briers, its fences in ruins, and the buildings barely able to stand alone, — the large two-story house more especially far gone. My father had let his own farm, on shares, to a younger brother, whom he wished and hoped thus to serve, while he was led to expect payment for whatever improvements he should make on that which he had taken instead. He was disappointed every way; his health failed, and he was for nearly a year unable to work ; his brother did not prosper on our place ; while the promises which had lured us to the larger sphere of effort were not made good. To us children — by this time, four in number — the larger house and broader activities of tlie hired farm were a welcome exchange ; but our fortunes, manifestly, waned there ; and I think we were all soberly glad to return to our own snugger house and smaller farm, in the Spring of 1820. As we were trying to work off a lee-shore, I believe neither of us boys went to school at all that Summer, though I was but nine years old, and my brother not eight till June. All in vain. The times were what is termed " hard," — that is, almost every one owed, and scarcely any one could pay. The rapid strides of British manufactures, impelled by tjie steam-engine, spinning-jenny, and power-loom, had utterly undermined the homely household fabrications whereof Lon- donderry was a prominent American focus ; my mother stiU ADIEU TO NEW HAMPSHIRE. 49 carded lier wool and flax, spun her yarn, and wove her woollen, linen, and tow cloth ; but they found no market at living prices ; our hops sold for little more than the cost of bagging ; and, in short, we were bankrupt. I presume my father had never been quite out of debt since he bought his place ; but sickness, rash indorsements (a family failing), and bad luck generally, had swelled his indebtedness to something like $ 1,000, — which all we had in the world would not, at current prices, pay. In fact, I do not know how much property vmuld have paid $1,000 in New Hampshire in 1820, when almost every one was hopelessly involved, every third farm was in the sheriff's hands, and every poor man leaving for "the West " who could raise the money requisite for getting away. Everything was cheap, — dog-cheap, — British goods especially so ; yet the comparatively rich were embarrassed, and the poor were often compulsorily idle, and on the brink of famine. I have not been much of a Free-Trader ever since. We had finished our Summer tillage and our haying, when a very heavy rain set in, near the end of August. I think its second day was a Saturday ; and still the rain poured till far into the night. Father was absent on lousiness ; bvit our motlier gathered her little ones around her, and delighted us with stories and prospects of good things she pvirposed to do for us in the better days she hoped to see. Father did not return till after we children were fast asleep ; and, when he did, it was with tidings that our iU-fortune was about to culminate. I guess that he was scarcely surprised, though we young ones ruefully were, when, about sunrise on Monday morning, the sheriff and sundry other officials, with two or three of our principal creditors, appeared, and — first formally demanding payment of their claims — proceeded to \qyj on farm, stock, implements, household stuff, and nearly all our worldly pos- sessions but the clothes we stood in. There had been no -writ issued till then, — of course, no trial, no judgment, — but it was a word and a blow in those days, and the blow first, in the matter of debt-collecting by legal process. Father left 4 50 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. the premises directly, apprehending arrest and imprisonment, and was invisible all day ; the rest of us repaired to a friendly neighlior's, and the work of levying went on in our absence. It were needless to add that all we had was swallowed up, and ovir debts not much lessened. Our farm, which had cost us $ 1,350, and which had been considerably improved in our hands, was appraised and set off to creditors at $ 500, out of which the legal costs were first deducted. A barn-full of rye, grown by us on another's land, whereof we owned an undivided half, was attached by a doctor, threshed out by his poorer customers by days' work on account, and sold ; the net result being an enlargement of our debt, — the grain failing to meet all the costs. Thus, when night fell, we were as bankrupt a family as well could be. We returned to our devastated house ; and the rest of us stayed there while father took a journey on foot westward, in quest of a new home. He stopped in the township of Hamp- ton, Washington County, IST. Y., and worked there two or three months with a Colonel Parker French, who tilled a nolile farm, and kept tavern on the main road from Troy into western Vermont. He returned to us in due time, and, on the 1st of January, 1821, we all started in a hired two-horse sleigh, with the little worldly gear that M^as left us, for the to\\aiship of Westhaven, Vermont, where father had hired, for $16 per annum, a small house, in which, after an intensely cold jour- ney, we were installed three days later. Let me revert for a little to our New Hampshire life, ere I bid it a final adieu. I have already said that Amherst and Bedford are in the main poor towns, whose hard, rocky soil yields grudgingly, save of wood. Except in the villages, if even there, there were very few who could be called forehanded in my early boyhood. Poor as we were, no richer family lived within sight of our hunilAe homestead, thougli our western prospect was only bounded by the " Chestnut Hills," two or three miles ADIEU TO NEW HAMPSHIRE. 51 away. On the east, our range of vision was barred by the hill on the side of which we lived. The leading man of our neighborhood was Captain Nathan Barnes, a Calvinist deacon, after whom my brother was named, and who was a farmer of decided probity and sound judgment, — worth, perhaps, $ 3,000. Though an ardent Federalist, as were a majority of his towns- men, he commanded a company of " exempts," raised to defend the country in case of British invasion, during the war of 1812. The Eevolutionary War was not yet thirty years bygone when I was born, and its passions, its prejudices, and its ballads were still current throughout that intensely Wliig region. When neighbors and neighbors' wives drew together at the house of one of their number for an evening visit, there were often interspersed with " Cruel Barbara Allen," and other love-lorn ditties then in vogue, such reminiscences of the pre- ceding age as "American Taxation," a screed of some fifty prosaic verses, opening thus : — " While I relate my story, Americans, give ear ; Of Britain's fading glory You presently shall hear. I '11 give a true relation, (Attend to what I say,) Concerning the taxation Of North America." The last throes of expiring loyalty are visible in this long- drawn ballad, — Bute and North, and even Fox, being soundly berated for acts of tyranny whereof their royal master, George III., was sole author, and they but reluctant, hesitat- ing, apprehensive instruments. The ballads of the late war with Great Britain were not so popular in our immediate neighborhood, though my mother had good store of these also, and sang them with spirit and effect, along with " Boyne Water," " The Taking of Quebec," by Wolfe, and even "Wearing of the Green," which, though dating from Ireland's '98, has been revived and adopted in our day, with so vast and deserved an Irish popularity. 52 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. We were, in the truest sense, democrats, we Scotch-Irish Federalists from Londonderry, where Jefferson received but two votes in the memorable strviggle of 1800. When, for a single year at the " Beard Farm," our house echoed to the tread of a female " help," whose natural abilities were humble, and whose literary acquirements were inferior even to ours, that servant always ate with the family, even wlien we had the neighbors as " company " ; and, though her wages were but fifty cents a week, she had her party, and invited the girls of the neighborhood to be her guests at tea, precisely as if she had been a daughter of the house. Nowhere were manners ever simpler, or society freer from j)retension or exclusiveness, than in those farmers' homes. Hospitality was less bounteous, and kinship less prized, than in the days of the Scotch-Irish pioneers ; but there was still much visiting of relatives and social enjoyment, especially in Winter, when hundreds returned to the old Londonderry hive from the younger swarms scattered all over the East : some of them beginning to stretch away even to the far " Hol- land Purchase," in Western New York ; then practically as distant as Oregon or Alaska now is. I remember when the Doles left the " Chestnut Hills " to pitch their tent in Illinois, — then a far bolder venture than migration to Sitka would now be. I have often seen my grandfather Woodburn's house crammed for days with cousins and nephews from Vermont and other 'Derry settlements, Avho could not be so many as to miss a hearty welcome. Our house was far smaller, and less frequented ; but its latch-string was always out ; and a free liver, with twelve brothers and sisters, to say nothing of their partners l)y ntarriage and their children, is not apt to be persistently shunned. In fact, we lived better than we could afford to (as poor folks are too apt to do), and this was one cause of our downfall. My father, as proud as he was poor, spared nothing when friends and relatives, especially those of higher social standing, favored him with their com- pany, and was rarely found unable to fulfil their most sanguine expectations. When too many dropped in upon us at once, ADIEU TO NEW HAMPSHIRE. 53 or we were found deficient in the luxuries they might fauiy expect, he had a habit of telling them this anecdote : — " Wlien I was a boy of fifteen," said he, " I worked two summers in the great brick-yards of Medford, Mass. My employer, Mr. Marshall, was at first a new man in the com- munity, whose wife deemed it incumbent on her to give her neighbors a tea-party, as a prelude to better acquaintance. In those ante-canal days, wheaten flour was a luxury, though nearly all had it for ' company ' occasions ; ordinarily, our bread was made of ' rye and Indian ' exclusively. Mrs. Mar- shall, on the great occasion, had the inevitable ' short-cake ' for tea, — of rye flour, as all could perceive : still, it was not imperative on common folks to proffer cake of wheaten flour ; and all would have passed off without remark, and been soon forgotten, but for a maladroit explanation by the hostess. ' Ladies,' said she to her guests, ' I beg you not to infer that we have no wheat flour, from the fact that I give you rye short-cake. We have wheat flour in the house ; but I thought I would save that for Mr. Marshall, when he comes to work hard in haying-time.' " The astonished guests tittered ; the glee broadened into a loud laugh as the explanation galloped through the neighborhood ; and it readily passed into a proverb, that anything deficient on a kindred occasion was saved for Mr. Marshall in haying-time. " Friends," added my father, in conclusion, "if you note anything deficient in our fare, consider that it is saved for Mr. Marshall in haying-time." VII. WESTHAVEN. THE township of Westhaven, Vermont, comprises that irregular corner of the State which is bounded by Lake Champlain on the west, and by Hampton and Whitehall, N. Y., on the south and southeast, and may be roughly com- pared to a very blunt wedge driven into the State of New York ; its point being formed by tlie rather sharp angle which the little Poultney river, which here divides the two States, makes with the Lake, in which it is finally lost. The general plain or level, widening from south to north, which separates the Green Mountains from that lake, is here repeatedly broken by gentle upheavals of limestone, and, less frequently, by higher and more precipitous ridges of gneiss or of trap, which increase in number and height as you approach the chain of verdant hills which have gi^^en the State her name. Tliis whole region was thickly covered by heavy timber, — in good part, white pine, — wlien its devastation by our race commenced ; and its proximity to navigable water, with the abundance of mill-streams everywhere pervading it, incited its rapid monopoly for " lumbering " purposes. A Dr. Smith, from Connecticut, — brother of one and inicle of another Governor of that State, — pitched his tent in Westhaven (then a part of Fairhaven) some seventy to eighty years ago, and did great execution upon the pines ; rapidly amassing wealth, and becoming an extensive landholder. Deatli stopped him in mid-career, paralyzing his activity, and dividing his prop- erty, whereof part was inherited by his brother, and the residue by his widow ; who soon married Christopher Minot, WESTEAVEN. 55 a Boston banker, who thenceforth made his home in West- haven ; inhabiting the spacious mansion which his predecessor had barely lived to complete. Our first home in Vermont was on his estate, and within a few rods of his mansion ; and we mainly worked for him, or on his land, while we lived in that town. Westhaven might have been, and should be to-day, a rich grazing township ; but for its original wealth of pines, it pro- bably would luu'e been. But its pioneers, high and low, were lumbermen ; and it has never yet liberated itself from their baleful sway. As Moore says, — " The trail of the sei-pent is over it all." As the pines had begun to fail, I presume its population was declining when we settled there, or a house that might be lived in with frugal comfort could not have been hired for $ 16 per annum ; but it had then a considerably larger popu- lation than it has to-day, — our school-district at least twice as much. " Going West " has ever since been the general proclivity; though I believe any one who understands and likes dairy farming can buy land and buildings there cheaj)er than anywhere beyond the Ohio. By and by some one will settle there who knows how to apply the superabundant lime to the strong but stubborn clay ; making farms richly worth $ 100 per acre which now go begging at $ 30. Until then, let Westhaven sleep ; for / lack power or time to wake her. I can heartily commend her remaining people — all farmers, after a sort — as too honest to need a lawyer, and too wise to support a grog-shop, even though the law had not forbidden any one to open it. When we first set our stakes there, father was thirty-eight and mother was thirty-three years old. I was not quite ten ; my brother and two sisters, eight, six, and four, resj)ectively. A third sister — the youngling of the flock — was born two years later ; and all five of us children have been spared through the intervening forty-seven years. We now made the acquaintance of genuine poverty, — not 56 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. beggary, nor dependence, but the manly American sort. Our sum total of worldly goods, including furniture, bedding, and the clothes we stood in, may have been worth $ 200 ; but, as we had afterward to pay that amount on old New Hampshire debts, our material possessions may be fairly represented by 0, with a credit for $ 200 worth of clothing and household stuff. Yet, we never needed nor ran into debt for anything ; never were without meal, meat, and wood, and very rarely without money. Father went to chopping at fifty cents per day, with- out repining or apprehension ; and we children all went ' to school till Spring, though there were no school-funds in those days, and rate-bills for four children made quite a hole in a gross income of $ 3 per week. Hitherto, we had never lived within a mile of a school-house ; now, we were within fifty rods of one, — in fact, of two ; for a quarrel had split the dis- trict, and two schools were in full blast on our arrival, — one on either side of us. The Vermont schools were rather better than the New Hampshire, — better, at least, in this : their terms were longer. I never tried them in Summer, — except during one very rainy day ; but I had a full opportunity in Winter ; and I deeply regret that such homely sciences as Chemistry, Geology, and Botany were never taught, — were not even named therein. Had our range of studies included these, I had ample time to learn something of them ; and this would have proved of inestimable value to me evermore. Yet, I am thankful that Algebra had not yet been thrust into our rural common schools, to knot the brains and squander the time of those who should be learning something of positive and practical utility. Before the Spring of 1821 opened, father had taken a job of clearing fifty acres of wild land, a mile north of our cot ; and here he and his sons were employed, save in Winter, for the next two years. The work was rugged and grimy, but healthful. The land had been timbered with Yellow Pine, a thousand years before, — as a hundred giant trunks, long since prostrated, but not yet wholly mouldered back to dust, attested. This was fol- WESTHAVEN. 57 lowed by a forest of White Piiies, of which hundreds were still standing, mostly lifeless ; while a large number lay prone and dead, though the trunks were mainly sound. Black Ash in abundance formed a later and generally living growth ; though a fierce conflagration, which swept over this whole region, during a great drouth, four years before we saw it, had devoured much, and killed more of the forest, but increased the undergrowth of Beech, Alder, Poplar, etc., which we were requn-ed to dispose of Wlien we first attacked it, the snow was just going, and the water and slush were knee-deep. We were all indifferent choppers, when compared with those who usually grapple with great forests ; and the job looked so for- midable that travellers along the turnpike which skirted our task were accustomed to halt and comfort us with predictions that we boys would be grown men before we saw the end of it. But, cutting trees and bushes ; chopping up great trunks into manageable lengths, drawing them together, rolling up and burning great heaps of logs ; saving out here and there a log that would do to saw ; digging out rotten pines from the soil wherein they had embedded themselves, so that they might dry sufficiently to burn ; piling and burning brush and rotten or worthless sticks, and carting home such wood as served for fuel, we persevered until the job was done ; ^v■hen I could have begun another just like it and managed so as not to require more than two thirds of the labor we expended on this. And now, if any one has a great tract of land to clear of trees, decaying logs, and bushes, I fancy that I might give' him hints worth considering. N. B. — I work for pay. We had been farmers of the poorer class in New Hamp- shire ; we took rank with day-laborers in Vermont. We had lived freely, though not lavishly, much less sumptuously, in our earlier home ; here, we were compelled to observe a sterner frugality. The bread of our class in this section was almost exclusively made of rye, — Indian corn being little grown on the clay soil of Western Vermont, — and, though there are always about six women alive who know how to make of rye the best bread ever tasted, om" mother was not one of these. 58 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. and never learned tlieir admirable art. Then the clay itself, alternating with the weather from mire to lock, is not well adapted to bare feet ; while the detestable Canada thistles, which infest every road and almost every field in Westhaven, are not conducive to placidity of temper or propriety of speech. Having tlie sharp lances of these thistles dug out of my fes- tered feet with needles was long my daily terror and my nightly torture ; the tough, horny integument with which their rough experiences had covered our naked feet rendering the dislodgement of the thistle-beards more laborious and painful than any soft-footed person can realize. I have never since been able to appraise stiff clay soils at their full value. A precipitous ledge, eighty rods east of the turnpike from which we worked westward, afforded us good spring water, and supplied us also with rattlesnakes, whereof we killed some, which might have proved annoying to us barefoot boys, as we worked among the brush and weeds, had they caught the idea. Still, clearing land is pleasant work, especially when you have a hundred heaps of logs and brush burning at once of a dark, windy night ; while ten or twenty acres of fallen, leafy timber, on fire at once, affords a magnificent spec- tacle. We were to have had $ 7 per acre, with the use of a team, and half the wood suitable for timber and fuel ; and, though $ 350, even in those days, was not large pay for two years' work of a man and two boys, we were well satisfied. In the event, however, Mr. Minot died before we had effected a settlement; when his estate was declared insolvent, and we were juggled out of a ]iart of our pay. Our third year in Vermont was spent two miles farther west, where we inhabited and worked a little place known as Flea Knoll, while fatlier ran a neighboring saw-mill on shares. As he sawed twelve hours on and twelve off, with a partner, I insisted on being his helper ; but I think once working from noon till midnight satiated my ambition, and I never fully learned the art and mystery of sawing boards by water-power. My brother, though younger, was more persistent, and made greater progress. I gave that Summer pretty diligently to WESTHAVEN. 59 farming, with very meagre results. First, the season was wet till the 1st of June ; and our corn, planted in mortar, encoun- tered a brick-like crust when it undertook to come up ; and, unable to pierce or break it, pushed laterally under it for two inches or so, imtil we dug off the crust, and introduced the pale, imprisoned shoots to sunshine. Next came a long Sum- mer of intense drouth, baking and cracking our fields, so that the hoe made no serious impression on their rock-like masses, causing the corn to stand still and turn yellow, while the thistles came up thick, rank, and vigorous, covering the fields with a verdure most deceitful to the eye at a distance. We had failed in an attempt to make maple sugar that Spring : the season being bad, the trees distant, and our knowledge of the art very meagre ; our crops amounted to little ; while the water we drank here was so bad that the fever and agvie struck down our parents in the Fall, and all of us children next Spring, when we beat a precipitate retreat from " Flea Knoll," — where it was said that no family ever remained more than a year, — and returned to the Minot estate ; living in a larger house just west of om- former tenement, cultivating the adja- cent land on shares, and clearing off some twenty acres more of young White Pine, for which we were to be paid by two years' crops ; which proved, in the main, a failure : our wheat being destroyed by the midge. Thus ended my boyish experiences of farming, which may be said to have commenced in my sixth, and closed with my fifteenth year. Dviring the whole period, though an eager and omnivorous reader, I never saw a book that treated of Agriculture and the natural sciences auxiliary thereto. I think I never saw even one copy of a periodical devoted mainly to farming ; and I doubt that we ever harvested one bounteous crop. A good field of rye, or corn, or grass, or potatoes, we sometimes had ; but we had more half crops than whole ones ; and a good yield of any one product was generally balanced by two or three poor ones. I know I had the stuff in me for an efficient and successful farmer ; but such training as I received at home would never have brought it out. And the 60 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. moral I would deduce from my experience is simply this : Our farmers' sons escape from their fatlieri calling whenever they can, hecause it is made a mindless, monotonous drudgery, instead of an ennobling, liberalizing, intellectual pursuit. Could I have known in my youth what a business farming some- times is, always may be, and yet generally shall be, I would never have sought nor chosen any other. In the farmer's calling, as I saw it followed, there was neither scope for ex- panding faculties, incitement to constant growth in knowl- edge, nor a spur to generous ambition. To preserve existence was its ordinary impulse ; to get rich, its exceptional and most exalted aim. So I turned from it in dissatisfaction, if not in disgust, and sought a different sphere and vocation. Fairhaven, lying southeast of Westhaven, was tlie poorer of the two towns thirty years ago, producing no surplus but of rye, which was readily transmuted into whiskey, and drank at home to no profit ; but the more recent development of her natural wealth in slate, with the erection of mills for saw- ing the marble abundantly found a few miles farther east, has given her a pretty rapid and quite substantial growth. Though limited in area, and nowise inviting in soil, Fairhaven now takes rank with the more prosperous townships of Vermont ; a considerable accession of inhabitants, — mainly Welsh min- ers and Irish laborers, — with the erection of new dwellings and other structures, evincing the thrift which everywhere attends or follows the opening of a new field for productive industry. Fairhaven might to-day be mistaken, at a hasty glance, for a growing township of Pennsylvania or Ohio; while Westhaven — having no pursuit but Agriculture — lies petrified and lifeless as though located in Nova Scotia or Lower Canada. Clearly, Man was not intended to live by bread alone, — whether the eating or the growing of it. VIII. MY APPRENTICESHIP. HAVING loved and devoured newspapers — indeed, every form of periodical — from childhood, I early resolved to be a printer if I could. When but eleven years old, hear- ing that an apprentice was wanted in the newspaper office at Whitehall, T accompanied my father to that office, and tried hard to find favor in the printer's eyes ; but he promptly and properly rejected me as too young, and would not relent ; so I went home downcast and sorrowful. No new opportunity was presented till the Spring of 1826, when an apprentice was advertised for by the publishers of The Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vt. That paper had just been purchased by an association of the leading citizens of the place from its founders, Messrs. Smith and Shute, who had started it as The Poultney Gazette three or four years before. The village, though larger and more active then than now, was not ade- quate to the support of a newspaper ; but the citizens thought otherwise, and resolved to maintain one, under the manage- ment of a committee. So they hired from New York an editor, — jMr. E. G. Stone, brother of the more distinguished editor of The Commercial Advertiser, — paid handsomely for the printing-office and good-will, and went ahead. Much of the old force having left mth the retiring publisher's, there was room for a new apprentice, and I wanted the place. Mj father was about starting for the wide West in quest of a future home ; so, not needing at the moment my services, he readily acceded to my wishes. I walked over to Poultney, saw the publishers, came to an understanding with them, and 62 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. returned; and a few days afterward — April 18, 1826 — my father took me down, and verbally agreed with them for my services. I was to remain till twenty years of age, be allowed my l)oard only for six months, and thereafter $ 40 per annum in addition for my clothing. So I stopped, and went to work ; while he returned to Westhaven, and soon left in quest of a more inviting region. He made his way to the town of Wayne, Erie County, Pennsylvania, on the State line opposite Clymer, Chautauqua County, N. Y., — a spot where his brothers Benjamin and Leonard had, three or four years earlier, made holes in the tall, dense forest, which then covered nearly all that region for twenty to fifty miles in every direction. He bought out first one, then another pioneer, until he had at length two or three hundred acres of good land, but covered with a hea^y growth of Beech, Maple, Elm, Hemlock, &c. Having made his first purchase, — wliich included a log hut, and four acres of clearing, — he returned for his family ; and I walked over from Poultney to spend a Sabbath with and bid them farewell. It was a sad parting. We had seen hard, times together, and were very fondly attached to each other. I was urged by some of my kindred to give up Poultney, — where there were some things in the office not exactly to my mind, — and accompany them to their new home ; whence, they urged, I could easily find, in its vicinity, another and better chance to learn my chosen trade. I was strongly tempted to comply ; but it would have been bad faith to do so ; and I turned my face once more toward Poultney with dry eyes but a heaA-y heart. A word from my mother, at the critical moment, might have overcome my resolution ; but she did not speak it, and I went my way; leaving the family soon to travel much farther, and in an opposite direction. After the parting was over, and I well on my way, I Avas strongly tempted to return ; and my walk l)ack to Poultney (twelve miles) was one of the slowest and saddest of my life. I have ever since been thankfid that I did not yield to the temptation of the hour. Poultney was a capital place to MY APPRENTICESHIP. 63 serve an apprenticeship. Essentially a rural community, her people are at once intelligent and moral ; and there are few villages wherein the incitements to dissipation and vice are fewer or less obtrusive. The organization and management of our establishment were vicious ; for an apprentice should have one master ; while I had a series of them, and often two or three at once. First, our editor left us ; next, tlie conqiany broke up or broke down, as any one might have known it would ; and a mercantile firm in the village became owners and managers of the concern ; and so we had a succession of editors and of printers. These changes enabled me to demand and receive a more liberal allowance for the later years of my apprenticeship ; but the oflice was too laxly ruled for the most part, and, as to instruction, every one had perfect liberty to learn whatever he could. In fact, as but two, or at most three, persons were employed in the printing department, it would have puzzled an apprentice to avoid a practical knowl- edge of whatever was done there. I had not been there a year before my hands were blistered and my back lamed by working off the very considerable edition of the paper on an old-fashioned, two-pull Eamage (wooden) press, — a task be- yond my boyish strength, — and I can scarcely recall a day wherein we were not hurried by our work. I would not imply that I worked too hard ; yet I think few ap]5rentices work more steadily and faithfully than I did throughout the four years and over of my stay in Poultney. While I lived at home, I had always been allowed a day's fishing, at least once a month in Spring and Summer, and I once went hunt- ing ; but I never fished, nor hunted, nor attended a dance, nor any sort of party or fandango, in Poultney. I doubt that I even played a game of ball. Yet I was ever considerately and even kindly treated by those in authority over me ; and I believe I generally merited and enjoyed their confidence and good-will. Very seldom was a word of reproach or dissatisfaction addressed to me by one of them. Though I worked dihgently, I found much time for reading, and might have had more, had every leisure 64 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. hour been carefully improved. I had been generously loaned books from the Minot house while in Westhaven ; I found good ones abundant and accessible in Poultney, where I first made the acquaintance of a public library. I have never since found at once books, and opportunity to enjoy them, so ample as while there ; I do not think I ever before or since read to so much profit. They say that apprenticeship is dis- tasteful to, and out of fashion with, the boys of our day : if so, I regret it for their sakes. To the youth who asks, " How shall I obtain an education ? " I would answer, " Learn a trade of a good master." I hold firmly that most boys may thus better acquire the knowledge they need than by spending four years in college. I was kindly allowed to visit my father's family in their new Western home twice during my apprenticeship ; having a furlough of a month in either instance. I made either jour- ney by way of the Erie Canal, on those line-boats whose " cent and a half a mile, mile and a half an hour," so many yet remember. Railroads, as yet, were not ; the days passed slowly yet smoothly on those gliding arks, being enlivened by various sedentary games ; but the nights were tedious beyond any sleeping-car experience. At daybreak, you were routed out of your shabliy, shelf-like berth, and driven on deck to swallow fog while the cabin was cleared of its beds and made ready for breakfast. I say nothing as to " the good old times " ; but, if any one woidd recall the good old line- boats, I object. And the wretched httle tubs that then did duty for steamboats on Lake Erie were scarcely less conducive to the increase and diffusion of human misery. I have suf- fered in them to the extent of mortal endurance ; I have left one at Dunkirk, and walked twenty miles to Westfield, instead of keeping on by boat at a trifling charge, simply because flesh and blood could bear the torture no longer. I trust I have due respect for " the good old ways " we often hear of ; yet I feel that this earthly life has been practically lengthened and sweetened by the invention and construction of railroads. Among the incidents of my sojourn in Poultney that made MY APPRENTICESHIP. 65 most impression on my mind is a fugitive slave-chase. New- York had professed to abolish slavery years before, but had ordained that certain born slaves should remain such till twenty-eight years old ; and the year of jubilee for certain of these had not yet come. A young negro, who must have been uninstructed in the sacredness of constitutional guaranties, tlie rights of property, &c., &c., &c., feloniously abstracted him- seK from his master in a neighboring New York town, and conveyed the chattel-personal to our village ; where he was at work when said master^ with due process and following, came over to reclaim and recover the goods. I never saw so large a muster of men and boys so suddenly On om- village- green as his advent incited ; and the result was a speedy dis- appearance of the chattel, and the return of his master, dis- consolate and niggerless, to the place whence he came. Every- thing on our side was improinptu and instinctive ; and nobody suggested that envy or hate of " the South," or of New York, or of the master, had impelled the rescue. Our people hated injustice and oppression, and acted as if they could n't help it. Another fresh recollection of those far-off days concerns our Poultney celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Ameri- can Independence. I know we still celebrate the Foui'th of July ; but it does seem to me that the glory has departed. In those times, we had always from twenty to fifty Eevolu- tionary soldiers on the platform, — veterans of seventy to ninety years, in whose eyes the recurrence of the nation's an- niversary seemed to rekindle " the light of other days." The semi-centennial celebration brought out these in full force, — the gatherings were unusually large, and the services impres- sive ; since few of those present, and none of the veterans, could rationally hope to see its repetition. The Declaration of In- dependence sounded far less antediluvian than it now does ; the quarrel of the colonists with King George, if not recent, was yet real ; and the old soldiers forgot for a day their rheu- matism, their decrepitude, and their poverty, and were proud of their bygone perils and hardships, and their abiding scars. I doubt that Poultney has since been so thrilled with patriotic 5 66 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. emotion as on that 4th of July, 1826 ; and when we learned, a few days later, that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the author and the great champion, respectively, of the Declara- tion, had both died on that day, and that the messengers hearing South and North, respectively, the tidings of their decease, had met in Philadelphia, under the shadow of that Hall in which our Independence was declared, it seemed that a Divine attestation had solemnly hallowed and sanctified the great anniversary by the impressive ministration of Death. Time works changes, even where a hasty glance discerns but immobility and virtual stagnation. A railroad from Troy to Eutland {via Eagle Bridge and Salem, N. Y.) now runs through West Poultney; increasing the decided advantage which that village had already achieved over its rival by the establishment within its limits of a great Methodist seminary and of certain manufactures. East Poultney has fewer stores, fewer mechanics' shops, less business, and fewer inhabi- tants, than when I first saw it, forty-odd years ago ; while scarcely a house has meantime been built within its limits. It is still a pleasant place to visit, however ; and I live in hopes of spending a quiet week there ere I die. Our paper was intensely Adams and Clay before, and in the Presidential struggle of 1828, and our whole community sym- pathized with its preference. The defection of our State's fore- most politician, Governor Cornelius P. Van Ness, after he had vainly tried, while professing to be an Adams man, to vault from the Governor's chair into the United States Senate, created a passing ripple on the face of the current, but did not begin to stem it. A few active yet unpopular politicians went over with him ; but the masses stood firm, especially in our section, where the influence of Hon. PtoUin C. Mallary, our represent- ative in Congress, was unrivalled. The Jackson party nomi- nated him for Congress ; but that did not affect his position, nor much affect his vote, which in any case would ha^e been nearly imanimous. We Vermonters were aU Protectionists ; MY APPRENTICESHIP. 67 ' and Mr. Mallary was the foremost champion of our cause in the House. He made a speech in Poultney the evening before the election, when, though the omens were sinister, we still hoped that Adams might be reelected. The Jackson paper nearest us headed its Electoral Ticket, " For General Jackson and a Protective Tariff" ; and Jackson men all over the North and West protested that their party was as decidedly for Protection as ours ; pointing to the attitude of Pennsyl- vania, at once the leading Protectionist and the strongest Jackson State; but we could not help seeing that all the Free Traders were for Jackson; that Calhoun was running with him for Vice-President ; and that South Carolina was threatening nullification and forcible resistance if the Protec- tive policy were not abandoned ; and we concluded that either Pennsylvania or Carolina must be cheated, and that the latter would take good care not to be. So Mr. Mallary urged us to stand fast by those whom we knew to be devoted to our cher- ished policy, rather than try those whose professions were discredited by notorious facts ; and the response in our section was enthusiastic. Poultney gave next day 334 votes for Adams to 4 for Jackson. I doubt that her vote has ever since been so unanimous or so strong. And, though the gen- eral result was heavily adverse to our desperate hopes, — only New England, not quite half of New York, New Jersey, Dela- ware, and part of Maryland, giving Mr. Adams their votes ; while Pennsylvania, the rest of New York, and all the South and West, went against him, — we had the poor consolation, that, for whatever disaster the political revolution might involve, no shadow of responsibility could rest on our own Vermont. IX. MY FAITH. I MUST have been about ten years old, when, in some school-book, whereof I have forgotten' the name, I first read an account of the treatment of the Athenians by Deme- trius, called Pohorcetes (Destroyer of Cities), one of the suc- cessors of " Macedonia's madman." I cannot rediscover that account ; so I must be content with the far tamer and less vivid narration of the French historian Eollin : — " Demetrius had withdrawn himself to Ephesus after the Battle of Ipsus, [wherein he was routed,] and thence embarked for Greece ; his whole resources being trusted to the affection of the Athenians, with whom he had left his fleet, money, and wife, Deidamia. But he was strangely siuprised and offended when he was met on his way by ambassadors from the Athenians, who came to apprise him that he could not be admitted into their city, because the people had, by a decree, prohibited the reception of any of the kings ; they also informed him that his consort, Deidamia, had been con- ducted to Megara with all the honors and attendance due to her dignity. Demetrius was then sensible of the value of honors and homages extorted by fear, and which did not proceed from the will. The posture of his affairs not permitting him to revenge the perfidy of that people, he contented himself with intimating his complaints to them in a moderate manner, and demanded his galleys ; with which, as soon as he had received them, he sailed toward the Chersonesus." Not many months elapsed before, through one of those strange and sudden mutations which were frequent through- out his career, the fortunes of Demetrius were completely MY FAITH. 69 restored, and he was enabled to settle his running account with those who had proved so treacherous in his adversity. I return here to the narration of Eollin : — " Athens, as we have already observed, bad revolted from Deme- trius, and shut ber gates against bim. But, when that prince thought be bad sufficiently provided for the secm-ity of bis terri- tories in Asia, be moved against that rebellious and ungrateful city, witb a resolution to punish ber as she deserved. The first year was devoted to the conquest of the Messenians, and of some other cities which bad quitted bis party ; but be retm-ned the next season to Athens, which be closed, blocked up, and reduced to the last extremity, by cutting off aU influx of provisions. A fleet of a hundred and fifty sail, sent by King Ptolemy to succor the Athen- ians, and which appeared ofi" the coast of yEgina, afforded them but a transient joy ; for, when this naval force saw a strong fleet arrive from Peloponnesus to the assistance of Demetrius, besides a great niunber of other vessels from Cyprus, and that the whole amounted to three hundred, they weighed anchor and fled. " Although the Athenians bad issued a decree by which they made it a capital ofience for any person even to mention a peace witb Demetrius, the extremity to which they were reduced obliged them to open their gates to bim. ^¥ben he entered the city, be commanded the inhabitants to assemble in the theatre, which be siuTounded witb armed troops, and posted bis guards on either side of the stage where the dramatic pieces wei'e wont to be per- formed ; and then, descending from the upper part of the theatre, in the manner usual witb acto?s, he showed himself to the multi- tude, who seemed more dead than alive, and awaited the event in inexpressible terror, expecting it would prove their sentence to destruction ; but be dissipated their apprehensions by the first words he uttered : for be did not raise bis voice like a man enraged, nor deliver himself in any passionate or insidting terms ; but softened the tones of bis voice, and only addressed to them gentle complaints and amicable expostulations. He pardoned their offence and restored them to bis favor, — presenting them, at the same time, witb 100,000 measm-es of com [wheat], and reinstating such magistrates as were most agreeable to them. The joy of this people may be easily conceived from the terrors witb which they were previously affected ; and bow glorious must that prince be who could always support so admirable a character ! " 70 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. Eeflecting with admiration on this exhibition of a magna- nimity too rare in human annals, I was moved to inquire if a spirit so nobly, so wisely, transcending the mean and savage impulse which man too often disguises as justice, when it is in essence revenge, might not be reverently termed Divine ; and the firm conclusion to which I was finally led, imported that the old Greek's treatment of vanquished rebels or pros- trate enemies must forcibly image and body forth that of the " King immortal, invisible, and only wise God." When I reached this conclusion, I had never seen one who was called, or who called himself, a Universalist ; and I neither saw one, nor read a page of any one's writings, for years there- after. I had only heard that there were a few graceless repro- bates and scurvy outcasts, who pretended to believe that all men would be saved, and to wrench the Scriptures into some sort of conformity to their mockery of a creed. I had read the Bible through, much of it repeatedly, but when quite too infantile to form any coherent, definite synopsis of the doctrines I presumed to be taught therein. But, soon after entering a printing-ofiice, I procured exchanges with several Universalist periodicals, and was thenceforth familiar with their methods of interpretation and of argument; though I first heard a sermon preached by one of this school while passing through Buffalo, about 1830 ; and I was acquainted with no society, and no preacher, of this faith, prior to my arrival in New York in August, 1831 ; when I made my way, on the first Sunday morning of my sojourn, to the little chapel in Grand Street, near Pitt, — about the size of an average country school-house, — where Rev. Thomas J. Sawyer, then quite young, ministered to a congregation of, perhaps, a hundred souls ; tO which congregation I soon afterward attached myself: remaining a member of it until he left the city. I am not, therefore, to be classed with those who claim to have been converted from one creed to another by studying the Bible alone. Certainly, upon re-reading that book in the light of my new convictions, I found therein abundant proof MY FAITH. 71 of their correctness in the averments of patriarchs,* prophets,f apostles,^ and of the Messiah § himself. But not so much in particular passages, however pertinent and decisive, as in the spirit and general scope of the Gospel, — so happily blending inexorable punishment for every offence with unfailing pity and ultimate forgiveness for the chastened transgressor, — thus saving sinners from sin by leading them, through suffering, to loathe and forsake it ; and in laying down its Golden Eule, which, if of universal application, (and why not ?) must be utterly inconsistent with the infliction of infinite and unending torture as the penalty of transient, and often ignorant, offend- ing, did I find ample wan-ant for my hope and trust that all suffering is disciplmary and transitional, and shall ultimately result in universal holmess and consequent happiness. In the light of this faith, the dark problem of Evil is irra- diated, and virtually solved. "Perfect through suffering" was the way traced out for the great Captain of our salvation : then why not for all the children of Adam ? To say that temporary affliction is as difficult to reconcile with Divine goodness as eternal agony is to defy reason and insult common sense. The history of Joseph's perfidious sale into slavery by his brethren, and the Divine overruling || of that crime into a means of vast and permanent blessing to the entire family of Jacob, is directly in point. Once conceive that an Omniscient Beneficence presides over and directs the entire course of human affairs, leading ever onward and upward to universal purity and bliss, and all evil becomes phenomenal and pre- parative, — a mere curtain or passing cloud, which hides for a moment the light of the celestial and eternal day. I am not wise enough, even in my own conceit, to assume to say where and when the deliverance of our race from evil and suffering shall be consummated. Perceiving that many * Gen. iii. 15 ; xii. 3. t Isa. XXV. 8 ; xlv. 23 - 25. t Rom. V. 12-21; viii. 19-21; 1 Cor. xv. 42 - 54 ; Eph. i. 8-10; Col. i. 19-21 ; 1 Tim. ii. 3-6. § Matt. XV. 13 ; John xii. 32. II Gen. xlv. 5-8. 72 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. leave this stage of being depraved and impenitent, I cannot believe that they will be transformed into angels of purity by the intervention of a circumstance so purely physical and involuntary as death. Holding that tlie government of God is everywhere and always perfect (however inadequate may be our comprehension of it), I infer that, alike in all worlds, men will be chastised whenever they shall need to be, and that neither by suicide, nor any other device, can a single individual escape the penalty of his evil-doing. If man is punished because he needs to be, — because that is best for him, — why should such discipline be restricted to this span of life ? While I know that the words translated hell, eternal, &c., in our version of the Bible, bear various meanings which the translators have befogged, — giving hell, the grave, the pit, &c., as equivalents of the one Hebrew term that signifies the unseen home of departed souls, — and while I am sure that the luxuriant metaphors whereby a state of anguish and suffer- ing are depicted were not meant to be taken literally, — I yet realize that human iniquity is often so flagrant and enormous that its punishment, to be just and efficient, must be severe and protracted. How or where it will be inflicted are matters of incident and circumstance, not of principle nor of primary consequence. Enough that it will be administered by One who " doth not willingly * [that is, wantonly] afflict nor grieve the children of men," but because their own highest good demands it, and would be prejudiced by his withholding it. But I do not dogmatize nor speculate. I rest in a more as- sured conviction of what Tennyson timidly, yet impressively, warbles, in mourning the death of his beloved friend : — " O, yet wc trust that, somehow, good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; " That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete ; * Lam. iii. 33. MY FAITH. 73 " That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth, with vain desire, Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subsei-ves another's gain. " Behold ! we know not anything : I can but trust that good shall fall At last, — far off, — at last, to all, And every Winter change to Spring." Twenty years earlier, Mrs. Hemans, when on the brink of the angelic life, was blest with a gleam from within the celes- tial gates, and, in almost her last sonnet, faintly refracted it as foUows : — " ON RECORDS OF IMMATURE GENIUS. " O, judge in thoughtful tenderness of those Who, richly dowered for life, are called to die Ere the soul's flame, through storms, hath won repose In truth's divinest ether, still and high ! Let their minds' riches claim a trustful sigh ; Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain, First notes of some yet struggling harmony By the strong rush, the crowding joy and pain, Of man}' inspirations, met and held From its true sphere. O, soon it might have swelled Majestically forth ! Nor doubt that He Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve Those links of music, elsewhere will evolve Their grand, consummate hymn, from passion-gusts made free ! " If I pronounce timid and tentative these and many kindred utterances of modern poets, I mean only that the great truth, so obscurely hinted by one, and so doubtingly asserted by the other, had long before been more firmly grasped, and more boldly proclaimed, by seers like Milton and Pope, and has in our age been affirmed and systematically elucidated by the calm, cogent reasoning of Ballou, the critical research of Bal- four, the fervid eloquence of Chapin, and hundreds beside them, until it is no longer a feeble hope, a trembling aspira- tion, a pleasing hypothesis, but an assured and joyful convic- tion. In its clear daylight, the hideous Inquisition, and all kindred devices for torturing heretics, under a libellous pre- 74 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. tence of zeal for God, shrink and cower in shame and terror ; the revolting gallows hides itseK from public view, prelimi- nary to its utter and final disappearance ; and man, growing ashamed of all cruelty and revenge, deals humanely with the outcast, the pauper, the criminal, and the vanquished foe. The overthrow of a rebellion is no longer the signal for sweeping spohation and massacre ; the downfall of an ancient tyranny like that of Naples is followed by no butchery of its pertinacious upholders ; and our earth begins to body forth and mirror — but so slowly, so faintly ! — the merciful doctrines of the meek and loving Prince of Peace. Perhaps I ought to add, that, with the great body of the Universalists of our day (who herein differ from the earlier pioneers in America of our faith), I believe that " our God is one Lord," — that " though there be that are called gods, as there be gods many and lords many, to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, one Lord Jesus Christ, hy whom are all things " ; * and I find the relation between the Father and the Saviour of mankind most fully and clearly set forth in that majestic first chapter of Hebrews, which I cannot see how any Trinitarian can ever have intently read, without perceiving that its whole tenor and burden are directly at war with his conception of " three persons in one God." Nor can I see how Paul's express assertion, that " when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son him- seK also be subject to Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all," f is to be reconciled with the more popular creed. However, I war not upon others' convictions, but rest satisfied with a simple statement of my own. * 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6. t 1 Cor. xv. 28. X. A YEAR BY LAKE ERIE. WHEN I entered Poultney, an aspirant to apprenticeship in her printing-office, I knew no one of her citizens or residents ; when I left that place, after a quiet sojourn of a little more than four years, I parted with many valued friends, of whom all who survive still, I trust, remain such. I have never since known a community so generally moral, intelli- gent, industrious, and friendly, — never one where so much good was known, and so little evil said, of neighbor by neigh- bor. There is no single individual among the many whose acquaintance I formed there, of whom I have other than a kindly remembrance ; while of nearly all those with whom I was brought into immediate contact I cherish fervid and grateful recollections. The two-story wooden house, whence our Spectator was issued, still stands on the east side of the street leading from north to south, a few rods southeast of the Baptist meeting- house, near the centre of the village green ; but the printing materials Avere packed up directly after I left, and have been sold away, — I know not whither. No single number of a journal has been issued from that town since I left it in June, 1830. A friend of like years accompanied me thence by wagon to Comstock's Landing, on the Champlain Canal, where we waited, scarcely twelve miles from Poultney, tln-ough a dreary- day of pelting rain, for a line-boat from Whitehall, whereon we crept snail-like to Troy, and thence, by another such con- veyance, to Buffalo ; though my friend stopped to look about 76 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. him not far westward of Eochester. I kept on by steamboat on Lake Erie to Dunkirk, and thence diagonally across Chau- tauqua County to my father's in Pennsylvania. I think it was on tliis visit that I made my best day's walk, — from Fredonia, through Mayville and Mina, to my father's, which can hardly be less than forty miles now, and by the zigzags we then made must have been considerably farther. I have known my father to walk fifty-two miles in a day, — that is, betwixt morning and midnight, — and I had made thirty-six miles per day (from Salem, Washington County, N. Y., to WestJiaven) before I was fifteen years old ; but I caught a horseback ride for several miles of the distance. I estimated the route I travelled from Fredonia to Wayne at forty-five miles of bad road, equal to fifty of good. He who will measure his walk by mile-stones, as I have done, will discover that lively and persistent steppmg, with no stopping to chase butterflies, is required to make four miles per hour. I have done this on the tow-path of the Delaware and Earitan Canal ; but the sweat started freely pretty early in the second mile. Beginning at twenty-five miles per day, walking slowly, but keeping pretty constantly ui motion, you may add two to three miles per day, till you have reached forty ; all above that, I judge, must, for most persons, involve exhaustive fatigue. I once walked across a corner of Chautauqua Lake when it was freshly frozen, and learned that walking on smooth ice, no matter how firm and assured your tread, will start the sweat on the coldest day, though you have been quite cool enough while walking on hard, frozen ground. The railroads have nearly killed pedestrianism, and I regret it. Days of steady, solitary walking I have found most favor- able to patient meditation. To study Nature profitably, you must be left alone wdth her, — she does not unveil herseK to babbling, shouting crowds. A walk of two or three hundred miles in a calm, clear October, is one of the cheap and whole- some luxuries of life, as free to the poor as the rich. I do not regard the modern student plan of tramping and camping, ten to twenty in a mess, as its fair equivalent. A solitary A YEAR BY LAKE ERIE. 77 walk of day after day is inevitably sober, qiiiet, thoughtful ; and the weary pedestrian washes his feverish feet and drops asleep very soon after he has halted at night. An encamp- ment of several pedestrians, whether in tent or tavern, is prone to stories, songs, games, feasting, drinking, and often to bois- terous hilarity, whereby rest is postponed or sacrificed, and health imperilled. Of course, these evils are often shunned or repelled; yet I would advise the yoimg pedestrian, who seeks mainly enjoyment, to travel with a single, well-chosen friend; if his aim be meditation and self-improvement, let him swing his pack and step off entirely alone. I was once travelling in the company of a chance companion, whom I had never seen before, and have not seen since, — a man of perhaps forty years, — when our route led us through the village of Mayville, Chautauqua County, IST. Y. We were in doubt as to our road beyond that village, and civilly in- quired our way of a thrifty citizen whom we met. He looked us well over, and, seeing that we were evidently of no account, vouchsafed us never a word of reply, but passed us in utter silence. We, too, walked on without remark, until, at length, my companion broke the stillness with the abrupt observation : " I am glad I have got to die some time." I did not see the point, and looked inquiry. " Because," he resumed, " that man has got to die just the same as I have." I saw. On my first visit to my father's forest home, I had entered the little hamlet termed Clymer, — then of four or five very new houses, — just at dusk of a Saturday night, when I learned that the log-cabin I sought was three miles away in a south- westerly course. " But you can't make your way to it to- night," I was very properly advised. I tried to hire some one to _guide me, but without success ; there was no tavern to stay at; so I took the track pointed out, and plunged into the darkening woods. Half a mile on, the cart-tracks diverged ; and I took the more easterly and wrong one. I went on till I found a log-cabin tenanted by a mother and her children, 78 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. who responded to my inquiries that they knew the way to Zack Greeley's quite well, but that it was two miles off, through dense woods, away from any road, and could not be reached that night, especially as the two intervening cabins stood tenantless, — their usual occupants having gone off to work on the Pennsylvania State Canal, then being dug in the vicinity of Meadville. I was pressed to stay here till morn- ing, and — there being no practicable alternative — consented. The house was quite new, consisting of a single room, some twenty by sixteen feet, and the logs of which it was built were still so green that the fire was made close to one side, on the bare earth, with no fireplace and no chimney save a hole through the bark-covered roof The man of the house soon came home, and we all slept sweetly till morning, when I made my way to my destination. The cabin which my father had bought with his land was a little better than that I have just described, but nothing to brag of My mother — born half a century after the log-cabin stage of Londonderry — could never be reconciled to this, nor to either of the two rather better ones that the family tenanted before it emerged into a poor sort of framed house. In fact, she had plunged into the primitive forest too late in life, and never became reconciled to the pioneer's inevitable discom- forts. The chimney of the best log-house, she insisted, would smoke ; and its roof, in a driving, drenching rain, would leak, do what you might. I think the shadow of the great woods oppressed her from the hour she first entered them ; and, though removed but two generations from pioneer ancestors, she was never reconciled to what the less roughly bred must always deem privations and hardships. I never caught the old smile on her face, the familiar gladness in her mood, the hearty joyfulness in her manner, from the day she entered those woods until that of her death, nearly thirty years later, in August, 1855. Though not yet sixty-eight, she had for years been worn out by hard work, and broken down in mind and body. Those who knew her only in her later years, when toil and trouble had gained the victory over her, never truly knew her at all. A YEAR BY LAKE ERIE. 79 My father had for many years — perhaps from boyhood — fixed his affections on Western Pennsylvania as his ultimate home ; and the region to which his footsteps were at length directed is essentially a good one. Situated on high, moder- ately rolling land, just across the line from Clymer, Chau- tauqua County, N. Y., in Erie County, Pa., two miles from the line of Warren County, the region is healthy and the soil strong, though better adapted to grass than to grain. He never wished to move again. Still, it was a mistake, at his time of life, to plunge so deep into the primitive forest. The giant timber — Beech, Maple, Hemlock, Elm, Ash, Basswood, &c. — yielded very slowly to his axe ; he and my brother were often a full Winter month in chopping off an acre ; and logging up and burning made another serious job ; still leaving the soil cold with green roots, and deformed by an eruption of stumps, which must be allowed years wherein to rot out. A wealthy pioneer, who can pay for slashing or winrowing forty to eighty acres at once of timber when in full leaf, and can afford to let it lie untouched for a full year (better still, two years), and then put fire into it when favored by a dry spell and a good breeze, then log off and put it into grain forthwith, may clear at a third of the cost to, and have his land in far better condition than the poor settler, who must burn up his timber green, because he needs the land to till, and cannot afford to lay out of the fruits of his labor for years. Thus, a poor man hews a farm out of the great woods at more than twice the proper cost, and injures the soil by the pro- cess. I presume my folks gave two thousand days' work to gathering ashes from their burned log-heaps, and leaching them into " Black Salts " (the base of Pot and Pearl Ashes), because they must have wherewith to pay store-bills, though the product did not give fifty cents' return for each fair day's work, and the removal of the ashes impoverished the soil by more than they brought. But the crops grown among green roots, in a small excavation from a vast, tall forest, are pre- carious and scanty at best, being preyed upon by pigeons in myriads, and by all manner of four-footed beasts; and the 80 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. pioneer's family must somehow live while he slowly trans- forms the stubborn wilderness into fruitful fields and orchards. After spending some weeks at home, I sought work at my trade in various directions : finding a little first at Jamestown, !N". Y., and, after an interval, more at Lodi (now Gowanda), Cattaraugus County, where I received $ 11 per month for six weeks ; but my employer could afford to hire a journeyman no longer; and I thence walked home across Chautauqua County, about January 1, 1831, and remained a fuU month — a bitter cold one — chopping with my father and brother, but not very efficiently nor satisfactorily. Fully convinced that the life of a pioneer was one to which I was poorly adapted, I made one more effort to resume my chosen calling. Having already exhausted the possibilities in the printing line of Chautauqua County, I now visited Erie, Pa., where I found work in the office of The Erie Gazette, and was retained at $ 15 per month well into the ensuing summer. This was the first newspaper whereon I was employed that made any money for its o^vner, and thus had a pecuniary value. It had been started twenty years or so before, when borough and county were both thinly peopled, almost wholly by poor young men, and it had grown with the vicinage until it had a substantial, profitable patronage. Its proprietor, Mr. Joseph M. Sterrett, now in the prime of life, had begun on The Gazette as a boy, and grown up with it into general considera- tion and esteem ; his journeymen and apprentices boarded at his house, as was fit ; and I spent here five months industri- ously and agreeably. Though still a raw youth of twenty years, and knowing no one in the borough when I thus entered it, I made acquaintances there who are still valued friends ; and, before I left, I was offered a partnership in the concern ; which, though I had reasons for declining, was none the less flattering as a mark of appreciation and confidence. Mr. Sterrett has since represented his district acceptably in the Senate of Pennsylvania, has received other proofs of the trust- A YEAR BY LAKE ERIE. 81 fill regard of his fellow-citizens ; and, though he has retired from The Gazette, still lives in the enjoyment of competence and general esteem. Erie dwells in my memory as a place which started with too sanguine expectations, and was thus exposed to a sudden check, from which it has never fully recovered. From time to time, its early dreams of greatness have lieen revived by a State canal, by railroads, by coal-mines, and at length by the oil developments of the Titusville region not far south of it ; but they have never been fully realized. It was ratlier a busy borough for its size in 1831 ; it is much larger and more important now ; yet it has seen Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, on either side, rise above it like meteors, and not merely achieve a preeminence, but retain it. I fancy it must have ceased even to dream of coming grandeur by this time. The quality for which its people were most remarkable in 1831 was an intense addiction to partisan strife. An ardent politician from childhood, I was fairly appalled by the assidu- ity and vehemence wherewith political controversy was prose- cuted by nearly every man and boy I met in Erie. I have seen individual politicians elsewhere who could never set eyes on a stranger without mentally measuring up the feet and inches of party capital that might be made out of him ; but politics in Erie seemed the universal and engrossing topic, to an extent and in a degree I have never kno^vn paralleled. Possibly, however, there was a temporary frenzy on the sub- ject while I stayed there, from which her people have long since recovered. At all events, I will hope so. At length, work failed at The Gazette office, and I was con- strained to take a fresh departure. No printing-office in all that region wanted a journeyman. The West seemed to be laboring under a surfeit of printers. One was advertised for to take charge of a journal at Wilkesbarre, Pa., and I applied for the place, but failed to secure it. I would gladly have given faithful labor at case and press through some years yet 6 82 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. for $ 15 per montli and board, or even less ; but it was not to be had. So, upon full consideration, I decided to turn my steps toward the Commercial Emporium, while still consider- ably younger than I would have preferred to be on making such a venture. Paying a parting visit to my father's, under the reasonable expectation tliat my next absence would be a long one, I divided with him my Erie earnings, and, with $ 25 in my pocket, and very little extra clothing in my bundle, I set my face toward New York. It was now midsummer, — dry and hot. I had but one friend on my rather long route, and I resolved to pay him a visit. He lived at Gaines, nearly forty miles westward of Eochester ; and I traversed on foot the dusty " ridge road " eastward from Lockport the day before I reached him. That day was quite hot, and the water I was incessantly compelled to drink seemed very hard; by nightfall, I fancied that it had covered my moutli and throat with a scale like that often found incrusting a long-used tea-kettle. The region was gently rolling and very fertile ; but I should have more enjoyed a saunter over New England hills and rocks, sweet- ened by draughts from New England wells and springs. It was Saturday night when I reached my friend, and I remained with him till Sunday afternoon, when we walked down to the canal, and waited long for a boat. None came till after nightfall, when I dismissed my friend, confident that a boat must soon appear. After waiting in vain till near midnight, I started down the tow-path, and walked through the pitchy darkness to Brockport, some fifteen miles. Ee- peatedly, the head-light of a boat moving westward came in sight, when I was obliged to plunge down the often rugged, briery, off-bank of the tow-path, to avoid being caught by the tow-line and hauled into the not quite transparent and nowise inviting " drink." Though the almanac made that night short, it seemed to me quite long ; and I very gladly hailed and boarded at Brockport a line-boat Reading eastward. My sleepy tendencies amused my fellow-passengers thence to Eochester, to whom "sparking Sunday night" afforded a ready and natural explanation. XL MY FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. REACHING- Schenectady from Buffalo by line-boat, — my sixth and last journey on " the raging canal," — I debarked about 6 p. m., and took the turnpike for Albany. I think a railroad between the two cities first and last named was completed soon afterward ; but I believe not a mile of iron track was then operated in the State, if (in fact) anywhere in America, save the little affair constructed to freight granite from the quarry at Quincy, Mass., to Boston. Night fell when I was about half-way over ; so I sought rest in one of the many indifferent taverns that then lined the turnpike in ques- tion, and was directed to sleep in an ante-room through which people were momently passing ; I declined, and, gathering up my handful of portables, walked on. Half a mile farther, I fomid another tavern, not quite so inhospitable, and managed to stay in it till morning ; when I rose and walked on to Albany. Having never been in that city before, I missed the nearest way to the day-boat, and when I reached the landing it was two or three lengths on its way to New York, having left at 7 A. M. I had no choice but to wait for another, which started at. 10 A. M., towing a barge on either side, and reached, in twenty hours, the emporium, where I, after a good view of the city as we passed it down the river, was landed near Wliitehall at 6 A. M. New York was then about one third of her present size ; but her business was not one fourth so great as now ; and her real size — coimting her suburbs, and considering the tens of thousands who find employment in and earn subsistence here, 84 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. though sleeping outside of her chartered limits — was not one fifth that of 1867. No single railroad pointed toward her wharves. No line of ocean steamers brought passengers to her hotels, nor goods to her warehouses, from any foreign port. In the mercantile world, her relative rank was higher, but her absolute importance was scarcely greater, than that of Eio Janeiro or San Francisco is to-day. Still, to my eyes, which had never till yesterday gazed on a city of even 20,000 in- habitants, nor seen a sea-going vessel, her miles square of mainly brick or stone houses, and her furlongs of masts and yards, afforded ample incitement to a wonder and admiration akin to awe. It was, if I recollect aright, the 17th of August, 1831. I was twenty years old the preceding February ; tall, slender, pale, and plain, with ten dollars in my pocket. Summer cloth- ing worth perhaps as much more, nearly all on my back, and a decent knowledge of so much of the art of printing as a boy will usually learn in the offtce of a country newspaper. But I knew no human being within two hundred miles, and my unmistakably rustic manner and address did not favor that immediate command of remunerating employment which was my most urgent need. However, the world was all before me ; my personal estate, tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, did not at all encumber me ; and I stepped lightly off tlie boat, and away from the detested hiss of escaping steam, walking into and up Broad Street in quest of a boarding-house. I found and entered one at or near the corner of Wall ; but the price of board given me was $ 6 per week ; so I did not need the giver's candidly kind suggestion that I would probably prefer one where the charge was more moderate. Wandering thence, I cannot say how, to the North River side, I halted next at 168 West Street, where the sign of "Boarding" on a humbler edifice fixed my attention. I entered, and was offered shelter and subsistence at $ 2.50 per week, which seemed more rational, and I closed the bargain. My host was Mr. Edward McGolrick ; his place quite as much grog-shop as boarding-house ; but it was quietly, decently MY FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. 85 kept while I stayed in it, and he and his family were kind and friendly. I regret to add that liquor proved his ruin not many years afterward. My first day in New York was a Friday, and, the family being Eoman Catholic, no meat was eaten or provided, which I understood ; but when Sunday evening was celebrated by unlimited card-playing in that same house, my traditions were decidedly jarred. I do not imply that my observances were better or worse than my host's, but that they were different. Having breakfasted, I began to ransack the oity for work, and, in my total ignorance, traversed many streets where none could possibly be found. In the course of that day and the next, however, I must have visited fully two tliirds of the printing-oflSces on Manhattan Island, without a gleam of suc- cess. It was midsummer, when business in New York is habitually dull; and my youth, and unquestionable air of country greenness, must have told against me. A\^ien I called at The Journal of Commerce, its editor, Mr. David Hale, bluntly told me I was a runaway apprentice from some country oftice ; which was a very natural, though mistaken, presumption. I returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, tlioroughly weary, disheartened, disgusted with New York, and resolved to shake its dust from my feet next Monday morning, while I could still leave with money in my pocket, and before its almshouse could foreclose upon me. But that was not to be. On Sunday afternoon and even- ing several young Irishmen called at McGolrick's, in their holiday saunterings about town ; and, being told that I was a young printer in quest of work, interested themselves in my effort, with the spontaneous kindness of their race. One among them happened to know a place where printers were wanted, and gave me the requisite direction ; so that, on visiting the designated spot next morning; I readily found employment ; and thus, when barely three days a resident, I had found anchorage in New York. The printing establishment was John T. West's, over McEbath and Bangs's publishing-house, 85 Chatham Street, 86 RECOLLECTION.'i OF A BUSY LIFE. and the work was at my call simply because no printer who knew the city would accept it. It was the composition of a very small (32mo) New Testament, in double columns, of Agate type, each column barely 12 ems wide, with a centre column of notes in Pearl, only 4 ems wide ; the text thickly studded with references by Greek and superior letters to the notes, which of course were preceded and discriminated by corresponding indices, with prefatory and supplementary re- marks on each Book, set in Pearl, and only paid for as Agate. The type was considerably smaller than any to which I had been accustomed ; the narrow measure and thickly sown Italics of the text, with the strange characters employed as indices, rendered it the slowest, and by far the most difficult, work I had ever undertaken ; while the making up, proving, and correcting twice, and even thrice over, preparatory to stereo- typing, nearly doubled the time required for ordinary com- position. I was never a swift type-setter ; I aimed to be an assiduous and coiTect one ; but my proofs on this work at first looked as though they had caught the chicken-pox, and were in the worst stage of a profuse eruption. For the first two or three weeks, being sometimes kept waiting for letter, I scarcely made my board ; while, by diligent type-sticking through twelve to fourteen liours per day, I was able, at my best, to earn but five to six dollars per week. As scarcely another compositor could be induced to work on it more than two days, I had this job in good part to myself ; and I persevered to the end of it. I had removed, very soon after obtaining it, to jVIrs. Mason's shoemaker boarding-house at the corner of Chatham and Duane Streets, nearly opposite my work ; so that I was enabled to keep doing nearly all the time T did not need for meals and sleep. When it was done, I was out of work for a fortnight, in spite of my best efforts to find more ; so I attended, as an unknown spectator, the sittings of the Tariff Convention, which was held at the American Institute, north end of the City Hall Park, and presided over by Hon. William Wilkins, of Pittsl)urg, I'a. I next found work in Ann Street, on a short-lived monthly, where my pay was not MY FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. 87 forthcoming ; and the next month saw me back at West's, where a new work — a commentary "on the Book of Genesis, by Rev. George Bush — had come in ; and I worked on it throughout. The chirography was blind; the author made many vexatious alterations in proof ; the page was small and the type close ; but, though the reverse of fat, in printers' jargon, it was not nearly so aboininably lean as the Testament ; and I regretted to reach the end of it. When I did, I was again out of work, and seriously meditated seeking employ- ment at something else than printing ; but the Winter was a hard one, and business in New York stagnant to an extent not now conceivable. I think it was early in December, when a " cold snap " of remarkable severity closed the Hudson, and sent up the price of coal at a bound to $ 16 per ton, while the cost of other necessaries of life took a kindred but less con- siderable elevation. Our city stood as if besieged till Spring relieved her; and it was much the same every Winter. Mechanics and laborers lived awhile on the scanty savings of the preceding Summer and Autumn ; then on such credit as they could wring from grocers and landlords, till milder weather brought them work again. The earnings of good mechanics did not average $ 8 per week in 1831 - 32, wliile they are now double that sum ; and living is not twice as dear as it then was. Meat may possibly be ; but Bread is not ; Fuel is not ; Clothing is not ; while travel is chea]3er ; and our little cars have enabled working-men to live two or three miles from their work without serious cost or inconvenience ; thus bring- ing Yorkville or Green Point practically as near to Maiden Lane or Broad Street as Greenwich or the Eleventh Ward was. Winter is relatively dull now, but not nearly so stagnant as it formerly was. In spite of an inflated currency and high taxes, it is easier now for a working-man to earn his living in New York than it was thirty to forty years ago. About the 1st of January, 1832, I found employment on The Spirit of the Times, a weekly paper devoted to sporting in- telligence, then started by Messrs. William T. Porter and James Howe, two young printers, of whom the former, if not both. 88 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. had worked with me at West's the previous Fall. I think it was a little after midnight, on the 1st of January, 1832, that we compositors delivered the forms of the first number into the hands of the pressmen in an upper story in Fulton Street. The concern migrated to Wall Street the next March, finding a location very near the present site of the Merchants' Ex- change ; and I clung to it through the ensuing Spring and Summer ; its foreman, Francis V. Story, being nearly of my own age, and thenceforth my devoted friend. But the founders and editors were also quite young ; they were inexperienced in their calling, without capital or influential friends, having recently drifted from the country to the city much as I did ; and their paper did not pay, — I know it was difficult to make it pay me, — especially through the dreary cholera Summer of 1832. The disease was then new to the civilized world, while the accounts of its recent ravages in the far East were calcu- lated to appall the stoutest heart ; the season was sultry, the city filthy, and the water we drank such as sliould breed a pestilence at any time. New York had long enjoyed and deserved the reputation of having worse water than any other city of its size on earth ; and the loose, porous sands whereon it was built rendered this fluid more and more detestable as the city grew larger and older. I am glad that it was my privilege to vote soon afterward for the introduction of the Croton, which I did right heartily, though a good many op- posed it (some of them voting " Brandy ") ; two of the Wards, tenanted mainly by poor men, giving majorities against it. Twelve years intervened betwixt that vote and oiu^ celebra- tion to welcome the actual introduction of the water, — the fluid we drew from the wells growing steadily more and more repulsive and unwholesome ; but the glad day came at last ; and New York has ever since been a more eligible, healthful residence for rich or poor than it previously was. We have had cholera and other epidemics since ; but our city has never since been paralyzed as it was in the Summer of 1832. Those who could mainly left us ; scarcely any one entered the city; trade was dead, and industry languished MY FIRST EXPERIENCES IN NEW YORK. 89 during that fatal Summer. I think I sometimes met two, if not three, palanquins, bearing cholera patients to some hos- pital, in my short walk from dinner in Chatham Street to my work in Wall Street. One died at my boarding-house. I believe nearly all experienced symptoms of the plague, though it was most common and most fatal with those debilitated by intemperance or some form of sensual excess. But it passed off as cool evenings came on ; our fugitives and our business came back to us ; and all, save the dead and the bereaved, was as before. In October I paid a visit, via Providence and Boston, to my relatives in New Hampshire ; walking over the lower part of that State from Londonderry into eastern Vermont, and as far north as Newport, which I entered after dark of a stormy even- ing, having walked from Claremont (nine miles) in a rain, at first gentle, but steadily increasing to the last. I never enter, as a stranger, a private house if I can avoid it ; and I kept hoping to see a tavern-sign until I was so wet that it was of no consequence. When at last I reached the village, where I expected (but failed) to find an uncle living, it proved to be court-week, with the two taverns crowded to overflowing. Making my way through a thick cloud of tobacco-smoke to the office of one, I procured a remnant of supper, and part of a bed in a private house at some distance, where I threw off my wet clothes and slept. In the morning, my clotlies all responded to the call to duty till it came to my short boots ; these utterly refused, until I had taken off my wet socks and thrust them into my pockets, when the boots were barely persuaded to resume their only serviceable position. I took breakfast, paid my bill, and walked off, in the frosty morning air, considerably less supple-jointed than one should be at one- and-twenty. I never saw this New Hampshire Newport be- fore, and have not seen it since. , My relatives being pretty widely scattered, I had occasion to traverse southwestern New Hampshire in various direc- tions ; and I saw more of that State than ever before or since. I started, one clear, frosty morning, from Francestown, 90 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. taking a mountainous by-way to Stoddard ; and, as I recollect, I did not see a hundred acres of really arable soil in travelling twelve to fifteen miles. There was some rugged pasturage ; but Hemlock and Wliite Birch, alternating with naked rocks and mountain tarns or petty lakes, generally monopolized the prospect. I met one poor soul who had a horse and wagon, and heartily pitied him. He could rarely ride, while my walk was far easier and less anxious than his. Eeaching Stoddard (a small village half-way up a high hill), I stepped into a convenient tavern, and called for dinner. My breakfast had been quite early ; the keen air and rough walk had freshened my appetite ; I was shown into a dining- room with a well-spread table in the centre, and left to help myself. There were steaks, chickens, tea, coffee, pies, &c., and I did ample justice to all. " What is to pay ? " I asked the landlord, on reentering the bar-room. " Dinner 18f cents," he repUed. I laid down the required sum, and stepped off, men- tally resolving that I would, in mercy to that tavern, never patronize it again. I returned by the way I went ; walking from Providence across to Norwich, Conn., where I took steamboat, and arrived in New York on the second of our three days of State elec- tion. I gave my vote right heartily for the anti-Jackson ticket, but without avail, — Jackson being overwhelmingly reelected, with Marcy over Granger for Governor. I soon found work which paid fairly at the stereotyping estabhsh- ment of J. S. Eedfield, and was there employed till the close of that year, when an opportunity presented for commencing business on my own account, which I improved, as will be set forth in my next chapter. XII. aETTINa INTO BUSINESS. HAVING- been fairly driven to New York two or three years earlier than I deemed desirable, I was in like manner impelled to undertake the responsibilities of business wlide stni in my twenty-second year. My friend Story, barely older than myself, but far better acquainted with city ways, having been for many years the only son of a poor widow, and accustomed to struggling with difficulties, had already conceived the idea of starting a printery, and offering me a partnership in the enterprise. His position in Wall Street, on The Spirit of the Times, made him acquainted with Mr. S. J. Sylvester, then a leading broker and seller of lottery-tickets, who issued a weekly " Bank-Note Reporter," largely devoted to the advertising of his own business, and who offered my friend the job of printing that paper. Story was also intimate with Dr. W. Beach, who, in addition to his medical practice, dabbled considerably in ink, and at whose office my friend made the acquaintance of a young graduate. Dr. H. D, Shei^ard, who was understood to have money, and who was in- tent on bringing out a cheap daily paper, to be sold about the streets, — then a novel idea, — daily papers being presumed desirable only for mercantile men, and addressed exclusively to their wants and tastes. Dr. Shepard had won over my friend to a belief in the practicability of his project ; and the latter visited me at my work and my lodging, urging me to unite with him in starting a printery on the strength of Mr. Sylvester's and Dr. ShejDard's proffered work. I hesitated, having very little means, — for I had sent a good part of my 92 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. past year's scanty savings to aid my father in his struggle with the stubborn wilderness ; but Story's enthusiastic con- fidence at length triumphed over my distrust ; we formed a partnership, hired part of two rooms abeady devoted to print- ing, on the southwest corner of Nassau and Liberty Streets . (opposite our city's present post-office), spending our little all (less than % 200), and stretching our credit to the utmost, for the requisite materials. I tried Mr. James Conner, the exten- sive type-founder in Ann Street, — having a very slight ac- quaintance with him, formed in the course of frequent visits to his foundry in quest of " sorts " (type found deficient in the several offices for which I had worked at one time or another), — but he, after hearing me patiently, decided not to credit me six months for the % 40 worth of type I wanted of him; and he did right, — my exhibit did not justify my request. I went directly thence to Mr. George Bruce, the older and wealthier founder, in Chambers Street, — made the same exhibit, and was allowed by him the credit I asked ; and that purchase has since secured to his concern the sale of not less than $ 50,000 worth of type. I think he must have noted something in my awkward, bashful ways, that impelled him to take the risk. The Morning Post — Dr. Shepard's two-cent daily, which he wished to sell for one cent — was issued on the 1st of January, 1833. Nobody in New York reads much (except visitor's cards) on New Year's Day ; and that one happened to be very cold, with the streets much obstructed by a fall of snow throughout the preceding night. Projectors of news- papers in those days, though expecting other people to adver- tise in their columns, did not comprehend that they also must advertise, or the public will never know that their bantling has been ushered into existence ; and Dr. Shepard was too poor to give his sheet the requisite publicity, had he understood the matter. He was neither a writer nor a man of affairs ; had no editors, no reporters worth naming, no correspondents, and no exchanges even ; he fancied that a paper would sell, if remarkable for cheapness, though remarkable also for the GETTING INTO BUSINESS. 93 absence of every other desirable quality. He was said to have migrated, while a youth, from New Jersey to New York, with $ 1,500 in cash ; if he did, his capital must have nearly all melted away before he had issued his first number. Though his enterprise involved no outlay of capital by him, and his weekly outgoes were less than $ 200, he was able to meet them for a single week only, while his journal obtained a cir- culation of but two or three hundred copies. Finally, he reduced its price to one cent ; but the public would not buy it even at that, and we printers, already considerably in debt for materials, were utterly unable to go on beyond the second or third week after the publisher had stopped paying. Thus the first cheap-for-cash daily in New York — perhaps in the world — died when scarcely yet a month old ; and we printers were hard aground on a lee shore, with little prospect of getting off. We were saved from sudden bankruptcy by the address of my partner, who had formed the acquaintance of a wealthy, eccentric Briton, named Schols, who had a taste for editorial life, and who was somehow induced to buy the wreck of The Morning Post, remove it to an office of his o^vn, and employ Story as foreman. He soon tired of his thriftless, profitless speculation, and threw it up ; but we had meantime sur- mounted our embarrassments by the help of the little money he paid for a portion of our materials and for my partner's services. Meantime, the managers of the New York lotteries, then regularly drawn under State auspices, had allowed a portion of their letter-press printing to follow Mr. Sylvester's into our concern, and were paying us very fairly for it; I doing most of the composition. For two or three months after Dr. Shepard's collapse, I was frequently sent for to work as a substitute in the composing-room of The Commercial Advertiser, not far from om' shop ; and I was at length offered a regular situation there ; but our business had by this time so improved that I was constrained to decline. Working early and late, and looking sharply on every side for jobs, we were beginning to make decided headway, when my partner was 94 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. drowned (July 9, 1833) while bathing in the East Kiver near liis mother's residence in Brooklyn, and I bitterly mourned the loss of my nearest and dearest friend. His place in the concern was promptly taken by another young printer, a friend of the bereaved family, Mr. Jonas Winchester, who soon married Story's oldest sister ; and we thus went on, with moderate but steady prosperity, until the ensuing Spring, when we issued (March 22, 1834), without premonitory sound of trumpet, The New-Yoeker, a large, fair, and cheap weekly folio (afterward changed to a double quarto), devoted mainly to current literature, but giving regularly a digest of all important news, including a careful exhibit and summary of election returns and other political intelligence. I edited and made up this paper, while my partner took charge of our more profitable jobbing business. The New-Yorker was issued under my supervision, its edito- rials written, its selections made, for the most part, l^y me, for seven years and a half from the date just given. Though not calculated to enlist partisanship or excite enthusiasm, it was at length extensively liked and read. It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers ; these steadily increased to nine thousand ; and it might, under better business management, (perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time,) have proved profitable and permanent. Tliat it did not was mainly owing to these circumstances : 1. It was not extensively advertised at the start, and at least annually thereafter, as it should have been. 2. It was never really published, though it had half a dozen nominal publishers in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, and a large share of them never paid for it, and never will, while the cost of collecting from others ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of railroads, expresses, news companies, news offices, &c., whereby literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist. I believe that just such a paper, issued to-day, properly published and advertised, would obtain a circulation of one hundred thousand in less time than was required to give The New-Yorker scarcely a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money for its GETTING INTO BUSINESS. 95 owners, instead of nearly starving them, as mine did. I was worth at least $ 1,500 when it was started ; I worked hard and lived frugally throughout its existence ; it subsisted for the first two years on the profits of our job-work ; when I, deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking the jobbing business and I The New-Yorker, which held its own pretty fairly thenceforth till the Commercial Eevulsion of 1837 swept over the land, whelming it and me in the gen- eral ruin. I had married m 1836 (July 5th), deeming myself worth $5,000, and the master of a business which would thenceforth yield me for my labor at least $ 1,000 per annum ; but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I found myself obliged, throughout 1837, to confront a net loss of about $ 100 per week, — my income averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses $ 200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay up ; many of them migrated ; some died ; others were so considerate as to order the paper stopped, but very few of these paid ; and I struggled on against a steadily rising tide of adversity that might have appalled a stouter heart. Often did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit a small loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed nor evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, utterly unable to broach the loathsome topic. I have bor- rowed $ 500 of a broker late on Saturday, and paid him $ 5 for the use of it till Monday morning, when I somehow con- trived to return it. Most gladly would I have terminated the struggle by a surrender ; but, if I had failed to pay my notes continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly supply of paper, — so that would liave availed nothing. To have stopped my journal (for I could not give it away) would have left me in debt, beside my notes for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at least three thousand subscribers who had paid in advance ; and that is the worst kind of bank- ruptcy. If any one would have taken my business and debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $ 2,000, I would have jumped at the chance, and tried to work out the debt by setting type, if nothing better offered. If it be sug- 96 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. gested that my whole indebtedness was at no time more than % 5,000 to $ 7,000, I have only to say that even $ 1,000 of debt is ruin to him who keenly feels his obligation to fulfil every engagement, yet is utterly without the means of so doing, and who finds himseK dragged each week a little deeper into hopeless insolvency. To be hungry, ragged, and penni- less is not pleasant ; but this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All the wealth of the Eothschilds would be a poor recompense for a five years' struggle with the conscious- ness that you had taken the money or property of trusting friends, — promising to return or pay for it when required, — and had betrayed their confidence through insolvency. I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from enter- ing that place of torment. Half the young men in the coun- try, with many old enough to know better, would " go into business " — that is, into debt — to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to envy the merchant or manufacturer whose life is an incessant struggle with pecun- iary difficulties, who is driven to constant "shinning," and who, from month to month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner or later overtakes most men in business ; so that it has been computed that bvit one in twenty of them achieve a pecuniary success. For my own part, — and I speak from sad experience, — I would ratlier be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt. Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable ; but debt is infinitely worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years, tlie lesson whicli I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon them is, — " Never run into debt ! Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than owe any GETTING INTO BUSINESS. 97 man a dollar ! " Of course, I know that some men must do business that involves risks, and must often give notes and other obligations, and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all he owes ; I speak of real debt, — that which involves risk or sacrifice on the one side,, obligation and dependence on the other, — and I say, From all such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore ! When I at length stopped The ISTew- Yorker (September 20, 1841), though poor enough, I j)rovided for making good all I owed to its subscribers who had paid in advance, and shut up its books whereon were inscribed some $ 10,000 owed me in sums of $ 1 to $ 10 each, by men to whose service I had faithfully devoted the best years, of my life, — years that, though full of labor and frugal care, might have been happy had they not been made ^vretched by those men's dishonesty. They took my journal, and probably read it ; they j^romised to pay for it, and defaulted ; leaving me to pay my paper- maker, type-founder, journeymen, &c., as I could. My only requital was a sorely achieved but wholesome lesson. I had been thoroughly burned out, only saving my books, in the great Ann Street fire (August 12, 1835) ; I was burned out again in February, 1845 ; and, while the destruction Avas complete, and the insurance but partial, I had the poor con- solation, that the account-books of The New-Yorker — which I had never opened since I first laid them away, but which had been an eye-sore and a reminder of evil days whenever I stumbled upon them — were at length dissolved in smoke and flame, and lost to sight for ever. XIII. TEMPERANCE IN ALL THINGS. ON the first day of January, 1824, while living in West- haven, Vermont, I deliberately resolved to drink no more distilled hqnors. At this time I had heard of persons who had made a kindred resolve, but I had not known one.. I had probably heard that Temperance societies had some- where been formed, though I do not now distinctly recollect the circumstance. I believe the first American society that adopted the principle of Total Abstinence — at least from distilled liquors — had been organized in a rural township of Saratoga County, N. Y., in 1817 ; but the American Tem- perance Society was yet unknown, and did not adopt the principle of Total Abstinence from Alcoholic Beverages until 1833. Wlriskey and Tobacco were the universal luxuries — I might say the poor man's only luxuries — in Vermont, as Rum had been in New Hampshire. The apple-tree flourished luxuriantly, and bore abundantly on the virgin soils wherein it was generally planted, and Avhile each settler's " clearing " was shut in by the grand old woods which softened the harsher winds and obstructed the dissemination of fruit- destroying insects. Good peaches were grown in southern New Hampshire fifty years ago ; whereas they can no longer be produced, save rarely and scantily, in southern New York. Cider was, next to water, the most abundant and the cheapest fluid to be had in New Hampshire, while I lived there, — often selling for a dollar per barrel. In many a family of six or eight persons, a barrel tapped on Saturday barely lasted a TEMPERANCE IN ALL THINGS. 99 full week. Wlioever dropped in of an evening expected to be treated to cider ; a mug, once emptied, was quickly refilled ; and so on, till every one was about as full as he could hold. The transition from cider to warmer and more potent stimu- lants was easy and natural ; so that whole families died drunkards and vagabond paupers from the impetus first given by cider-swilling in their rural homes. I believe I was five years old when my grandfather "Wood- burn's house in Londonderry was, one Winter day, filled with relatives, gathered, in good part, from Deering, AVindham, and from Vermont towns originally settled from the old hive ; wlio, after dinner, departed in their sleighs to visit some other relative, taking our old folks with them, and leaving but three or four little boys of us to keep house till their return. A number of half-smoked cigars had been left on the mantel, and some evil genius suggested to us tow-headed urchins that it would be smart and clever to indulge in a general smoke. Like older fools, we went in ; and I was soon the sickest mortal on the face of this planet. I cannot say as to my comrades in this folly ; but that half-inch of cigar-stump will last me all my life, though its years should outnumber Methuselah's. For a decade thereafter, it was often my filial duty to fill and light my mother's pipe, when she had lain down for her after-dinner nap ; and she, having taken it, would hold it and talk tiQ the fire had gone out, so that it must again be lighted and drawn till the tobacco was well ignited ; hence I know that, if I had not been proof against narcotic seduction, I should have learned to like the soothing weed ; but I never used, nor wished to use, it as a sedative or a luxury after my one juvenile and thoroughly conclusive experiment. From that hour to this, the chewing, smoking, or snuffing of tobacco has seemed to me, if not the most pernicious, certainly the vilest, most detestable' abuse of his corrupted sensual appetites whereof depraved Man is capable. • In my childhood, there was no merry-making, there was no entertainment of relatives or friends, there was scarcely 100 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. a casual gathering of two or three neighbors for an evening's social chat, without strong drink. Cider, always, while it remained drinkable without severe contortions of visage; Rum at all seasons and on all occasions, were required and provided. No house or barn was raised without a bountiful supply of the latter, and generally of both. A wedding without " toddy," " flip," " sKng," or " punch," with rum un- disguised in abundance, would have been deemed a poor, mean affair, even among the penniless ; while the more for- tunate and thrifty of course dispensed wine, brandy, and gin in profusion. Dancing — almost the only pastime wherein the sexes jointly participated — was always enlivened and stimulated by liquor. Militia trainings — then rigidly en- forced at least twice a year — usually wound up with a drinking frolic at the village tavern. Election days were drinking days, as they still too commonly are ; and even funerals were regarded as inadequately celebrated without the dispensing of spirituous consolation : so that I distinctly recollect the neighborhood talk, in 1820, after the funeral of a poor man's child, that, if he had not been mean as well as poor, he would have cheered the hearts of his sympathizing friends by treating them to at least one gallon of rum. I have heard my father say that he had mowed througli the haying season of thirty successive years, and never a day Avithout liquor ; and the account of an Irishman who mowed and pitched throughout one haying, drinking only butter- milk, while his associates drank rum, yet accomplished more, and with less fatigue, than any of them, was received with as much wondering incredulity as though it had been certified that he lived wholly on air. Nay : we had an ordination in Amlierst nearly fifty years ,ago, settling an able and popular young clergyman named Lord (I believe he is now the vener- able ex-President of Dartmouth College) to the signal satis- faction of the great body of our people ; and, according to my recollection, strong drink was more generally and bountifully dispensed than on any previous occasion : bottles and glasses being set on tables in front of many farmers' houses as an in- TEMPERANCE IN ALL THINGS. 101 vitation to those who passed on their way to or from the instal- lation to stop and drink freely. We have worse liquor now than we had then ; and delirium tremens, apoplexy, palsy, &c., come sooner and oftener to those who use it; but 'our con- sumers of strong drink are a class ; whereas they were then the whole people. The pious probably drank more discreetly than the ungodly ; but they all drank to their own satisfac- tion, and, I judge, more than was consistent with their per- sonal good. My resolve not to drink was only mentioned by me at our own fireside ; but it somehow became known in the neigh- borhood, where it excited some curiosity, and even a stronger feeKng. At the annual sheep-washing, in June following, it was brought forward and condemned ; when I was required to take a glass of liquor, and, on my declining, was held by two or three youngsters older and stronger than I, while the liquor was turned into my mouth, and some of it forced down my throat. That was understood to be the end of my foolish attempt at singiilarity. It was not, however. I kept quiet, but my resolution was unchanged ; and, soon after my removal to Poultney, I " as- sisted " in organizing the first Temperance Society ever formed in that town, — perhaps the first in the county. It inhibited the use of distilled liquors only ; so that I believe our first president died of intemperance some years afterward ; bvit a number still live to rejoice that they took part in that move- ment, and have since remained faithful to its pledge and its purpose. I recollect a story told at that time by our adver- saries of a man who had joined the Temperance Society just organized in a neighboring township, and, dying soon after- ward, had been subjected to an autopsy, which developed a cake of ice weighing several pounds, which had gradually formed and increased in his stomach, as a result of his fanat- ical devotion to cold water. Alas that most of our facetious critics have since died, and no autopsy was needed to develop the cause of their departure ! A glance at each fiery pro- boscis, that irradiated even the cerements of the grave, was sufficient. 102 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. Total Abstinence has never yet been popular in this nor in any other great city ; and, as liquor grows unfashionable in the country, it tends to become less and less so. A great city derives its subsistence and its profits from ministrations therein, not only to the real needs of the surrounding countiy, but to its baser appetites, its vices, as well ; and, as the country becomes less and less tolerant of immoral indulgences and vicious aberrations, the gains of cities therefrom, and their consequent interest therein, must steadily increase. Time was when the young man of means and social position, who shunned the haunts of the gamester, the wiles of the libertine, and never indulged in a drunken "spree," was widely sneered at as a " milksop," or detested as a calculating hypocrite. Sheridan's Joseph Surface admirably reflects the once popular appreciation of such absurd, fanatical Puritan- ism ; but, as the world grows wiser and (in an important sense) better, a great tliough silent change is wrought in pub- lic sentiment, which compels the vicious to conceal indul- gences that they formerly paraded, and maintain an exterior decency which would once have exposed them to ridicule. Thousands, who formerly gratified their baser appetites with- out disguise or shame, now feel constrained, not to " leave undone," but to " keep vmknown," by hieing to some great city, — where no one's deeds or ways are observ^ed or much regarded so long as he keeps out of the hands of the police, — and there balance a year's compelled decorum by a week's unrestrained debauchery. Fifty years back, a jug would readily be filled with any designated liquor at almost any country store ; now, the devotee of alcoholic potations must usually send or take his demijohn to the most convenient city, where it will at once be filled and despatched to its im- patient, thirsty owner ; and so, as the Liquor Interest grows weaker and weaker in the country, it becomes stronger and yet stronger in the cities, whose politics it fashions, whose government it governs, by virtue of its inherent strength and apprehensive activity. And thus the Liquor Traffic has greater strength and vitality in our city to-day than it had twenty to forty years ago. TEMPERANCE IN ALL THINGS. 103 Sylvester Graham first appeared in New York as a lecturer, I think, in the Winter of 1831-32. He had been a Presby- terian clergyman, settled in New Jersey, and was styled " Dr.," though I do not know that he ever studied or practised medi- cine. He had an active, inquiring mind, and a considerable knowledge of physics, metaphysics, and theology ; he was a fluent and forcible, though diffuse and egotistical, speaker; and he was possessed and impelled by definite convictions. He was at home in single combat alike mth Alcohol and Athe- ism ; but there was nothing narrow in his Temperance nor in his Orthodoxy. He believed, therefore taught, that Health is the necessary result of obedience. Disease of disobedience, to physical laws ; that all stimulants, whether alcoholic or narcotic, are pernicious, and should be rejected, save, possibly, in those rare cases where one poison may be wisely employed to neutralize or expel another : he condemned Tea and Coffee, as well as Tobacco, Opium, and Alcoholic potables, — Cider and Beer equally with Brandy and Gin, save that the poison is more concentrated in the latter. He disapproved of all spices and condiments save (grudgingly) a very little salt ; and he held that more suitable and wholesome food for hu- man beings than the flesh of animals can almost always be procured, and should be preferred. The bolting of meal, to separate its coarser from its finer particles, he also reprobated ; teaching that the ripe, sound berry of Wheat or Ptye, being ground to the requisite fineness, should in no manner be sifted, but should be made into loaves and eaten precisely as the mill-stones deliver it. Such is, in brief, "the Graham system," as I heard it expounded in successive lectures by its author, and fortified by evidence and reasoning which com- manded my general assent. A boarding-house was soon established, based on its principles, and I became an inmate thereof, as well as of others afterward founded on the same general ideas, though I never wholly rejected the use of meat. Tea I never cared for, and I used none at all for a quarter of a century ; now, I sometimes take it in moderation, when black and very good. Coffee had for years been my 104 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. chief luxury, — coffee without breakfast being far preferable, to my taste, to breakfast without coffee ; but, having drank a strong cup of it one evening at a festive board, I woke next morning to find my hand trembling ; and I at once said, " No more coffee ! " and have not drank it since. My taste grad- ually changed thereafter, so that I soon ceased to crave, and now thoroughly dislike, the beverage. And, while I eat meat, and deem it, Avhen imspoiled by decay or bad cookery, far less objectionable than hot bread, rancid butter, decayed fruits, wilted vegetables, and too many other contributions to our ordinary diet, I profoundly believe that there is better food obtainable by the great body of mankind than the butcher and the fisherman do or can supply ; and that a diet made up of sound grain (ground, but unbolted), ripe, undecayed fruits, and a variety of fresh, wholesome vegetables, with milk, but- ter, and cheese, and very little of spices or condiments, will enable our grandchildren to live in the average far longer, and fall far less frequently into the hands of the doctors, than we do. My wife, whose acquaintance I made at the Graham House, and who was long a more faithful, consistent disciple of Graham than I was, in our years of extreme poverty kept her house in strict accordance with her convictions ; never even deigning an explanation to her friends and relatives who from time to time visited and temporarily sojourned with us ; and, as politeness usually repressed complaint or inquiry on their part, their first experiences of a regimen which dispensed with all they deemed most appetizing could hardly be observed without a smile. Usually, a day, or at most two, of beans and potatoes, boiled rice, puddings, bread and butter, with no condiment but salt, and never a pickle, was all they could abide ; so, bidding her a kind adieu, each in turn departed to seek elsewhere a more congenial hospi- tality. " But what peculiar effects of a vegetable diet did you ex- perience ? " some will naturally ask. I answer generally, " Much the same as a rum-drinker notes after a brief return TEMPERANCE IN ALL THINGS. 105 to water-drinking exclusively. I first felt a quite perceptible sinking of animal spirits, a partial relaxation or depression of natural energies. It seemed as though I could not lift so much, jump so high, nor run so fast, as when I ate meat. After a time, this lowering of the tone of the physical system passed away or became imperceptible. On the other hand, I had no feeling of repletion or over-fidness ; I had no head- ache, and scarcely an ache of any sort ; my health was stub- bornly good ; and any cut or other flesh-wound healed more easily and rapidly than formerly. Other things being equal, I judge that a strict vegetarian will live ten years longer than a habitual flesh-eater, while suffering, in the average, less than haK so much from sickness as the carnivorous must. The simple fact, that animals are often diseased when killed for food, and that the flesh of those borne in crowded cars, from far inland, to be slaughtered for the sustenance of sea- board cities, is almost always and inevitably feverish and unwholesome, ought to be conclusive. On the whole, I am convinced, by the observation and experience of a third of a century, that all public danger lies in the direction opposite to that of vegetarianism, — that a thousand fresh Grahams let loose each year upon the public will not prevent the consumption, in the average, of far too much and too highly seasoned animal food ; while aU the Goughs and Neal Dows that ever were or can be scared up will not deter the body politic from pouring down its throat a great deal more "fire-water" than is good for it. And, while I look with interest on all attempts to substitute American wines and malt liquors for the more concentrated and maddening decoctions of the still, I have noted no such permanent triumphs in the thousand past attempts to cast out big devils by the incantations of little ones as would give me reason to put faith in the principle, or augur success for this latest experiment. XIV. POLITICS. AN" eager, omnivorous reader, especially of newspapers, from early childhood, I was an ardent politician when not yet half old enough to vote. I heartily sympathized with the Northern uprising against the admission of Missouri as a Slave State, and shared in the disappointment and chagrin so widely felt when that uprising was circumvented and defeated by what was caUed a Compromise. I think few of us blamed the Southern politicians for their agency in our defeat; but the score of Northern Senators and Representatives who (as we thought) betrayed us were thenceforth marked men, and few indeed of them were ever again successful aspirants to popular favor. AVlien, in 1824, the country was freshly agitated and di- vided, after several years of general calm, by the nomination of William H. Crawford, of Georgia, for President, in a caucus attended by less than a third of the Members of Congress, — considerably less than half of those who were chosen by the dominant party, — all New England became zealously anti- Caucus, and her electoral vote was cast solid for John Quincy Adams ; there being no serious opposition among the masses, though several of her leading politicians, and hitherto most influential journals, were vehemently for Crawford. The choice in the House of Adams for President, by the help of Mr. Clay and his friends, suited us exactly, and all the more that Mr. Clay was eminently National in his views and feel- ings, a leading champion of Internal Improvements, Protection to Home Industry, and every good work. But the hostile POLITICS. 107 combination soon thereafter formed of the lately warring sup- porters of Jackson, Crawford, and Calhoun respectively, did not please us at all; Calhoim especially — having been a National man, a supporter of Protection, Eiver and Harbor Im- provement, &c., while in Congress, and having been generally sustained by our section for Vice-President — was regarded, up our way, as a renegade from principle for oflfi.ce and power. The fierce personal warfare waged upon Adams and Clay for their alleged coalition, by and in full view of this hostile com- bination, excited our wrath and scorn ; but this did not over- bear the fact that their three factions united were an over- match for our two ; and, as Crawford died soon after Adams's accession, they were enabled to achieve what would now-a- days be called a close connection, by running Jackson for President, mth Calhoun for Vice-President. We ought to have countered this by nominating Clay with Adams, or (better still) by having Adams decline a reelection, and run- ning Clay for President, with AValter Forward, of Pennsylvania, or Smith Thompson, of New York, for Vice-President; but everything went wrong with us : the sudden death of De Witt Clinton consolidated many of his personal followers with their life-long adversaries in the support of Jackson for President, with Van Buren for Governor of New York ; our nomination of Eichard Push, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-Presi- dent was injudicious, and gave us no strength ; and our reasonable hopes that the Tariff question would secure us Ohio with Kentucky, and give us a fair chance for Pennsyl- vania, were blighted by the tactics of our antagonists : Van Buren, Silas Wright, Buchanan, the Jackson delegations from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky, in solid column, with all but two or three members from New York, uniting (in 1828) to frame and pass the highest and most Protective Tariff that had ever been proposed, over the votes of a majority of the Adams men from New England. Outmanoeuvred on every side, we were clearly foredoomed to defeat ; the loss of Mr. Clay's own Kentucky was a blow for which her preceding election of Members to Congress had partly prepared us, 108 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. though we carried, by a close vote, her Governor (Metcalf) in the spirited August election of this year; but Indiana, and even Ohio, went with her, though we had carried the latter in her State election scarcely a month before the popular vote for President. Louisiana, too, voted for Jackson, though with us in her preceding State contest ; New York (then choosing electors by districts) gave Adams but 16 votes to 20 for his opponent; and so we were badly beaten, carrying but 84 electors, while Jackson — having every vote below the Poto- mac, and all west of the Alleghanies — had more than double that niunber. In the succeeding Presidential contest (1832) we had scarcely a chance. Anti-Masonry had divided us, and driven thousands of Adams men over to Jackson, whose personal popularity was very great, especially with the non-reading class, and who had strengthened himself at the North by his Tariff Messages and his open rupture with Calhoun. New Hampshire and Maine had already gone over to him ; Ver- mont voted for Wirt, the Anti-Masonic candidate ; Ohio, dis- tracted by Anti-Masonry, went again for Jackson ; New York (now choosing electors by general ticket) went solid for him, with Pennsylvania, and even New Jersey : so that Mr. Clay, though carrying his own Kentucky, made but a sorry figure in the electoral aggregate. Massacliusetts, Ehode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and part of Maryland (by districts), were all the States that voted for him, save his own. South Carolina now threw away her vote for President on John Floyd, of Virginia, and proceeded to nullify the Tariff, -which had just been somewhat reduced, — in part, to placate her. But Van Biiren had been substituted for Calhoun as Vice-President, and she would not he placated. Her nullifi- cation was abandoned, rather than suppressed, and this only after the main point had been virtually yielded to her by a graduated reduction of the Tariff throughout the next ten years to a purely Eevenue standard. Though overborne, she was practically triumpliant. Mr. Clay proposed tlie Compro- mise Tariff, that gave her ample excuse for receding from her POLITICS. 109 untenable position ; but only after , it had been rendered certain that a more immediate and sweeping reduction of the Tariff, already reported by Mr. Verplanck, from the Committee of Ways and Means, would be carried if this were forborne. So the land had peace again for a brief season. The United States Bank war, which soon followed, had already been inaugurated by General Jackson's imperious will. Early in his first term, he had been prompted to re- quire the removal of Jeremiah Mason, President of the branch at Portsmouth, N. H., who was obnoxious to his leading friends in that State. He was not gratified. Though the first charter of the bank would not expire till 1836, he de- monstrated against its renewal so early as 1830 ; telling Con- gress that the question should be promptly acted on, so that arrangements might seasonably be made, in case it should not be rechartered, for supplying its place as a financial agent of the Government, and a commercial convenience to the people. A Jackson Congress, in due time, took the matter in hand, and, in 1832, voted a renewal of the charter, by large majorities in either House. The bill was vetoed, and the Veto Message complained that the act of rechartering was premature ! That Congress, prior to its final adjournment, heard vaguely that the President intended to remove the deposits of public money from the detested Bank ; whereupon the House voted, by three to one, that they ought not to be removed. William J. Duane, of Pennsylvania, was then Secretary of the Treasury. The President required him to remove the deposits. He declined. Jackson thereupon removed liim ; appointing in liis stead Eoger B. Taney, of Maryland, w^ho proceeded at once to do his master's bidding. When a new Congress assembled (December, 1833), the Federal deposits, as they accrued, were being dispersed among a multiplicity of State banks, — the least able being of course the most needy and clamorous for a share of the pap, on the strength of their directors' professed devotion to the Administration and its "revered chief" I have always — at least, since I read Dr. Franklin's auto- 110 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. biography, more than forty years ago — been an advocate of paper money. But I want it to be money, — convertible at pleasure into coin, — not printed lies, even though they fail to deceive. From 1818 up to 1830, this country suffered from a dearth of money. Tens of thousands were unwillingly idle from month to month, who would have been usefully and profitably emjjloyed had the country been blest with an ade- quate circulating medium. Comparatively few houses were built in those years, because of the scarcity of money, which palsied enterprise and petrified labor. As a journeyman, I could rarely find work in the country, because there was so little money ; and, on coming to the city, I found that pay- ments by master mechanics to their men were mainly made in " uncurrent " notes of State banks, which must often, if not generally, be taken to a broker and "shaved" before they would pay board or buy groceries. The consequent loss was something ; the inevitable bother and vexation were a far greater nuisance. A paper currency everywhere current, every^vhere convertible into coin, was my ideal ; hence I was not partial to local emissions of paper, but a zealous, deter- mined advocate of a National Bank. The United States Bank, being required to pay over the millions it held on deposit for the Government, receiving no more, began, of course, to contract its loans. It could do no otherwise ; especially as an attempt, evidently inspired, had been made by Jackson brokers to break its branch at Savan- nah by quietly collecting a large quantity of its notes and presenting them at once for payment, hoping that they could not all be met, and that it might thereupon be claimed that the Bank had failed. It was charged by its adversaries that the contraction consequent upon the removal of the Deposits was too rapid and too great ; in fact, that its purpose was the creation of commercial distress and panic. This may have been ; but a very decided contraction by that Bank was in- evitable ; and it could have pursued no course that did not expose it to accusation and reproach. I presume it struggled for its life, as most of us would do, if assailed with deadly POLITICS, 111 intent. With the removal of the Deposits, its power to regu- late the currency lapsed, and its duty as well. Those Banks to which the Government had transferred its funds and its favors should unitedly have assumed and exercised the fimc- tions of a regulator, or confessed their iaability. As the pressure for money increased, the political elements were lashed to fury, and our city, the focus of American com- merce, became the arena of a fierce electioneering struggle. Hitherto, the Jackson ascendency had, since the death of De Witt Clinton, been so decided, that our charter elections had usually been scarcely contested ; but the stirring debates daily received from Washington, the strivings of merchants and banks to avert bankruptcy, the daily tightening of the money market, and the novel hopes of success inspired in the breasts of those who now took the name of "Wliigs" (to indicate their repugnance to unauthorized assumptions of Executive power), rendered New York for some weeks a boiling caldron of political passions. Our three days' election (April, 1834) was the most vehement and keenly contested struggle which I ever witnessed. Our city was then divided into fifteen Wards, with but one poll to each Ward ; and I should esti- mate the average attendance on each poll at little less than one thousand. I am certain that I saw the masses surround- ing the Fourth and Sixth Ward polls respectively (then but two or three blocks apart), so mingled that you could not say where the one ended and the other began. There were some fights, of course, and one general collision in the Sixth Ward that might have resulted in deplorable bloodshed ; but peace was soon restored. In the event, the Jacksonites elected their Mayor (Cornelius W. Lawrence) over the Whig candidate (Gulian C. Verplanck) by 384 majority, which was less than their overplus of voters naturalized on the last day of the poll. The total vote was nearly 35,000 ; which was probably a closer approach to the whole number of legal voters than was ever drawn out before or since. The Whigs carried both branches of the Common Council, giving them the control of most of the city patronage ; so that the result was generally and justly regarded as a drawn battle. 112 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. My concern printed a daily campaign penny paper, entitled The Constitution, through most of that year, and I was a free contributor to its columns, though its editor and publisher was Mr. AchiUes E. Grain, who died some thirty years ago. It did not pay, and the iirm of Greeley and Winchester were losers by it, counting my editorial assistance worth nothing. William H. Seward, then thirty-four years old, and just closing with distinction a four years' term in the State Senate, was our candidate for Governor, with Silas M. Stillwell for Lieutenant ; and we fondly hoped to carry the State in the November election. But meantime the State Banks, wherein the Federal revenue was deposited (" Pet Banks," we Whigs termed them), had been enabled to effect an enormous expansion of their loans and issues ; and the country — not yet feeling the Tariff reductions which the Compromise of 1833 had barely in- augurated — was launched on the flood of a factitious but seductive semblance of prosperity. Money was abundant; every one had employment who wanted, and pay if he earned it ; property was rapidly appreciating in value ; factories and furnaces had full work, and were doing well ; so, when the Fall election came, we made a gallant fight, but were badly defeated, — Marcy being reelected Governor over Seward by some 13,000 majority, — more than he had over Granger in 1832, — and the Whigs, beaten pretty generally and decisively, relapsed into a torpor whence they were scarcely aroused by the ensuing Presidential Election, wherein General Harrison was made their candidate for President, with Francis Granger for Vice-President, while Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, ran for President, with John Tyler, of Virginia, for Vice-President, on an independent ticket which contested the South with the Jackson regulars, who alone held a National Convention, in which they nominated Martin Van Buren for President, with Colonel Ptichard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, for Vice. I was among the very few in the Eastern States who had taken any interest in bringing forward General Harrison as a candidate, believing that there was the raw material for a good run in his history and character ; but this was not generally credited. POLITICS. 113 at least in our State, whicli, in a languid contest on a light vote, went for Van Buren, Johnson, and Alarcy, by some 28,000 majority. When, however, the returns from other States came pouring in, and it was found that General Harri- son had carried, with Vermont only of the New England States, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, and had barely failed to carry Pennsylvania, while Wliite had carried Tennessee and Georgia, barely failing in North Carolina, and in two or three Southwestern States, and that Virginia had refused her vote to Johnson, so that he had failed of an election by the people, a^d had to be chosen over Granger by the Senate, there was a general waking up to the conviction, that either Harrison was more popular, or Van Buren more obnoxious, than had been supposed in our State, and that the latter might have been beaten by seasonalDle concert and effort. In that slouching; AVliig defeat of 1836 lay the germ of the overwhelming Whig triumph of 1840. Mr. Van Buren's election to the Presidency always seemed to me anomalous, and I am not yet fuUy reconciled to it. He had none of that personal magnetism which made General Jackson and Mr. Clay respectively the idols of their contend- ing parties. He was not even an orator, was far inferior to Silas Wright as a debater, and to William L. Marcy in execu- tive ability. I believe his strength lay in his suavity. He was the reconciler of the estranged, the harmonizer of those who were at feud, among his fellow-partisans. An adroit and subtle, rather tlian a great man, I judge that he owed his elec- tion, first to the Vice-Presidency, then to the Presidency, to the personal favor and imperious will of Andrew Jackson, with whom " Love me, love my dog," was an iron rule. Had there been no Jackson, Van Buren wovdd never have attained the highest olfice in the gift of his countrymen. XV. PLAY-DAYS. WHOEVEE has spent a few weeks in Paris has doubt- less paused to witness, on the greensward enclosed by the Palais Royal, or elsewhere, groups of young children at play, and been charmed by their unconscious spirit, freedom, and grace of manner. The French chronicler's observation, centuries ago, — " The English take their pleasures sadly," — will be brought to his mind on almost every occasion when he witnesses an attempt at festivity on the part of the neigh- boring islanders or of their descendants on this side of the Atlantic. Our Scotch-Irish settlers in southern New Hamp- shire brought with them from the other side a broad humor, a love of fun, a spirit of hospitality, a regard for kinship and clanship, which had not wholly faded out in my boyhood, or been drowned in the sea of British nationality which in time rolled over the continent, submerging the islets of Scotch, Hollandic, Swedish, French, or other diverse origin, which had for a season gleamed above the waves. The low-born, rudely bred Englishman has but one natural fashion of enjoy- ing himself, — by getting drunk. We have modified this somewhat ; but, as a rule, our thrifty, self-respecting people have liitherto allowed themselves too few holidays, and failed to make the best use of those they actually took. Fifty years have passed since I first stole down, one foggy morning, to the brook that ran through the west side of my fatlier's iiirm in New Hampshire, and, dropping my line off the bridge, felt a bite almost instantly, and, hauling up, drew in a nice speckled trout. I had tried to fish before, but PLAY-DAYS. 115. without success ; henceforth, through boyhood, I was an enthusiastic, persevering fisherman, tliough never a master of the art. The modern sophistications of fly and reel were unknown in rural New England in those days ; hook, line, and sinker gave adequate warning to every considerate, wary fish of what he- had to expect if he bit ; but fishermen were fewer and brooks more shady, less capricious in volume, than the clearing away of woods has since made them, while in- tellectual delights were rarer and less . inviting : so fishing was largely the' pleasure of the gay aiid .the business of the grave. Our rivers, unvexed by mill-dams, swarmed in their season with shad, lamprey-eels, &c., and afforded some sal- mon, as weU as fish of less consideration. Even the sea was not too far to be visited by adventurous parties, intent on a week's profitable sport. Winter brought its sleigh-loads of fresh cod, frozen as soon as fairly out of .water, and so retain- ing the sweetness which soon vanishes forever ; and I reckon that, down to 1800, the people of New England had eaten many more pounds of fish than of beef and mutton together, — perhaps of all meats save those obtained by the chase. In Vermont, the clay soil of the Champlain Valley dis- colors the brooks when full and repels the trout ; but the abundant lakes and lakelets used to abound in perch, bass, and sunfish, while the larger streams afforded, in addition, eels and pike. East Bay — the common estuary of the Poultney and Castleton creeks, and dividing Westhaven from Hampton, K Y. — is, in Spring, the resort of a small;' peculiar shad, which, with a few pike, bass, mullet, &c., come up from the Lake to spawn, and are caught with seines dra^n by two fishermen, who wade through the swollen stream, — one of them sometimes obliged to swim, — while great blocks of ice, left aground by the receding floods, often lie slowly wasting along the bank. The melted snow from the moun- tains eastward stings like a hornet as you enter it ; so that, if this were not sport, it would be disagreeable ; but I have often, when ten to twelve years old, carried the in-shore staff while my father took the deeper track, which immersed him 116 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. up to his neck ; we dipping together at his word of command, and then gathering up our net and carrying out therein, from no lisli at all up to six or eight. I have known a dozen taken at one haul ; but this was most extraordinary. In Summer, w^e sometimes caught a fine pike or eel with hook and line in the basin beneath the fifty-foot cataract by which the blended creeks tumble into the Bay ; but fishing here was too slow for any sportsman less persistent than I then was. I have sat here alone in the dense darkness of a wooded abyss, where the fall drowned all sounds but its own, from 8 to 11 P. M., without being blest with a bite, and then felt my way up through the Egyptian darkness of the forest hillside to the road, and so home, pondering on the fickleness of fortune ; yet eager to try again whenever oppor- tunity should favor. I always had my week's work allotted me when I could, and generally succeeded in redeeming at least the Saturday afternoon for my favorite pastime. And I wish here to bear my testimony against a current theory which imports that boys are naturally lazy. My experience contra- dicts it. My schoolmates and neighbors, who had a great deal more leisure than I, were frequent visitors to the field wherein I was working out my " stint," and very rarely hesi- tated to turn in, with hearty good-will, and help me out, so that I might devote the rest of the day to fishing, ball, or other sport with them. A lazy man, in my view, is always the pitiable victim of miseducation. Each human being, properly trained, works as freely and naturally as he eats ; only the victims of parental neglect or misguidance hate work, and i)refer hunger and rags with idleness, to thrift won by industry and patient effort. Tliere came a day, early in June, 1824, when I had ran- somed from toil the afternoon for perch-fishing in " Inman Pond," a lovely tarn, lying lonely among wooded hills in Fairhaven, some two miles east of our home. I was unde- niably ill, in the forenoon, so that I was twice compelled to desist from labor and lie down ; hence, my mother judiciously urged me to let the fish alone for that day, and care for my PLAY-DAYS. 117 health. I had not fished, for months, however ; the day was glorious ; I set off for the pond a little after noon, and was dropping the perch a line within the hour. But my head soon grew heavy ; there Avas a strange ache in my every hone ; the breeze that sped gently across the pond, tliougli really warm and bland, seemed to chiR me as never before. I was soon compelled to put aside my pole, and lie down, shivering, on the bare rock which here formed the shore ; thus passing two hours in a semi-conscious state of mingled delirium and suftering. When the fit of ague passed off, I rose and started homeward, but was constrained to stop at the first house, half a mile from home, where I passed the night. I had seen fever and ague before, but never felt it ; and I made haste to terminate the unpleasant acquaintance. Judging solely from my own experience, I believe he who wiU begin with an emetic directly after his first fit, and fol- low this with heavy and frequent doses of Peruvian Bark (I distrust Quinine, as less natural and more perilous), taking care to eat very little, and that of the simplest vegetalile food, and do absolutely no work at all, may break the fits directly, and return to work quite well after a fortnight. He who neglects or trifles with this scourge may lose a Summer by it, and never again be restored to his pristine health and vigor. Ball was a common diversion in Vermont while I lived there ; yet I never became a proficient at it, probably for want of time and practice. To catcli a flying ball, propelled Try a muscidar arm straight at my nose, and coming on so swiftly that 1 could scarcely see it, was a feat requiring a celerity of action, an electric sympathy of eye and brain and hand, which my few and far-between hours snatched from labor for recre- ation did not suffice to acquire. Call it a knack, if you will ; it was quite beyond my powers of acquisition. " Practice makes perfect." I certainly needed the practice, thougli I am not sure that any amount of it would have made me a perfect ball-player. I like popular amusements, especially those which dcA^elop 118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. and strengthen the muscles ; but I do not like the modern matches made up between clubs located hundreds of miles apart. According to my notion, the prize should be awarded in these matches to the side which makes the shorter score. In awarding the palm for such a contest, count my vote al- ways for the beaten party. They doubtless mind their proper business better, and perform their duties as fathers, husbands, sons, clerks, journeymen, apprentices, &c., more thoroughly than do the victors. It is an honor not to beat, but to be beaten, in a match of this sort. I wish it were practicable to win our countrymen to a wiser and more equable frame of mind respecting recreations. Many sourly conteuni and reject them altogether ; and I think this was a prevalent mistake of our better class, up to a late period. Now, the excess seems to be of an opjjosite character. Too many make play a business, when it should be only a diversion from business. The youth, who has given his minority to study and play alternately, with no experience of work, is deplorably ill fitted to grapple with the stern realities of responsible life. His muscles need harden- ing ; his sinews have not been disciplined to the Avork that solicits them. As between a youth all work and one all play, though neither is commendable, the former is pref- erable. I never saw a game of Billiards played, and know nothing of Bowling ; yet I judge this latter a capital in-door exercise for persons of sedentary pursuits and habits. These I would advise to shun such games as Chess, Cards, Checkers, Back- gammon, &c., because of their inevitable tendency to impair digestion and incite headache. If played at aU, they should be played by men who give their days to muscular, out- door exertion, and at night feel too tired to study. I tried fishing again, after being weaned of it throughout my apprentices! lip, while stopping with my father at the West, and had some little success in the creeks adjacent to his new home ; but I was no longer fascinated by the sport, while the proceeds were of slender bullc and value. The PLAY-DAYS. 119 streams were full of trees and roots, while overgrown by a tangle of Umbs and bushes ; the sawdust gradually repelled or killed the trout ; the business involved more plague than profit of any kind ; and I soon deserted it. I had become, in my poor way, a fisher of men. I protest against making a business of play. The Yankees are prone to " run the thing into the ground," be it what it may. We work immoderately, and play ditto. I have seen very few hohdays during my thirty-six years' sojourn in New York ; and such is the experience of a large class ; while others have too many play-days, — far too many. We must somehow strike a general average, for mutual benefit and the promotion of public health. I have often cooled my imagination, amid the fervid and sweltering heats of -a summer of constant work in the city, with a dream of spending a week amid the lakes and moun- tains, under the dense forest-shades of " John Brown's Tract," as we term the great northern Avilderness wherein the Hud- son, Mohawk, Au- Sable, Eacket, Black, and other rivers of. the eastern half of our State, have their sources ; and, though I never found time to set foot therein, I have hardly yet relinquished the hope that I may do so. I was ever the zealous advocate of all works of internal improvement, so called, save those which aim at the heart of that wilderness, threatening to hunt the deer from their last refuge on our soil, and denude of their forest-covering the springs which feed our most useful and valued streams. Strip " John Brown's Tract " of its timber, and the Hudson will, from June to October, cease to be navigable by floating palaces to Al- bany ; while desolating floods, especially in Spring, will do immense damage from Utica down to Castleton. I presume, if I were ever to have the week I covet, I should find it insufferably te.dious, — the mosquitoes biting superbly ; the trout shyly, or not at all, — and should long for a return to civilization, with its hourly toils and struggles, its thronged pavements, and its damp newspapers with breakiast. Still, I should like to try the experiment ; and I hope our children 120 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. will see, though I shall not, the greater portion of Pike and Monroe Counties, with other sterile mountain districts of eastern Pennsylvania, converted into spacious deer-parks of fifty to five hundred square miles each, enclosed by massive stone walls, intersected by belts of grass traversing each tiny valley (so as speedily to stop the running of any fires that might chance to be started), planted with the best timber, and held by large companies of shareholders for sporting, under proper regulations. These lands are not now worth five dollars per acre in the average; but the timber on them would soon be cheap at one hundred dollars per acre, if tliis plan were adopted. They are fuU of petty lakes, and of spring-fed, swiftly running streams, which would soon abound with the finest trout if they were simply let alone ; with proper arrangements for breeding and feeding, they would produce more of this dehcate fish than New York and Phila- delphia ever yet saw. A century hence, were those bleak mountains thus dealt witlr, they would be covered, as of old, with a magnificent forest, containing more serviceable pine than is now standing in all our States east of the Potomac and Lake Erie, and then worth at least five hundred dollars per acre. Yet the fact remains, that we do not enjoy our holidays, — do not know how to play judiciously and in moderation. Though often invited, I never yet went on a railroad excur- sion that was to outlast the day of starting ; knowing by in- stinct that it would prove a failure so far as enjoyment was concerned. And my recollection of steamboat excursions, however brief, is, that they were generally bores. I recollect that, one Foiirth of July, long ago, an excursion to Sandy Hook was advertised that seemed specially inviting; so I overruled my distrust, and went. At 11 A. M., we passen- gers, some hundreds in number, were debarked, by small boats, on tbe back side of the island, which we found a sand- heap, thinly l>ristled with bushes, — its solitary dwelling inhal)ited by tlie keeper of the light-liouse, whose limited stock of bread and bacon scarcely afforded us a fair mouthful PLAY-DAYS. 121 each. Our steamboat had gone back to the city for a second load ; so we bathed, and killed time as well as we could, until «he returned, — running aground as she attempted to near the shore. We got aboard, and waited dreary hours -i— hun- gry, crowded, and sullen — for the tide to rise and iioat us off; being tantahzed throughout the evening by the shooting up of abundant rockets over the city, barely within our range of vision. At length, we partly floated, partly pidled off; and, at midnight, we were landed at the Battery, — as thor- oughly wearied and disgusted a lot of disappointed pleasure- seekers as ever crept silently to their homes. I have never since hankered after a seaward excursion. "We have teachers of every art, science, and ology ; why not a teacher of the art of enjoying leisure, — of making play a little less wearisome than work ? Take excursions to illus- trate my idea. Wliy should not any person above ten years old know better than to embark on a crowded vessel or train with some hundreds of others, mainly total strangers, expect- ing to enjoy in their company a trip of several days ? But if, instead of this, a small party of intimate, devoted friends, of reasonably accordant tastes, education, and habits, were to charter a little steamboat, or a train, or a dozen wagons, and so betake themselves to some quiet ' nook where they would be safe from intrusion or prying curiosity, — say an islet off the coast or in the St. Lawrence, a lake-side in our Northern wilderness, a cluster of deserted shingle-makers' huts on the mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania, where fish or game was procurable, and cool breezes in IMidsummer might be confidently expected, — they surely might expect to redeem a full week from care and trouble, and return to their homes more vigorous, more healthful, more at peace with themselves and with others, — cured of these interminable headaches, and sound in body and soul. Wlio will teach us incessant workers how to achieve leisure and enjoy it ? XVI. TRIUMPH. ME. VAN" BUREN" was inaugurated President on the 4th of March, 1837; when General Jackson retired to his Hermitage, congratulating himself that he left the Ameri- can people prosperous and happy. Never was man more mistaken. He had just before pointed to the immense sales of public lands, in 1835-36, as proof of increased and general addiction to agricultuj-e, when, in fact, it proved only a pleth- ora of currency, and a consequent high-tide of speculation. At length, convinced that something was wrong, the General attempted to dam the flood by a " specie circular," prescribing that only coin should thenceforth be received in payment for public lands. This device precipitated the catastrophe it was intended to avert. The harvest of 1836 had been generally bad, while our importations had been quite large ; we were compelled to import grain, while heavily in debt to Europe for goods ; thus our banks were drained of specie both ways, — to pay for lands in the West and South, and for grain and goods daily pouring in from the Old World. They held out so long as they could, and then gave way, — those of our city sus])ending specie payment on the 10th of May, and all others directly afterward, save that some of those located in the southwest had done so some days before. Samuel Swartwout, Collector of Customs at this port, at first proclaimed that he would continue to receive bank-notes for duties, notwith- standing the suspension (which was promptly legalized by our Jackson legislature) ; but he was soon overruled from Washington ; and the duties on imports — indeed, the entire TRIUMPH. 123 Federal revenue — were thenceforth collected and kept in coin alone. The revenues of all the States, however, were still collected, kept, and paid out in bank-notes, which con- tinued to be the currency of the people. Mr. Van Buren promptly called the new Congress to meet in extraordinary session on the first Monday in September, when he addressed to it a Message which laid the blame of suspension on the banks, which were accused of over-issuing and over-lending ; and he thereupon insisted that the Gov- ernment should divorce itseK from all connection with banks, and should thenceforth collect, keep, and pay out its revenues in coin only, through the agency of special depositories, form- ing what he termed the Independent Treasury. An able, earnest, searching debate in the House was elicited by this proposition, which was terminated by a motion of Hon. John C. Clark, of this State, that tlie bill providing for the Inde- pendent Treasury (so called) do lie on the table ; which was carried in a full House by a small majority. Mr. Clark had been a Jackson- Van Bm'en Democrat, but was henceforth accounted a " Conservative," and acted openly with the Whigs, as did Hon. Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, one of our United States Senators, and many other leading men hitherto Democrats. The Independent Treasury, thus condemned by the House, \ remained in force, by the President's direction, until it was / finally enacted in the Summer of 1840. The commercial revulsion, which was rather apprehended than fuUy experienced in 1834, was abundantly realized in 1837. Manufactories were stopped, and their " hands " thrown out of work. Trade was almost stagnant. Bankruptcies among men of business were rather tlie rule than the excep- tion. Property was sacrificed at auction — often at sheriff's or assignee's sale — for a fraction of its value ; and thousands, who had fondly dreamed themselves millionnaires, or on the point of becoming such, awoke to the fact that they Avere banla^upt. The banks were, of course, in trouble, — those 124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. wliich liad been Government depositories, or "pets," rather deeper than the rest. Looking at the matter from their point of view, they had been first seduced into a questionable path, and were now reviled and assailed for yielding to tlieir seducers. Soon were heard the rumblings of a political earthquake. Scarcely a State elected Members of Congress or a Governor in 1837, after the Suspension of Specie Payments ; but the Legislative and local elections of Autumn sufficiently indi- cated the popular revulsion. When New York came to vote, in November, the gale had stiffened into a tornado. The Whigs carried New York City, — which they had never done before, — with Westchester, Orange, Dutchess, Greene, Oneida, Onondaga, and other counties hitherto overwhelmingly Demo- cratic, giving them six of the eight Senate districts, including the First and Second. Herkimer, Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Suf- folk, and a few smaller counties, were all that clung to the waning fortunes of Van Buren, — the Whigs choosing 100 out of the 128 Members of Assembly. The Senate, being chosen but one fourth annually, remained strongly Democratic. I had been active, as usual, in the canvass, but not con- spicuously so, — my personal embarrassments constraining me not to be. I had been privately tendered a place on the City Assembly ticket, but felt obliged to decline it. Outside of the city, I had no political, and little personal, acquaintance in the State ; having never yet attended a State Convention. I was somewhat surprised, therefore, at a visit, in my rude editorial attic, a few days after the extent of our victory was ascertained, from a stranger, who introduced himself as Mr. Thurlow Weed, editor of The Albany Evening Journal, who, with Mr. Lewis Benedict, also of Albany, was stopping at the City Hotel, and wished to confer with me at their lodgings. I accompanied ]\lr. Weed to his hotel, where the business which had brouglit the friends to New York was unfolded. Decided as had been our triumph in the State, it had been won on a moderate vote, and quite as much by the failure of TRIUMPH. 125 Democrats to exercise their right of suffrage as by their voting the Whig ticket. Tlie next election would naturally bring many of these stay-at-homes to the polls, and — there being a Governor and Representatives in Congress to be then chosen, with a United States Senator in prospect — would inevitably draw out a heavy vote. To maintain and confirm the Whig ascendency, it had been resolved to publish, throughout 1838, a cheap weekly journal, to be called The Jeffersonian, which I had been pitched upon as the proper ' person to edit. I , believe Mr. Weed first designated me for the post, though he knew nothing of me except by reading my paper. The New- Yorker; for though I had written for several Whig dailies, mainly of the ephemeral type, I had done so anonymously. The Jeffersonian was to be a small octavo, issued weekly for a year, and virtually given away for the nominal price of fifty cents per annum, — the expense of its issue being made up by voluntary contributions from wealthy or spirited Whigs. I was offered $ 1,000 to serve as editor, and concluded to accept it, though this would oblige me to spend a good part of my time — in Summer, liaK of each week ; in Winter, nearly the whole — in Albany. About two months thereafter, having put my affairs into as good a shape as possible, I took stage in Cortlandt Street, one cold Winter morning, and had a sleigh-ride thence up the west side of the Hudson to Albany, where I arrived in the afternoon of the third day. My No. 1 appeared in due time thereafter ; but, as my small paper did not require all my time, I made condensed reports of the Assembly debates for The Evening Journal, and wrote some articles for its editorial columns. The new era in politics had called many of our foremost men to Albany. The courtly and gracious Luther Bradish was Speaker of the Assembly. Our city was represented therein by several notables, — among them David B. Ogden, Willis Hall, Samuel B. Euggles, and Adoniram Chandler. We had chosen as Senator Gulian C. Verplanck, whom we vainly tried to make Mayor in 1834. From Albany, Daniel 126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. D. Barnard ; from Troy, Day 0. Kellogg ; from Oneida, For- tune C. White ; from Onondaga, James E. Lawrence, Victoiy Birdseye, and Azariah Smith ; from Eochester, Derick Sibley ; from Livingston, George W. Patterson, — were Whig Members of Assembly. On the other side stood Abijah Mann, of Her- kimer, Preston King, of St. Lawrence, and Eichard Hulbert, of Jefferson, with several others of decided ability and clever- ness in parliamentary warfare. The Free Banking System — for which our State is specially indebted to Willis Hall — was developed and established that Winter, — a great and admirable improvement on the corrupting political monopoly it superseded. Our banks were again allowed to issue small bills, which the last preceding Legislature had forbidden. The partisan device whereby County Judges (there w^ere then several in each county) were interpolated into the County Boards of Supervisors for the purpose of making certain county appointments, was knocked on the head. In short, I believe our State has, since 1824, had no other Legislature so able, nor one that did so much good and so little harm, as that of 1838. The Jeffersonian was a campaign paper, but after a fashion of its own. It carefully eschewed abuse, scurrility, and rail- ing accusations. Its editorials were few, brief, and related to the topics of the day, — rarely evincing partisanship, never bitterness. Its pages were mainly devoted to the ablest and calmest speeches made in Congress, — generally to those which opposed the Independent (or Sub-) Treasury scheme and its adjuncts, though other able essays also found place in it. In short, it aimed to convince and win by candor and moderation, rather than overbear by passion and vehemence. Its circulntion was, throughout, about 15,000 copies ; and, being mainly read by those who took no other paper, I think it did good. Had it been conducted on the high-pressure principle, it would probably have had a larger circulation, and perhaps done no good at all. I think its efficiency was some- what evidenced by the fact that, while the Whigs were beaten TRIUMPH. 127 that Fall in Maine, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio (which they had carried two years before), and in nearly or quite every State westward of Ohio, they were successful in the later election in New York, as the result of a desperate struggle, aad on an average vote largely beyond precedent, — William H. Seward ousting William L. Marcy from the Governor's chair, and Luther Bradish succeeding John Tracy as Lieu- tenant-Governor, — each by more than 10,000 majority. We carried also the Assembly (though by no such majority as the year before), and gained somewhat in the Senate ; but that branch was still adverse to us, owing to the dead weight accu- mulated in former years : so Governor Seward's nominations were all laid on the table, and our attempt to reelect Hon. N. P. Tallmadge' United States Senator was likewise defeated, — the law requiring each House to nominate a Senator, meet to compare nominations, and, in case of their disagreement, proceed to elect in joint ballot ; but the Democratic Senators evaded its requirement by each voting for a separate candi- date : so that the Senate made no nomination, and could not be compelled to go into joint ballot. Considerable excitement was caused by this evasion of a strictly prescribed duty ; and the Whigs, by desperate exer- tions, carried the State again in the ensuing election (Novem- ber, 1839), though this city, which for two years had gone with them, now went against them. There were three Sena- tors to be chosen this year in the Third (Albany and Dela- ware) District ; and the Whigs just carried them all, — one of them (General Erastus Eoot) by barely one majority. They had never triumphed in this district before ; and I think they never carried it again unless their adversaries were divided. And now, when the new Legislature met (January, 1840), we had, along with the Governor and Assembly, a clear majority (20 to 12) in the Senate, and a new chapter was to be opened. I was "svriting at a reporter's desk in the Senate, when, very soon after its first sitting had begun, some Wliig rose and moved that so and so (the Democratic incumbents) be re- moved from the posts of secretary, sergeant-at-arms, &c., and 128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. that so and so [nominees of a Whig caucus, held the night before] be appointed in their stead. At once, up rose the venerable but vigorous Colonel Samuel Young, of Saratoga, and for nearly an hour poured hot shot into the proposition, descanting on bleeding constitutions, outraged liberties, vio- larted rights, &c., &c. When he had blown out, Uncle Harry Livingston, of Dutchess, — a humorous old Whig, who, in the general overturn of 1837, had blundered into the Senate from the Second District, to the amazement of himself and of every- body else, — sprang to his feet. As we all knew that he could not make a speech, — in fact, had scarcely, till now, attempted it, — curiosity was on tiptoe to catch his first sen- tence ; but his consciousness that he had something good to say for a moment choked his powers of utterance. " Mr. Presi- dent " (che-hee-hee), — " Mr. President," he at length managed to say, " I take it that this is one of those questions that are settled by the rule of eic/hteen to fourteen." [Throughout the preceding session, every attempt to confirm one of Governor Seward's nominees resulted in this entry in the journal : "Laid on the table, — 18 to 14."] The hit was decided; the spec- tators roared ; the Senator from the Fourth was shut up ; and the Senate proceeded to appoint the Whig nominees without further opposition or demur. Mr. Tallmadge was soon re- elected to the Senate, and e"s^erything put in order for the decisive struggle of this eventful 1840. XVII. LOG-- CAB IN DAYS. NEW YOEK, which gave Mr. Van Biiren the largest ma- jority of any State in 1836, had been held against him throughout his administration, though she was his own State, and he had therein a powerful body of devoted, personal adherents, led by such men of eminent ability as Silas AVright, William L. Marcy, and Edwin Croswell. She had been so held by the talent, exertion, and -sagilance of men equally able and determined, among whom Thurlow Weed, William H. Seward (now Governor), John C. Spencer, and Willis Hall were conspicuous. But our majority of 15,000 in '37 had fallen to 10,000 in '38, and to 5,000 in '39, despite our best efforts ; Governor Seward's school recommendations and dis- pensation of State patronage had made him many enemies ; and the friends of ]\Ir. Van Buren counted, with reason, on carrying the State for his reelection, and against that of Governor Seward, in the impending struggle of 1840. Penn- sylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, and all the Northwest, had been carried against the Wliigs in the most recent contests ; Mr. Van Buren's star was clearly in the ascendant at the South ; while New England and New Jersey were nicely balanced, — Massachusetts, as well as Maine and New Hampshire, having chosen a Democratic governor (]Marcus Morton) in 1839. Mr. Van Buren's Administration, though at first condemned, was now sustained by a popular majority : New York alone — his own State — stood forth the flagship of the Opposition. Both parties were silently preparing to put forth their very best efforts in the Presidential contest in prospect ; but fully frsvo 9 130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. thirds of the States, choosing about that proportion of the electors, were now ranged on the Democratic side, — many of them by impregnable majorities, — while scarcely one State was imquestionably AVhig. Mr. Van Buren, when first over- whelmed by the popular surge that followed close upon the collapse of the Pet Bank system, had calmly and with dignity appealed to the people's " sober second thought " ; and it now seemed morally certain that he would be triumphantly re- elected. Such were the auspices under which the first Wliig National Convention (the second National Convention ever held by any party, — that held in 1840 by the Democrats at Baltimore, which nominated Van Buren and Johnson, having been the first) assembled at Harrisburg, Pa., early in December, 1839. Of its doings I was a deeply interested observer. The States were nearly all represented, though in South Carolina there were no Wliigs but a handful ; even the name was unknown in Tennessee, and the party was feeble in several other States. But the delegations convened included many names widely and favorably known, — including two ex-Governors of Vir- ginia (James Barbour and John Tyler), one of Kentucky (Thomas Metcalf), one of Ohio (Joseph Vance), and at least one from several other States. I recollect at least two ex- Governors of Pennsylvania (John Andrew Shultze and Joseph Ptitner) as actively counselling and sympathizing with the delegates. The sittings of the Convention were protracted through three or four days, during which several ballots for President were taken. There was a plurality, though not a majority, in favor of nominating Mr. Clay ; but it was in good part com- posed of delegates from States whicli could not rationally be expected to vote for any Wliig candidate. On the other hand, the delegates from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana said, " We can carry our States for General Harrison, but not for Mr. Clay." New York and New Jersey cast their earlier votes for General Scott, but stood ready to unite on General Harrison whenever it should be clear that he could be nomi- LOG-CABIN DAYS. 131 nated and elected ; and they ultimately did so. The delegates from Maine and Massachusetts contributed powerfully to secure General Harrison's ultimate nomination. Each delega- tion cast its vote through a committee, and the votes were added up by a general committee, which reported no names and no figures, but simply that no choice had been effected ; until at length the Scott votes were all cast for Harrison, and his nomination thus effected ; when the result was proclaimed. Governor Seward, who was in Albany (there were no tele- graphs in those days), and Mr. Weed, who was present, and very influential in producing the result, were strongly blamed by the ardent, uncalculating supporters of Mr. Clay, as having cheated him out of the nomination, — I could never see with what reason. They judged that he could not be chosen, if nominated, while another could be, and acted accordingly. If politics do not meditate the achievement of beneficent ends through the choice and use of the safest and most effective means, I wholly misapprehend them. Mr. John Tyler, with nearly or quite all his fellow-dele- gates from Virginia, was for Clay first, last, and all the time ; for him whether he could be elected or not. "Wlien it w^as announced that Mr. Clay was defeated, he cried (so it was reported) ; and that report (I tliink) gave him the nomination for Vice-President without a contest. It was an attempt of the triumphant Harrisonites to heal the womids of ]Mr. Clay's devoted friends. Yet the nomination was, for several reasons, a strong one. Mr. Tyler, though a Jackson man, had received, in 1828, the votes for United States Senator of the Adams men in the Virginia Legislature, and been thereby elected over John Eandolph. When Jackson removed the deposits from the United States Bank, he united with the AVliigs in publicly condemning the act ; and, having been superseded therefor, he was thereafter regarded as a Whig. He had voted alone in the Senate of 1832-33 against the Force bill, which pro- vided for the collection of the Federal revenue in South Caro- lina in defiance of the nullifying ordinance of her Convention. He had run for Vice-President on the Wliite ticket in 1836, 132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. and so had acquired a hold on the Southern opponents of Van Buren, which soon brought them all heartily into the support of the Harrisburg ticket. In short, the Convention made the strongest possible ticket, so far as success was regarded ; and the Democrats in attendance all felt, though they did not confess it. Every one who had eyes could see that they de- sired and worked for the nomination of Mr. Clay. One of them, after the ticket was made, offered to bet that it would not be elected; but, his offer being promptly accepted, and he requested to name the amount, he hauled off. In short, we left Harrisburg with that confidence of success which goes far to secure its own justification ; and we were greeted on our way home as though the battle were already won. But it was well understood that the struggle would be desperate, especially in our State, and preparations were soon in progress to render it effective. Our adversaries now helped us to our most effective weapons. They at once commenced assailing General Harrison as an imbecile, dotard, granny, &c., who had seen no real fighting, but had achieved a good deal of tall running from the enemy ; and one militia general, Crary, who represented Michigan in the House, having made a speech in this vein, provoked a response from Hon. Tom Corwin of Ohio, which for wit, humor, and withering yet good-natured sarcasm has rarely, if ever, been excelled. The triumph was overwhelming; and, when the venerable and grave John Quincy Adams, in a few casual remarks next morning, spoke carelessly of " the late General Crary," a spon- taneous roar attested the felicity of the allusion. General Harrison had lived many years after his removal to Ohio in a log-house, and had been a poor man most of his life, as he still was. A Democratic jouriiahst, scoffing at the idea of electing such a man to the Presidency, smartly ob- served, in substance, " Give him a log-cabin and a barrel of hard cider, and he will stay content in Ohio, not aspiring to the Presidency." The taunt was immediately caught up by the "WHiigs : " log-cabins " and " hard cider " became watch- words of the canvass ; and every hour the excitement and enthusiasm swelled hij^her and higher. LOG-CABIN DAYS. 133 But the Democratic party claimed an unbroken series of triumphs in every Presidential election which it did not throw \ away by its own dissensions ; and, being now united, regarded j its success as inevitable. " You Whigs," said Dr. Duncan, of Ohio, one of its most effective canvassers, " achieve great vic- tories eveiy day in the year but one, — that is the day of election." It was certain that a party which had enjoyed the ever-increasing patronage of the Federal Government for the preceding twelve years, which wielded that of most of the States also, and which was still backed by the popularity and active sympathy of General Jackson, was not to be expelled from power without the most resolute, persistent, systematic exertions. Hence, it was determined in the councils of our friends at Albany that a new campaign paper should be issued, to be entitled The Log-Cabin ; and I was chosen to conduct it. No contributions were made or sought in its behalf. I was to publish as well as edit it ; it was to be a folio of good size ; and it was decided that fifteen copies should be sent for the full term of six months (from May 1 to November 1) for $ 5. I had just secured a new partner (my fifth or sixth) of con- siderable business capacity, when this campaign sheet was undertaken ; and the immediate influx of subscriptions fright- ened and repelled him. He insisted that the price was ruin- ous, — that the paper coidd not be afforded for so little, — that we should inevitably be bankrupted by its enormous circulation, — and all my expostulations and entreaties were unavailing against his fixed resolve to get out of the concern at once. I therefore dissolved and settled with him, and was left alone to edit and publish both The New-Yorker and The Log-Cabin, as I had in 1838 edited, but not published, The New-Yorker and The Jeffersonian. Having neither steam presses nor facilities for mailing, I was obhged to hire every- thing done but the head-work, which involved heavier outlays than I ought to have had to meet. I tried to make The Log-Cabin as effective as I could, with wood engravings of General Harrison's battle-scenes, music, &c., and to render it 134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. a model of its kind ; but the times were so changed that it was more lively and less sedately argumentative than The Jefiersonian. Its circulation was entirely beyond precedent. I fixed the edition of No. 1 at 30,000 ; but before the clos^ of the week I was obliged to print 10,000 more ; and even this was too few. The weekly issues ran rapidly up to 80,000, and might have been increased, had I possessed ample facilities for printing and mailing, to 100,000. With the machinery of distribution by news companies, expresses, &c., now existing, I guess that it might have been swelled to a quarter of a million. And, though I made very little money by it, I gave every subscriber an extra number containing the results of the election. After that, I continued the paper for a full year longer; having a circulation for it of 10,000 copies, which about paid the cost, counting my work as editor nothing. The Log-Cabin was but an incident, a feature of the can- vass. Briefly, we Whigs took the lead, and kept it through- out. Our opponents struggled manfully, desperately ; but wind and tide were against them. They had campaign and other papers, good speakers, and large meetings ; but we were far ahead of them in singinc;, and in electioneering emblems and mottoes which appealed to popular sympathies. The elections held next after the Harrisburg nominations were local, but they all went our way ; and the State contests, which soon followed, amply confirmed their indications. In September, Maine held her State election, and chose the Whig candidate for Governor (Edward Kent) by a small majority, but on a very full vote. The Democrats did not concede his election till after the vote for President, in November. Penn- sylvania, in October, gave a small Democratic majority ; but we insisted that it could be overcome when we came to vote for Harrison, and it was. In October, Ohio, Indiana, and Georgia all gave decisive Harrison majorities, rendering the great result morally certain. Yet, when the Presidential LOG-CABIN DAYS. 135 electors chosen were fully ascertained, even the most sangume among us were astounded by the completeness of our triumph. We had given General Harrison the electoral votes of all but the seven States of New Hampshire, Virginia, Soutli Carolina, Alabama, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, — 60 in all, — while our candidate had 234 ; making his the heaviest ma- jority by whicli any President had ever been chosen. New York, where each party had done its best, had been carried .for him by 13,290 majority; but Governor Seward had been reelected by only 5,315. With any other candidate for Presi- dent, he could scarcely have escaped defeat. I judge that there were not many who had done more effective work in the canvass than I had ; but I doubt that General Harrison ever heard my name. I never visited nor wrote him ; I was not of the throng that surrounded him on reaching Washington, — in fact, I did not visit that city, in 1841, until after his most untimely death. I received the news of that calamity on landing one morning from an Albany steamboat ; and I mournfully realized, on the instant, that it W'as no common disaster, but far-reaching in its malign influ- ence. General Harrison was never a great man, but he had good sense, was moderate in his views, and tolerant of adverse convictions; he truly loved and aspired to serve his country, and was at the summit of a broadly based and substantial popularity which, had he lived out his term, would have averted many impending evils. Our country, in my view, had lost many abler men, but none that she could so ill spare since Washington. He was President for one short month ; and then the hopes born of his election were suddenly buried in his Grave. XVIII. THE TRIBUNE. ON the tenth day of April, 1841, — a day of most unseason- able chill and sleet and snow, — our city held her great funeral parade and pageant in honor of our lost President, who had died six days before. General Eobert Bogardus, the ven- erable Grand Marshal of the parade, died not long afterward of exposure to its inclemencies. On that leaden, funereal morning, the most inhospitable of the year, I issued the first number of The New York Tribune. It was a small sheet, for it was to be retailed for a cent, and not much of a news- paper could be afforded for that price, even in those specie- paying times. I had been incited to this enterprise by sev- eral Whig friends, who deemed a cheap daily, addressed more J especially to the laboring class, eminently needed in our city, \ where the only two cheap journals then and still existing — The Sun and The Herald — were in decided, though un- avowed, and therefore more effective, sympathy and affiliation with the Democratic party. Two or three had promised pecuniary aid if it should be needed ; only one (Mr. James Coggeshall, long since deceased) ever made good that promise, by loaning me one thousand dollars, which was duly and gratefully repaid, principal and interest. I presvmie others would have helped me had I asked it ; but I never did. Mr. Dudley S. Gregory, who liad voluntarily loaned me one thou- sand dollars to sustain The New-Yorker in the very darkest hour of my fortunes, in 1837, and whom I had but recently repaid, Avas among my most trusted friends in the outset of my new enterprise also ; but I was able to prosecute it with- out taxing (I no longer needed to test) his generosity. THE TRIBUNE. 137 My leading idea was the establishment of a journal re- moved ahke from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other. Party spirit is so fierce and intolerant in this country that the editor of a non-partisan sheet is restrained from saying what he thinks and feels on the most vital, imminent topics ; while, on the other hand, a Democratic, Whig, or Eepublican journal is generally expected to praise or blame, like or dislike, eulogize or condemn, in precise accordance with the views and interest of its party. I believed there was a happy medium between these extremes, — a position from which a journahst might openly and heartily advocate the principles and commend the measures of that party to which his convictions allied him, yet frankly dissent from its course on a particular ques- tion, and even denounce its candidates if they were shown to be deficient in capacity or (far worse) in integrity. I felt that a journal thus loyal to its guiding convictions, yet ready to expose and condemn unworthy conduct or incidental error on the part of men attached to its party, must be far more effective, even party-wise, than though it might always be counted on to applaud or reprobate, bless or curse, as the party's prejudices or immediate interest might seem to pre- scribe. Especially by the "Whigs — who were rather the loosely aggregated, mainly undisciplined opponents of a great party, than, in the stricter sense, a party themselves — did I feel that such a journal was consciously needed, and would be fairly sustained. I had been a pretty constant and copious contributor (generally unpaid) to nearly or quite every cheap Whig journal that had, from time to time, been started in our city ; most of them to fail after a very brief, and not particu- larly bright career ; but one — The New York Whig, which was, throughout most of its existence, under the dignified and conscientious direction of Jacob B. Moore, formerly of The New Hampshire Journal — had been continued through two or three years. ]\Iy familiarity with its history and manage- ment gave me confidence that the right sort of a cheap Whig journal would be enabled to live. I had been ten years in 138 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. New York, was thirty years old, in full health and vigor, and worth, I presume, about two thousand dollars, half of it in printing materials. The Jeffersonian, and still more The Log- Cabin, had made me favora))ly known to many thousands of those who were most likely to take such a paper as I pro- posed to make The Tribune, while The New-Yorker had given me some literary standing and the reputation of a use- ful and well-informed compiler of election returns. In short, I was in a better position to undertake the establishment of a daily newspaper than the great mass of those who try it and fail, as most who make the venture do and must. I pre- sume the new journals (in English) since started in this city number not less than one himdred, Avhereof barely two — The Times and The World — can be fairly said to be still living ; and The World is a mausoleum wherein the remains of The Evening Star, The American, and The Courier and Enquirer lie inurned ; these having long ago swallowed sundry of their predecessors. Yet several of those which have meantime lived their little hour and passed away were conducted by men of decided ability and ripe experience, and were backed by a pecuniary capital at least twenty times greater than the fearfully inadequate sum whereon I started The Tribune. On the intellectual side, my venture was not so rash as it seemed. ]\Iy OAvn fifteen years' devotion to newspaper-mak- ing, in all its phases, was worth far more than will be gen- erally supposed ; and I had already secured a first assistant in ]Mr. Henry J. Raymond, who — having for two years, while in college at Burlington, Vt., been a valued contributor to the literary side of The New-Yorker — had hied to the city directly upon graduating, late in 1840, and gladly accepted my offer to hire him at eight dollars per week until he could do better. I had not much for him to do till The Tribune was started : then I had enouuh : and I never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies, who evinced so signal and such versatile ability in journalism as he did. Abler and stronger men I may have met ; a cleverer, readier, more generally efficient journalist, I never saw. He remained THE TRIBUNE. 139 with me nearly eight years, if my memory serves, and is the only assistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing more work than any human brain and frame coidd be expected long to endure. His salary was of course gradu- ally increased from time to time ; but his services were more valuable in proportion to their cost than those of any one else wlio ever aided me on Tlie Tribune. Mr. George M. Snow, a friend of my own age, who had had considerable mercantile experience, took charge of the Finan- cial or AVaU-Street department (then far less important than it now is), and retained it for more than twenty-two years ; becoming idtimately a heavy stockholder in, and a trustee of, the concern ; resigning his trust only when (in 1863) he de- parted for Europe in ill health ; returning but to die two years later. A large majority of those who aided in prepar- ing or in issuing the first number had preceded or have fol- lowed ]\lr. Snow to the Silent Land ; but two remain, and are now Foreman and Engineer respectively in the Print- ing Department, — both stockholders and trustees. Others, doubtless, survive, who were with us then, but have long since drifted away to the West, to the Pacific slope, or into some other employment, and the places that once knew them know them no more. Twenty-six years witness many changes, especially in a city like ours, a position like mine ; and I believe that the only men who were Editors of New York dailies- before me, and who still remain such, are Mr. William CuUen Bryant of The Evening Post, and Mr. James Gordon Bennett of The Herald. About five hundred names of subscribers had already been obtained for The Tribune — mainly by my warm personal and political friends, ISToah Cook and James Coggeshall — before its first issue, whereof I printed five thousand, and nearly succeeded in giving away all of them that would not sell. I had type, but no presses ; and so had to hire my press-work done by the " token " ; my folding and mailing must have 140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. staggered me but for the circumstance that I had few papers to mail, and not very many to fold. The lack of the present machinery of railroads and expresses was a grave obstacle to the circulation of my paper outside of the city's suburbs ; but I think its paid-for issues were two thousand at the close of the first week, and that they thenceforth increased pretty steadily, at the rate of five hundred per week, till they reached ten thousand. My current expenses for the first week were about five hundred and twenty-five dollars ; my receipts ninety-two dollars ; and, though the outgoes steadily, inevit- ably increased, the income increased in a still larger ratio, till it nearly balanced the former. But I was not made for a publisher ; indeed, no man was ever quahfied at once to edit and to publish a daily paper such as it must be to live in these times ; and it was not until Mr. Thomas McElrath — whom I had barely known as a member of the publishing firm over whose store I first set type in this city, but who was now a lawyer in good standing and practice — made me a voluntary and wholly unexpected proffer of partnership in my still struggling but hopeful enterprise, that it might be considered fairly on its feet. He offered to invest two thou- sand dollars as an equivalent to whatever I had in the busi- ness, and to devote his time and energies to its management, on the basis of perfect equality in ownership and in sharing the proceeds. Tliis I very gladly accepted ; and from that hour my load was palpably hghtened. During the ten years or over that The Tribune was issued by Greeley & McElrath, I my partner never once even indicated that my anti-Slavery, I anti-Hanging, Socialist, and other frequent aberrations from the straight and narrow path of Whig partisanship, were in- jurious to our common interest, though he must often have sorely felt that they were so ; and never, except when I (rarely) drew from the common treasury more money than could well be spared, in order to help some needy friend whom he judged beyond help, did he even look grieved at anyt.hing T did. On the other IiuikI, his l)usiness management of the concern, though never briUiaut, nor specially energetic, THE TRIBUNE. 141 was so safe and judicious that it gave me no trouble, and scarcely required of me a thought, during that long era of all but unclouded prosperity. The transition from my four preceding years of incessant pecuniary anxiety, if not absolute embarrassment, was like escaping from the dungeon and the rack to freedom and sym- pathy. Henceforth, such mre pecuniary troubles as I en- countered were the just penalties of my own folly in indors- ing notes for persons who, in the nature of things, could not rationally be expected to pay them. But these penalties are not to be evaded by those who, soon after entering responsible life, " go into business," as the phrase is, when it is inevitable that they must be thereby involved in debt. He who starts on the basis of dependence on his own proper resources, re- solved to extend his business no further and no faster than his means will justify, may fairly refuse to lend what he needs in his own operations, or to indorse for others when he asks no one to indorse for him. But you cannot ask favors, and then churlishly refuse to grant any, — Ijorrow, and then frown upon whoever asks you to lend, — seek indorsements, but decline to give any : and so the idle, the prodigal, the dissolute, with the thousands foredoomed by their o^\ti de- fects of capacity, of industry, or of management, to chronic bankruptcy, live upon the earnings of the caj^able, thrifty, and provident. Better wait five years to go into business upon adequate means which are properly your own, than to rush in prematurely, trusting to loans, indorsements, and the forbearance of creditors, to help j^ou through. I have squan- dered much hard-earned money in trying to help others who were already past help, when I not only might, but should, have saved most of it if I had never, needing heljD, sought and received it. As it is, I trust that my general obligation lias been fully discharged. The Tribune, as it first appeared, was but the germ of what I sought to make it. No journal sold for a cent could ever be much more than a dry summary of the most important or the most interesting occurrences of the day ; and such is not 142 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. a newspaper, in the higher sense of the term. We need to know, not only what is done, but what is purposed and said, by those who sway the destinies of states and reahns ; and, to this end, the prompt perusal of the manifestoes of mon- arclis, presidents, ministers, legislators, etc., is indispensable. No man is even tolerably informed in our day who does not regularly " keep the run " of events and opinions, through the daily perusal of at least one good journal ; and the ready cavil that " no one can read " all that a great modern journal con- tains, only proves the ignorance or thoughtlessness of the caviller. No one person is expected to take such an interest in the rise and fall of stocks, the markets for cotton, cattle, grain, and goods, the proceedings of Congress, Legislatures, and Courts, the pohtics of Europe, and the ever-shifting phases of Spanish- American anarchy, etc., etc., as would in- cite him to a daily perusal of the entire contents of a metro- pohtan city journal of the first rank. The idea is rather to embody in a single sheet the information daily required by all those who aim to keep " posted " on every important occurrence ; so that the lawyer, the merchant, the banker, the forwarder, the economist, the author, the politician, etc., may find here whatever he needs to see, and be spared the trouble of looking elsewhere. A copy of a great morning journal now contains more matter than an average twelvemo volume, and its production costs far more, while it is sold for a fortieth or fiftieth part of the volume's price. There is no other miracle of cheapness which at all approaches it. The Electric Tele- graph has precluded the multiplication of journals in the great cities, by enormously increasing the cost of publishing each of them. The Tribune, for example, now pays more than one hundred thousand dollars per annum for intellectual labor (reporting included) in and about its office, and one hundred thousand dollars more for corresi^ondence and tele- graphing, — in other words, for collecting and transmitting news. And, Avhile its income has been largely increased from year to year, its expenses have inevitably been swelled even more rapidly; so that, at the close of 1866, in which its THE TRIBUNE. 143 receipts had been over nine hundred thousand dollars, its expenses had been very nearly equal in amount, leaving no profit beyond a fair rent for the premises it owned and occu- pied. And yet its stockliolders were satisfied that they had done a good business, — that the increase in the patronage and value of the establishment amounted to a fair interest on their investment, and might well be accepted in lieu of a dividend. In the good time coming, with cheaper paper and less exorbitant charges for " cable despatches " from the Old World, they will doubtless reap where they have now faithfully sown. Yet they realize and accept the fact, that a journal radically hostile to the gainful arts whereby the cunning and powerfid few live sumptuously wdthout useful labor, and often amass wealth, by pandering to lawless sensuality and popular vice, can never hope to enrich its publishers so rapidly nor so vastly as though it had a soft side for the Liquor Trafiic, and for all kindred allurements to carnal appetite and sensual indulgence. Fame is a vapor ; popularity an accident ; riches take \vings ; the only earthly certainty is oblivion; no man can foresee what a day may bring forth ; while those who cheer to-day will often curse to-morrow : and yet I cherish the hope that the journal I projected and estabhshed will live and flourish long after I shall have mouldered into forgotten dust, being guided by a larger wisdom, a more unerring sagacity to dis- cern the right, though not by a more unfaltering readiness to embrace and defend it at whatever personal cost ; and that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelhgible inscription, " Founder of The Xew York Tribune." XIX. SOCIALISM. THE Winter of 1837-38, though happily mild and open till far into January, was one of pervading destitution and suffering in our city, from paralysis of business and con- sequent dearth of employ meut. The liberality of those who could and would give was heavily taxed to save from famish- ing the tens of thousands who, being needy and unable to find employment, first ran into debt so far as they could, and thenceforth must be helped or starve. For, in addition to all who may be said to belong here, legions of laborers, servants, etc., are annually dismissed in Autumn from the farms, coun- try-seats, and watering-places of the suburban districts, and drift down to the city, whence they were mainly hired ; vaguely hoping to find work here, which a small part of them do : the rest live on the good-nature of relatives, if such they have here, or on credit from boarding-houses, landlords, or grocers, so long as they can ; and then make their choice between roguery and beggary, or change from this to that, or take them mixed, as chance may dictate. Since the general diffusion of railroads and the considerable extension of our hnanufacturing industry, business is far more equable than it I was, even in prosperous times, thirty years ago ; but Winter is still a season of privation and suffering to many thousands who live in tolerable comfort through the warmer seasons. To say that ten thousand young persons here annually take their first lessons in debauchery and crime would be to keep (pite within the truth ; and, while passion, ignorance, and miseducation ruin their thousands, I jvidge that destitution SOCIALISM. 145 flowing from involuntary idleness sends more men and women to j)erdition, in this city, than any other cause, — intemperance possibly excepted. I lived that Winter in the Sixth Ward, — then, as now, eminent for filth, squalor, rags, dissipation, want, and misery. A public meeting of its citizens was duly held early in De- cember, and an organization formed thereat, by which com- mittees were appointed to canvass the AVard from house to house, collect funds from those who could and would spare anything, ascertain the nature and extent of the existing des- titution, and devise ways and means for its systematic relief. Very poor myself, I coiild give no money, or but a mite ; so I gave time instead, and served, through several days, on one of the Adsiting committees. I thus saw extreme destitution more closely than I had ever before observed it, and was enabled to scan its repulsive features intelligently. I saw two families, including six or eight children, burrowing in one cellar under a stable, — a prey to famine on the one hand, and to vermin and cutaneous maladies on the other, with sickness adding its horrors to those of a polluted atmosphere and a wintry temperature. I saw men who each, somehow, sup- ported his family on an income of S 5 per week or less, yet who cheerfully gave something to mitigate the sufferings of those Avho were really poor. ' I saw three widows, with as many children, living in an attic on the profits of an apple- stand which yielded less than $ 3 per week, and the landlord came in for a full third of that. But worst to bear of all was the pitiful plea of stout, resolute, single young men and young women : " We do not want alms ; we are not beggars ; we hate to sit here day by day idle and useless ; help us to work, — we I want no other help : why is it that we can have nothing to do ? " ' I pondered these scenes at intervals throughout the next two or three years, and was impelled thereby to write for The New-Yorker — I think, in the Winter of 1839-40 — a series of articles entitled, " What shall be done for the Laborer ? " I believe these attracted the attention of Mr. Albert Brisbane, a young man of liberal education and varied culture, a native 10 f 146 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. of Batavia, IST. Y., which he still regarded as his home, but who had travelled widely and observed thoughtfully ; making the acquaintance in Paris of the school of Socialists called (after their founder) St. Simonians, and that also of Charles Fourier, the founder of a different school, which had been distinguished by liis name. Eobert Owen, by his experiments at New Lanark and his " Xew Views of Society," was the first in this century to win public attention to Socialism, though (I beheve) Fourier had not only speculated, but written, before either of his co-laborers. But Owen was an extensive and successful manufacturer ; St. Simon was a soldier, and the heir of a noble family ; , while Fourier was a poor clerk, reserved and taciturn, whose hard, dogmatic, algebraic style seemed expressly calculated to discourage readers and repel adherents ; so that his disciples were few indeed, down to the date of his death in 1837. Mr. Brisbane, returning not long afterward from Europe, prepared and published his first work — which was an exposition and commendation of Fourier's industrial system — in 1840. My acquaintance with the author and his work commenced soon afterward. I sum up these tliree competing projects of Social Eeform as follows : — Owen. — Place human beings in proper relations, under fa- voring circumstances (among which I include Education and Intelligence), and they wiU do right rather than wrong. Hitherto, the heritage of the great majority has been filth, squalor, famine, ignorance, superstition ; and these have im- pelled many to indolence and vice, if not to crime. Make their external conditions what they should be, and these will give place to industry, sobriety, and virtue. St. Simon. — " Love is the fulfilling of the law." Secure to every one opportunity ; let each do whatever he can do best ; and the highest good of the whole will be achieved and per- petuated. Fourier. — Society, as we find it, is organized rapacity. Half t)f its force is spent in repressing or resisting the jealousies and rogueries of its members. We need to oroanize Universal SOCIALISM. 147 Justice based on Science. The true Eden lies before, not behind us. We may so provide that Labor, now repulsive, shall be attractive ; while its efficiency in production shall be increased by the improvement of machinery and the ex- tended use of natural forces, so as to secure abundance, edu- cation, and elegant luxury, to all. Wliat is needed is to provide all with homes, employment, instruction, good living,\ the most effective implements, machinery, &c., securing to each the fair and fvill r,ecompense of his acliievement ; and this can best be attained through the association of some four to five hundred families in a common household, and in the ownership and cultivation of a common domain, say of 2,000 acres, or about one acre to each person living thereon. I accept, unreservedly, the views of no man, dead or li\dng. "The master has said it," was never conclusive with me. Even though I have found him right nine times, I do not take his tenth proposition on trust ; unless that also be proved sound and rational, I reject it. But I am convinced, after much study and reflection, that the Social Eeformers are right on many points, even when clearly wrong on others ; and I deem Fourier — though in many respects erratic, mistaken, visionary — the most suggestive and practical among them. I accept nothing on his authority; for I find many of his speculations fantastic, erroneous, and (in my view) pernicious ; but on many points he commands my unreserved concur- rence. Yet I prefer to set forth my own Social creed rather than his, even wherein mine was borrowed from his teachings ; and mine is, briefly, as follows : — I. I believe that there need be, and should be, no paupers who are not infantile, idiotic, or disabled ; and that civilized society pays more for the support of able-bodied pauperism than the necessary cost of its extirpation. II. I believe that they babble idly and libel Providence j who talk of surplus Labor, or the inadequacy of Capital to I supply employment to aU who need it. Labor is often most/ 148 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. required and best paid where Capital is scarcest (as was shown in California in 1849-50); and there is always — even in China — far more work than hands, provided the ability to devise and direct be not wanting. Where Labor stands idle, i save in the presence of some great public calamity, there is a I demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains. III. I believe that the efficiency of human effort is enor- mously, ruinously diminished by what I term Social Anarchy. That is to say : " We spend haK our energies in building fences and providing safeguards against each other's roguery, while our labor is rendered inefficient and inadequately productive by bad management, imperfect implements, a deficiency of power (animal or steam), and the inability of our producers to command and wield the most effective machinery. It is quite within the truth to estimate the annual product of our National Industry at less than one half what it might be if better applied and directed. IV. Inefficiency in production is paralleled by waste in consumption. Insects and vermin devour at least one fourth of the farmer's harvests, which inadequate fertilizing and un- skilful cultivation have already reduced far below the proper aggregate. A thousand cooks are required, and a thousand fires maintained, to prepare badly the food of a township ; when a dozen fires and a hundred cooks might do it far better, and with a vast saving in quantity as well as improvement in quality. [I judge that the cooks of Paris would subsist One Million persons on the food consumed or wasted by Six Hun- dred Thousand in this city ; feeding them better than they are now fed, and prolonging their lives by an average of five years.] V. Youth should be a season of instruction in Industry and the Useful Arts, as well as in Letters and the Sciences mastered by their aid. Each child should be trained to skill and efficiency in productive Labor. The hours of children should be alternately devoted to Labor, Study, and Eecreation, — say, two hours to each before, and a like allotment after, dinner each secular day. Thus eacli child would grow up an adept, not merely in letters, but in arts, — a sldlful worker as SOCIALISM. 149 well as a proficient in the lessons of the school-room, — able to do well, not one thing only, but many things, — familiar with mechanical as well as agricultural processes, and acquainted with the use of steam and the direction of machinery. Not till one has achieved the fullest command, the most varied use, of all his faculties and powers, can he be properly said to be educated. VI. Isolation is at war with efficiency and with progress. As " iron sharpeneth iron," so are man's intellectual and in- ventive faculties stimulated by contact with his fellow-men. A nation of herdsmen, dwelling in movable tents, invents little or nothing,- and makes no progress, or next to none. Serfdom was the general condition of the laboring class in Europe, until aggregation in cities and manufactories, dif- fusing intelligence, and nourishing aspiration, ^vl•ought its downfall. VII. The poor work at perpetual disadvantage in isolation, because of the inadequacy of their means. Let us sup]30se that four or five hundred heads of famiHes propose to embark in Agriculture. Each buys his httle farm, his furniture, his implements, animals, seeds, fertilizers, &c., &c., and — though he has pm-chased nothing that he does not urgently need — he finds his means utterly exliausted, and his farm and future exertions heavily burdened by debt. He hopes and labors to clear off the mortgage ; but flood and drouth, frost and fire, work against him ; his poverty compels him to do without many implements, and to plough or team with inadequate force ; he runs up an account at the store, and pays twenty per cent, extra for his goods, because others, who buy on credit, fail to pay at all ; and so he struggles on, till his strength fails, and he dies oppressed with debt. Such is the common lot. VIII. Association would have these unite to purchase, in- habit, and cultivate a conunon domain, — say, of two thousand j acres, — whereby these advantages over the isolated system j would be realized : — 1. One fourth (at most) of the land required under the old system would be found abundant. 150 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. 2. It could be far better allotted and appropriated to Grain, Grass, Fniits, Forest, Garden, &c. 3. The draught animals that were far too few, when dispersed among five hundred owners, on so many different farms, would be amply sufficient for a common domain. Ij 4c. Steam or water power could now be economically em- rployed for a hundred purposes — cutting and sawing timber, threshing and grinding grain, ploughing the soil, and for many household uses — where the small farmer could not think of employing it. 5. Industry would find new and powerful incentives in the observation and praise or censure of the entire community ; uniforms, banners, and music, with the rivalry of bands of competing workers, • would • provoke emulation and lighten labor; while such recreations as dramas, concerts, readings, &c., — now utterly beyond the reach of rural workers, — would give a new zest to life. At present, our youth escape from rural industry when they can, — not that they really hate work, but that they find their leisure hours even duller and less endurable than those they give to rugged toil. I must devote another chapter to a narration of my experi- ences as an advocate of the views above set forth, and a brief account of the efforts made within my knowledge to give them practical exemplification. That these efforts resulted in fail- ures the world already knows : I will endeavor to set forth the facts dispassionately, so as to afford fair grounds for judg- ment as to how far these failures are due to circumstances, and how far they may be fairly charged to the system itself I shall endeavor to lay little of the blame on well-abused Human Nature ; since, if any system be ill adapted to Man as we find him, it may be excellently calculated for use on some other planet, but not on this one. XX. SOCIALISTIC EFFORTS. THE propagation in this country of Fourier's ideas of Industrial Association was wholly pioneered by Mr. A. Brisbane, who presented them in a series of articles in The Tribune, beginning in 1841, and running through two or three years. The Future — a weekly entirely devoted to the sub- ject — was issued for a few weeks, but received no considerable support, and was therefore discontinued. The Harbinger, a smaller weekly, was afterward issued from the Brook Farm Association, and sustained — not without loss — for two or three years. Meantime, several treatises, explaining and commending the system, were published, — the best of them being "Democracy, Pacific and Constructive," by Mr. Parke Godwin, now of The Evening Post. The problem was furtlier discussed in a series of controversial letters between Mr. Henry J. Eaymond and myself. Thus, by persevering effort, the subject was thrust, as it were, on public attention ; a few zealous converts made to the new ideas, and probably more vehement adversaries aroused ; while the far greater number could not be induced to read or consider, but regarded all Socialist theories with stubborn indifference. Those who were in good circumstances, or hoped yet to be, wished no such change as was contemplated by the new theories ; the ignorant, stolid many, who endure hves of destitution and squalid misery, were utterly devoid of faith or hope, receiving with profound incredulity and distrust any proposal to im- prove their condition. My observation justifies the belief, that the most conservative of mankmd, when not under the 152 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. influence of some great, convulsive uprising like the French Eevolution, are those who have nothing to lose. Of the practical attempts to realize our social Utopia, I believe that known as " Brook Farm," in Eoxbury, Mass., ten miles from Boston, was first in the order of time, and notable in many other respects. Its projectors were cultivated, scholarly persons, who were profoundly dissatisfied with the aims, as well as the routine, of ordinary life, and who wel- comed in theoretic Socialism a fairer and nobler ideal. So they bought a cold, grassy farm of two hundred acres, added two or three new buildings to those which had served the last preceding owner, and bravely took possession. New members joined from time to time, as others left ; the land was improved, and, I believe, some was added ; boarders were taken occasionally ; a school was started and maintained ; and so the concern fared on through some five or six years. But, deficient in capital, in agricultural skill, and in many needful things besides, it was never a pecuniary success, and was finally given up about 1847 or '48, — paying its debts, I un- derstood, to the last dime, but returning nothing to its stock- holders. I believe this was the only attempt made in New England. From this city, two bands of Socialist pioneers went forth, — one to a rugged, lofty region in Pike County, Pa., five miles from the Erie Ptailroad at the mouth of the Lackawaxen, which they called " Sylvania," after the State. The domain here purchased was ample, — some 2,300 acres; the location was healthy, and there was abundance of wood and water. But the soil was stony and poor ; the altitude was such that there was a heavy frost on the 4th of July, 1844; the mem- bers were generally very poor, and in good part ineflicient also ; and the crops harvested were slender enough. I think "Sylvania" was founded early in 1843, and gave up the ghost — having little else to give up — sometime in 1845. Its domain returned to the seller or his assigns, in satisfaction of his mortgage, and its movables nearly or quite paid its debts, leaving its stock a total loss. SOCIALISTIC EFFORTS. 153 The "North American Phalanx" had more vitality and a better location. The nucleus of its membership was formed in Albany, though it drew associates from every quarter. Several of them were capable mechanics, traders, and farmers. It was located in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, N. J., five miles from the dock at Eed Bank, on a farm of 673 acres, originally good land, but Avorn out by most improvident, thriftless cidtivation, so that it was bought for less than $ 2.3 per acre, which was its full value. But there was an ample bed of marl on its eastern border, considerable timber along its creeks, two or three very dilapidated farm buildings, and a few large, old apple-trees, which were just better than none. Here we few, but zealous, Associationists of New York and its vicinity for a time concentrated our means and our efforts ; each subscribing freely to the capital, and then aiding the enterprise by loans to nearly an equal amount. I think the capital ultimately invested here (loans included) was fully $ 100,000, or about one fourth the amount there should have been. By means thereof, a capacious wooden dwelling, one or two barns, and a fruit-house were erected, thousands of loads of marl dug and applied to the land, large orchards M^ere planted and reared to maturity, and a mile square of sterile, exhausted land converted into a thrifty and productiA'e do- main. The experiment was finally abandoned, on the heel of a heavy loss sustained in the burning of our fruit-house, which, with some other set-backs, discouraged some of the best associates, and caused them to favor a dissolution. There was no pecuniary failure, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The property was sold out at auction, — the domain in tracts of ten to eighty acres, — and, though it brought not more than two thirds of its cash value, every debt was paid, and each stockholder received back about 65 per cent, of his investment with interest. I reckon that not many stock- holders in gold-mines or oil-wells can show a better result. (I can speak of gold-mines from personal experience ; oil- wells — being older when they came into vogue — I have carefully kept out of) As I recollect, the " North American 154 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. Phalanx" was founded in 1843, and wound up about 1850, when I think no sister Association was left to deplore its fate. Its means had been larger, its men and women, in the average, more capable and devoted, than those of any rival ; if it could not live, there was no hope for any of them. A serious obstacle to the success of any Socialist experi- ment must always be confronted. I allude to the kind of persons who are naturally attracted to it. Along with many noble and lofty souls, whose impidses are purely philanthropic, and who are willing to labor and suffer reproach for any cause that promises to benefit mankind, there throng scores of whom the world is quite worthy, — the conceited, the crotchety, the selfish, the headstrong, the pugnacious, the unappreciated, the played-out, the idle, and the good-for-nothing generally ; who, finding themselves utterly out of place and at a discount in the world as it is, rashly conclude that they are exactly fitted for the world as it ought to be. These may have failed again and again, and been protested at every bank to which they have been presented ; yet they are sure to jump into any new movement, as if they had been born expressly to super- intend and direct it, though they are morally certain to ruin whatever they lay their hands on. Destitute of means, of practical ability, of prudence, tact, and common sense, they have such a wealth of assurance and of self-confidence that they clutch the responsible positions, which the capable and worthy modestly shrink from : so responsibilities that would tax the ablest are mistakenly devolved on the blindest and least fit. Many an experiment is thus wrecked, when, engineered by its best members, it might have succeeded. I judge not what may be done and borne by a mature, thoroughly organized Association ; but a pioneer, half-fledged experiment — lacking means, experience, edifices, everything — can bear no extra weight, but needs to be composed of, and directed by, most efficient, devoted, self-sacrificing men and women. That there have been — nay, are — decided successes in practical Socialism, is undeniable ; but they all have that Communistic basis which seems to me irrational, and calcu- SOCIALISTIC EFFORTS. 155 lated to prove fatal. I cannot conceive it just, that an asso- ciate who invests $ 100,000 should stand on an equal footing, so far as property is concerned, with one who brings nothing to the common fund ; nor can I see why an ingenious, efficient mechanic, whose services are worth $ 5 per day, should receive no more of the annual product than an ignorant ditcher, who can at best earn but $ 2 per day. To my mind, every one is fairly entitled to what he has earned, and to what he sliall earn, unless he chooses to bestow it on some one else ; and I hold, with Fourier, that Communism must destroy individual liberty. Credit me on the books with what I invested, and what I have since earned or otherwise added to the common wealth; and, if I choose to spend my day with a visiting friend, or go off for a week's fishing, it is no one's business but my own. But, say that all we have and all we make are common property, wherein each has rightfully an eqvial in- terest, and I shall feel morally bound to do my share of the work, and shall be dissatisfied when others palpably do less than I do. Hence, I can easily account for the failure of Communism, — at New Harmony, and in several other experi- ments ; I cannot so easily account for its successes. Yet the fact stares us in the face, that, while hundreds of banks and factories, and thousands of mercantile concerns managed by shrewd, strong men, have gone into bankruptcy and perished. Shaker Communities, established more than sixty years ago, upon a basis of little property and less worldly wisdom, are lining and prosperous to-day. And their experience has been imitated by the German Communities at Economy, Pa., Zoar, Ohio, the Society of Ebenezer, &c., &c. Theory, however plausible, must respect the facts. I once visited the Society of Ebenezer, when it was located on lands seven miles from Buffalo, not long before surrendered by the Tonawanda Indians. The members were nearly all Prussians, led by a rich nobleman, who had invested his all in the common fund, and led his followers to this country, where they first located near Buffalo as aforesaid, but have since sold, and migrated to cheaper land, away from any great 156 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. city, in Iowa. I did not see the " head centre," but the second man was from the Zoar Community, and I had a free talk with him, part of which (in substance) is worth recalling : — " What do you do with lazy people ? " I inquired. " We have none," he promptly replied. " We have often disciplined members for working too hard and too long ; for, whatever the world may think of us, we profess to be asso- ciated for spiritual edification, not temporal gain ; and we do not desire our people to become absorbed in drudgery and money-getting." " Yes, I understand," I persisted ; " but suppose you had a lazy member » how would you treat him ? How does your discipline provide for the possible contingency of his attaining to the membership of your body ? " " In this way only : we are a brotherhood and sisterhood for spiritual, not temporal, ends. Our temporal relations are a consequence of our spiritual union. For spiritual growth and improvement, we are divided into four classes, according to our presumed religious advancement respectively. If, then, a member of the fourth (highest) class were to evince a lazy, shirking disposition, he would, after some private admonition, be reported by that class to the next general meeting, as not sufficiently developed, or endued with Divine grace, for that class ; and, on that report, he would be reduced to the third class. If, after due probation, he should evince a slothful spirit there, he would be reported by that class, as he had been by the higher ; and, on this report, be reduced to the second class ; and, on the report of this, in like manner, to the first or lowest class, — that which includes young children and all wholly undeveloped natures. Theoretically, this would be our course ; we know no further or other discipline than this : practically, no occasion for such discipline has arisen. We often discipline members for working too much or too persistently ; never for working too little." I do not believe men naturally lazy ; but I judge that they prefer to receive the fair recompense of their labor, — to work for themselves and those dear to them, rather than for hun- SOCIALISTIC EFFORTS. 157 dreds, if not tliousands, whom they scarcely know hy sight. I believe in Association, or Cooperation, or whatever name may be given to the combination of many heads and hands to achieve a beneficent result, which is beyond the means of one or a few of them ; for I perceive that vast economies, and vastly increased efficiency, may Jhus be secured; I reject Communism as at war with one of the strongest and most universal instincts, — that which impels each worker to pro- duce and save for liimseK and his own. Yet Eeligion often makes practicable that which were else impossible, and Divine Love triumphs where Human Science is baffled. Thus I in- terpret the past successes and failures of Socialism. • Cooperation — the combination of some hundreds of pro- ducers to dispose of their labor or its fruits, or of consumers in like manner to supply their common wants of food, &c. more economically and satisfactorily than by individual pur- 1 chases from markets, stalls, or stores — is one-sided, frag- 1 mentary Association. Its advantages are signal, obvious, im- mediate ; its chief peril is the rascality of the agent, treasurer, or manager, whom it is obliged to trust. As it involves no decided, radical change of habits and usages, it is destined to achieve an early success, and thus to pioneer further and more beneficent reforms. It has already won signal triumphs in sober, practical England; it is winning the intellectual assent of earnest, meditative G-ermany. I shall be sorely disappointed if this Nineteenth Century does not witness its very general adoption as a means of reducing the cost and increasing the comfort of the poor man's living. It ought to add twenty-five per cent, to the average income of the thriftier half of the laboring class ; while its advantages are free to all with wliom economy is an object. And even above its direct advantages I prize the habits of calculation, of foresight, of saving which it is calculated to foster and promote among those who accept its principle and enjoy its more material blessings. With a firm and deep religious basis, any Socialistic scheme may succeed, though vicious in organization, and at war with 158 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. Human Nature, as I deem Shaker Communism, and the antagonist or "Free Love" Community of Perfectionists at Oneida, IST. Y. Without a basis of religious sympathy and religious aspiration, it will always be difficult, though, I judge, not impossible. Even the followers of Comte, the swallowers of his Pantheistic fog, will yet be banded or melted into com- munities, and will endeavor to realize the exaltation of Work into Worship, with a degree of success to be measured by the individual characters of the associates. And every effort to achieve through Association a less sordid, fettered, grovelling life, will have a positive value for the future of mankind, however speedy and utter its failure. I deem it impossible that beings born in the huts and hovels of isolated society, feebly, ineffectively delving and grubbing through life on the few acres immediately surrounding each of them, shall there attain the full stature of perfect manhood. They are dwarfed, stunted, shrivelled, by their petty avocations and shabby sur- roundings, — by the seeming necessity which constrains them to bend their thoughts and energies to the achievement of narrow, petty, paltry ends. Our dwellings, our fields, our farms, our industries, all tend to belittle us ; the edifice which shall yet lodge commodiously and agreeably two thousand persons, giving each the requisite privacy and independence, though as yet unconstructed, is not a chimera ; no more is the prosecution of agricultural and other labor by large bands, rendered picturesque by uniforms, and inspu*ed by music. (iThat " many hands make light work " is an old discovery ; it shall yet be proved that the combined efforts of many workers make Labor efficient and emiobling, as well as attractive. In modern society, all things tend unconsciously toward grand, comprehensive, pervading reforms. The steamboat, the rail- car, the omnibus, are but blind gropings toward an end which, unjn-emeditatcd, shall yet be attained ; in the order of Nature, nothing ultimately resists an economy ; and the sceptical, sneering world sliall yet perceive and acknowledge that, in many important relations, and not merely in one, " It is not good for Man to be alone." XXI. HARRY CLAY. JOHN TYLER succeeded General Harrison in the Presi- dency. He was called a Whig when elected Vice-Pres- ident ; I think he never called himself, nor wished others to call him so, from the day on which he stepped into our dead President's shoes. At all events, he contrived soon to quarrel with the great body of those whose efforts and votes had borne him into power. If he cried at Harrislrarg over Mr. Clay's defeat, Mr. Clay's friends had abundant reason to cry ever afterward over Tyler's success there. He vetoed the bill chartering a new United States Bank ; and, having himself sketched the plan of a substitute, and given it a name, he, when Congress passed it, vetoed that. He having inherited General Harrison's cabinet, this veto compelled its members to resign ; Mr. Webster, as Secretary of State, lingering for months after all the rest had left ; but he, too, had to go at last; and Mr. Tyler stood forth an imbittered, implacable enemy of the party which had raised him from obscurity and neglect to the pinnacle of power. Men always hate those they have wronged ; and Mr. Tyler fairly detested those he had betrayed. Before he had been a year in power, he was in full, though covert, alliance with the Democrats, and figur- ing for their next Presidential nomination. But such as he are often used, never trusted. Of course, the blighting of the fond hopes of the "SVliigs, and the transfer to their adversaries of the power and patron- age they had so arduously won, were disastrous. Their plun- der-seekers went over to the adversary ; their favorite meas- 160 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. ures were defeated, and their energies paralyzed : so State after State deserted their standard. New York, which had proved herself Wliig at every State election held under Van Buren's administration, went strongly Democratic at the very first held under Tyler's, and remained so at the two following. Two thirds, if not three fourths, of the States were carried against us in the State elections of 1841, '42, '43. On the 1st of May, 1844, a Wliig National Convention assembled in Baltimore. The venerable Ambrose Spencer, of New York, then nearly eighty years old, presided. Henry Clay was nominated for President without a dissenting voice, and with rapturous enthusiasm. Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, was, after a spirited contest, presented for Vice- President. The delegates separated in undoubting confidence that their choice would be ratified by the people. The Democratic Convention met in the same city soon afterward. A large majority of the delegates had been ex- pressly instructed to nominate Martin Van Buren for Pres- ident, and such was the undoubted preference of the Demo- cratic masses. But many of the managing politicians had other views. Some of them had rival personal aspirations ; and these thought two chances for the Presidency enough for one person, even though he had but once succeeded. A good many were tired of the New York ascendency, and eager for a change. The question of annexing Texas — of which more hereafter — had been so manipulated as to render many Southern politicians bitterly, actively hostile to Mr. Van Buren, who had taken ground adverse to annexation under the existing circumstances. Hence, when the Convention met, a resolve was introduced and passed requiring the vote of two thirds of the delegates to nominate a candidate. Van Buren's pledged majority was thus rendered of no avail ; and soon, as tlie ballotings progressed, delegate after delegate dropped away from him, until at length his remaining and earnest supporters, in order to defeat Cass, Buchanan, and Woodbury, went over in a body to James K. Polk, of Ten- nessee, and nominated him on the forty-fourth ballot. Silas HARRY CLAY. 161 Wright, of New York, was quite unanimously named for Vice-President; but he declined, and George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was set up in his stead. Mr. Polk was a man of moderate abilities, faultless private character, and undeviating Jacksonism. He had briefly but positively avowed himself" an advocate of the immediate An- nexation of Texas. He had once been chosen Speaker of the House of Eepresentatives, and once Governor of Tennessee ; being beaten, when he stood for reelection, by Colonel James C. Jones, the Whig candidate. The suggestion that such a man, whose very name was unknown, up to the hour of his nomination, by a majority of those whose votes he must obtain if he were, to be elected, should be pitted against the world- known and admired Harry Clay, was deemed the height of absurdity. And not only did multitudes of Wliigs deem the nomination of Polk a virtual surrender at discretion, but many Democrats privately cherished a similar conviction. The canvass, whicli opened at once with unusual spirit and deter- mination, soon undeceived them. Yet I think I do not err in stating that thousands supported Mr. Polk who intended only to maintain their standing in the Democratic party, while they neither expected nor wished to defeat ]\Ir. Clay's election. The early nomination of Silas Wright for Governor of our State added immensely to Mr. Polk's strength. He was widely known as a life-long friend and devoted follower of Mr. Van Buren, and his refusal to be placed second on the Polk ticket had increased his popularity with those who felt as he did. It soon became evident that the party would be substantially united on its National nominees, — united rather by their common hostility to Mr. Clay than by their devotion to his competitor. A few eminent New York Democrats issued what was called a secret circular, advising their friends to vote for Polk and Dallas, but to be careful to send members to Congress who would oppose to the last the Annexation of Texas. This recommendation was not followed. Tliose Demo- crats who disliked Annexation generally held tlieir peace ; 11 162 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. Silas Wright, in two or more carajjaign speeches, proclaimed that Annexation should only take place under conditions that gave Free Labor equal advantages with Slave from the acqui- sition. In the event, though the repugnance to Annexation at the North had been strong and general, Mr. Polk lost very . few Democratic votes on account pf it, though his support of the measure was open and unequivocal. Mr. Clay, on the other liand, though always clearly hostile to the Tyler or any kindred project, — to any scheme of immediate, unconditional Annexation without the prior consent of Mexico, — yet wrote several letters on the subject that served to embarrass his friends and encourage his foes. He explained that he did not object to Annexation because of Slavery, which he re- garded as temporary, while the acquisition of Texas would be permanent, and, under fit circumstances, desirable. These letters were written to two different friends in Alabama, and were probably not intended for publication, — at all events, they should not have been published. They gave Mr. Clay's opponents plausible grounds for saying that he was dissatisfied with his position before the public, and anxious to change it ; they embarrassed his many friends who did object to Annexa- tion on anti-Slavery grounds ; and they did not help him anywhere. Alabama and all the planting States went against him, — all but Georgia and Louisiana heavily so. He would have been stronger with the people if he had stood on his letter written from Ealeigh, N. C, before his nomination, which was sufficiently full and explicit. A candidate for a high elective office can hardly be too sparing of personal manifestoes and explanations. On the other great issue of the canvass — the Tariff — Mr. Clay's position was unquestionable. He was for Protection as a cardinal feature of a beneficent National policy, and he was especially in favor of the Protective Tariff of 1842, then (just fairly in operation, and giving profitable employment to much hitherto dormant labor, not only in existing mines, furnaces, factories, &c., but in opening new mines, and in erecting and fitting up many more furnaces and factories. HARRY CLAY. ' 163 The country had unquestionably been poor, its industry par- alyzed, its revenue deficient, when that Tariff was enacted; the subsequent change had been signal and rapid, and the Whigs believed and insisted that the Protection and the Pros- perity stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect. Our opponents, of course, denied the relation : they could not plausibly deny the facts. And their metropolitan organ, — The Globe, — which issued a prospectus for campaign sub- scribers, in which Protection and the Tariff were fiercely as- sailed, circulated in Pennsylvania a revised and expurgated edition, from which the anti-Tariff fulmination was carefuUy expunged. Nor was this the worst. ]\Ir. Polk had been for years in Congress, and had always voted there against Protection, as all Southern Democrats had voted since 1828. He was as much a Free-Trader in his votes as Mr. Calhoun had been ever since 1824 And yet he was induced by the exigencies of the canvass in Pennsylvania to Aviite (or sign) the following letter : — v Columbia, Tenn., June 19, 1844. Dear Sir : T have received recently several letters in reference to my opinions on the subject of the Tariff, and, among others, yours of the 10th ultimo.* My opinions on this subject have been often given to the public. They are to be found in my public acts, and in the public discussions in which I have participated. I am in favor of a tariff for revenue, — such a one as will yield a sufficient amount to the Treasury to defray the expenses of Gov- ernment, economically administered. In adjusting the details of a revenue tariff, I have heretofore sanctioned such moderate dis- criminating duties as would produce the amount of revenue needed, and at the same time afford incidental protection to our home industry. I am opposed to a tariff for protection merely, and not for revenue. Acting upon these general principles, it is well known that I gave my support to the policy of General Jackson's admin- istration on this subject. I voted against the tariff act of 1828. I voted for the act of 1832, which contained modifications of some of the objectionable provisions of the act of 1828. As a member * Never given to the public. — H. G. 164 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representa- tives, I gave my assent to the bill reported by that committee in December, 1832, making further modifications of the act of 1828, and making also discriminations in the imposition of the duties which it proposed. That bill did not pass, but was superseded by the bill commonly called the Compromise Bill, for which I voted. In my judgment, it is the duty of the government to extend, as far as it may be practicable to do so, by its revenue laws and all other means within its power, fair and just protection to all the great interests of the whole Union, embracing Agriculture, Manu- factures, and the Mechanic Arts, Commerce, and Navigation. I heartily approve the resolutions \ipon this subject passed by the Democratic National Convention, lately assembled at Baltimore. I am, with great respect, dear sir. Your ob't serv't, John K. Kane, Esq., Philadelphia. ^^^^ ^- ^^^^ It was impossible not to see that tliis was an elaborate attempt to darken comisel so as to break the force of the Tariff issue, which was telling strongly against him wherever Protection was the favorite policy, and especially in intensely, and all but unanimously, Protective Pennsylvania. The Whigs had felt confident of carrying Pennsylvania on the Tariff issue in her State (October) election, and thereupon carrying, not her only, but New York and other doubtful States, at the Presidential election in November ; but this letter enabled those who saw fit to insist that Polk was as much a Tariff man as Clay, and thereupon to override us by appeals to Pennsylvania's Democratic and Jackson prepossessions. A remarkably clever and subtle speech by Silas Wright, at Watertown, N. Y., aided this effort. Mr. Wright had voted in Congress for both the Tariffs of 1828 and 1842, — the two most Protective of any ever yet passed. Yet he assailed the latter, not in principle, but in detail ; arguing that it favored the woollen manufacturer at the expense of the wool-grower, by admitting cheap, coarse foreign wool at a low rate of duty. All our efforts to make a distinct issue, and obtain a popular decision as between Protection and Free Trade respectively, HARRY CLAY. 165 were tlius baffled ; and, while every Free-Trader went against us, — Gulian C. Verplanck leaving us expressly on that ground, — we lost the votes of thousands of Protectionists, who were unfairly induced to believe Polk as much a Protectionist as Clay ! A " N'ative American " movement, which had originat- ed in the Fall of 1843 among the native Democrats of this city, who revolted against what they considered a monopoly of office by our foreign-born population, had extended to, and almost absorbed, the Whig voters of this and other cities, — New York and Philadelphia being both swept by it in the Spring of '44. The first impression that Mr. Clay would gain more than he would lose by this side-wind was not justified by the result ; as the Presidential contest grew hotter and hotter, the Democratic Natives returned to their old standard, while immigrants by tens of thousands were naturalized ex- pressly to vote against Nativism, and all their votes told against us, as did those of thousands more who managed to vote without awaiting naturalization. Hence M^e failed to elect our Governor in Pennsylvania by 4,397 majority, — the vote standing: Shunk, 160,759; Markle, 156,352; and of course failed to carry the State at the following Presidential election, when Polk had 167,535 to 161,203 for Clay; and, as Pennsylvania then voted on the Friday before our election, which commenced on the following Monday and continued till Wednesday night, — the weight of that State's vote against us fell heavily on New York, and, by tlie help of a heavy illegal vote in this city, barely carried her against us ; the votes cast being : Vo\\, 237,588 ; Clay, 232,482 ; and Birney (Abolition), 15,812. I think we should have had at least half of that Birney vote for Clay, and made him President (for he only needed the vote of New York), in spite of all other draw- backs, but for those fatal Alabama letters. And the result in Michigan was likewise decided by the Birney vote ; while Louisiana was lost by the scandalous " Plaquemine " frauds, — a parish which had given 179 Democratic to 93 Whig votes in '42 cjivinfj 1,007 Democratic to but 37 Whiu; in '44: the voters coming down from New Orleans on a steamboat, 166 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. and pouring in their illegal ballots with scarcely a fig-leaf of decency. Polk carried that State by 699 majority ; and he had 970 in Plaquemines, where he was entitled to 200 at most. As it was, we carried for Mr. Clay the States of Ver- mont, Massachusetts, Ehode Island, Connecticut, New Jer- sey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, — 11 in all, casting 105 electoral votes; while Mr. Polk's electors were chosen in fifteen States, casting 170 votes. And, so close was the contest throughout, that Mr. Clay had in the whole Union 1,288,533 popular votes to 1,327,325 for Mr. Polk : Polk's majority, 38,792. Mr. Birney had in all 62,263 votes : so that Mr. Polk was preferred by a plurality, not a majority, of the entire people. But that did not affect the fact nor the validity of his election. I have admired and trusted many statesmen : I profoimdly loved Henry Clay. Though a slaveholder, he was a champion of Gradual Emancipation when Kentucky formed her first State Constitution in his early manhood ; and he was openly the same when she came to revise it, half a century later. He was a conservative in the true sense of that much-abused iterm : satisfied to hold by the present until he could see Iclearly how to exchange it for the better ; but his was no I obstinate, bigoted conservatism, but such as became an intel- ligent and patriotic American. From his first entrance into Congress, he had been a zealous and effective champion of Internal Improvements, the Protection of Home Industry, a sound and uniform National Currency, — those leading fea- tures of a comprehensive, beneficent National policy which commanded the fullest assent of my judgment and the best exertions of my voice and pen. I loved him for his generous nature, his gallant bearing, his thrilling eloquence, and his life-long devotion to what I deemed our country's unity, pros- perity, and just renown. Hence, from the day of his nomina- tion in May to that of his defeat in November, I gave every hour, every effort, every thought, to his election. My wife and then surviving child (our third) spent the Summer at a farm-house in a rural township of Massachusetts, while I HARRY CLAY. 167 gave heart and soul to the canvass. I travelled and spoke much ; I wrote, I think, an average of three columns of The Tribune each secular day; and I gave the residue of the hours I could save from sleep to watching the canvass, and doing whatever I could to render our side of it more effective. Very often, I crept to my lodging near the office at 2 to 3 A.M., with my head so heated by fourteen to sixteen hours of incessant reading and writing, that I could only win sleep by means of copious affusions from a shower-bath ; and these, while they probably saved me from a dangerous fever, brought out such myriads of boils, that — though I did not heed them till after the battle was fought out and lost — I was covered by them for the six months ensuing, often fifty or sixty at once, so that I could contrive no position in which to rest, but passed night after night in an easy-chair. And these unwelcome visitors returned to plague me, though less se- verely, throughout the following Winter. I have suffered from their kindred since, but never as I did from their yoimg luxu- riance in that Winter of '44-45. Looking back through ahnost a quarter of a century on that Clay canvass of 1844, I say deliberately that it should not have been lost, — that it need not have been. True, there was much good work done in it, but not half so much as there should have been, I, for example, was in the very prime of life, — thirty-three years old, — and knew how to -wTite for a newspaper ; and I printed in that canvass one of the most effective daily political journals ever yet issued. It was sold for two cents ; and it had 15,000 daily subscribers when the canvass closed. It should have had 100,000 from the first day onward ; and my Clay Tribune — a campaign weekly, issued six months for fifty cents — should have had not less than a quarter of a million. And those two issues, wisely and carefully distributed, could not have failed to turn the long-doubtful scale in favor of Mr. Clay's election. Of course, I mean that other effective, devoted journals should also have been systematically disseminated, until every voter who could and would read a Whig journal had been supplied with one, even though he had paid nothing for it. A quarter of a million 168 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. Campaign Tribunes would have cost at most S 125,000 ; and there were single houses largely engaged in mining or manu- facturing who were damaged more than that amount by Mr. Clay's defeat, and the consequent repeal of the Tariff of '42. There should have been $ 1,000,000 raised by open subscrip- tion during the week in which Mr. Clay was nominated, and every dime of it judiciously, providently expended in furnish- ing information touching the canvass to the voters of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. To put a good, effi- cient journal into the hands of every voter who will read it is the true mode of prosecuting a political canvass ; meetings and speeches are well enough, but this is indispensable. Mr. Clay might have been elected, if his prominent, earnest sup- porters had made the requisite exertions and sacrifices ; and I cannot but bitterly feel that great and lasting public calami- ties would thereby have been averted. Mr. Clay, born in poverty and obscurity, had not even a common-school education, and had only a few months' clerk- ship in a store, with a somewhat longer training in a lawyer's office, as preparation for his great career. Tall in person, though plain in features, graceful in manner, and at once dignified and affable in bearing, I think his fervid patriotism and thrilling eloquence combined with decided natural abili- ties and a wide and varied experience to render him the American more fitted to win and enjoy popularity than any. other who has lived. That popularity he steadily achieved and extended through the earlier half of his long public life ; but he was now confronted by a political combination well- nigh invincible, based on the potent personal strength of General Jackson ; and this overcame him. Five times pre- sented as a candidate for President, he was always beaten, — = twice in conventions of his political associates, thrice in the choice of electors by the people. The careless reader of our history in future centuries will scarcely realize the force of his personal magnetism, nor conceive how millions of hearts glowed with sanguine hopes of his election to the Presidency, and bitterly lamented his and their discomfiture. XXII. MARGARET FULLER. THE year 1840 — rendered notable by the Harrison can- vass — was signalized by several less noisy reactions and uprisings against prescription and routine. One of these made itself manifest in the appearance at Boston of The Dial, — the quarterly utterance of a small fraternity of scholars and thinkers, who had so far outo;rown the recofijnized stand- ards of orthodox opinion in theology and philosophy as to be grouped, in the vague, awkward terminology of this stammer- ing century, as Transccndentalists. Inexcusably bad as the term is, it so clearly indicates an aspiration, a tendency, as contradistinguished from a realization, an achievement, that it may be allowed to stand. Those to whom it was appHed had ahke transcended the preexisting limitations of decorous and allowable thinking ; but they were alike in little else. The "chosen editor of this magazine was Sarah Margaret Fuller, while Ealph Waldo Emerson and George Eipley were announced as her associates. After a time, Mr. Emer- son became the editor, with his predecessor as his chief as- sistant, but there was in reality little change ; and, while others contributed to its pages. The Dial, throughout the four or five years of its precarious existence, was chiefly regarded and valued as an expression and exponent of the ideas and convictions of these two rarest, if not ripest, fruits of New England's culture and reflection in the middle of the Nine- teenth Century. The original editor was to have been paid a salary of two hundred dollars per annum, had the sale of the work justified so liberal a stipend ; but I believe it never 170 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. did. What was purposed by its projectors is thus stated in one of her private letters : — " A perfectly free organ is to be offered for the expression of individual thought and character. There are no party measures to be carried, no particular standard to be set up. A fair, calm tone, a recognition of universal principles, will, I hope, pervade the essays in every form. I trust there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism nor of compromise ; and that this journal will aim, not at leading public opinion, but at stimulating each man to judge for himself, and to think more deeply and more nobly, by letting him see how some minds are kept alive by a wise self-trust We cannot show high culture, and I doubt about vigorous thought. But we shall manifest free action as far as it goes, and a high aim. It were much if a periodical could be kept open, not to accomplish any outward object, but merely to afford an avenue for what of liberal and calm thought might be originated among us, by the wants of individual minds." I presume the circulation of The Dial never reached two thousand copies, and that it hardly averaged one thousand. But its influence and results are nowise measured by the number of its patrons, nor even of its readers. To the " fit audience, though few," who had long awaited and needed its advent, without clearly comprehending their need, it was like manna in the wilderness ; and scores of them found in its pages incitement and guidance to a noble and beneficent, even though undistinguished, career. S. Margaret Fuller, the eldest child of Timothy and Margaret Crane Fuller, was born at Cambridgeport, Mass., on the 23d of May, 1810. Her father was a lawyer of hum- ble origin, who had risen, by force of resolution and industry, to a respectable position at the Boston bar, though he was a Republican, and all the wealth and business of that city were intensely Federal ; and lie ultimately represented in Congress, for several terms, the Middlesex district adjacent. This did not increase his popularity nor his professional gains in Bos- ton ; so that, when he died of cholera (Oct. 2, 1835), after a life of labor and frugality, he left but a narrow competence MARGARET FULLER. 171 to his widow and large family of mainly young, dependent children. But that widow was a woman of signal excellence of soul and life. He was well established in practice, and must have been ten or fifteen years at the bar when he met her, — a young girl of humble family and little education, but of rare beauty, physical and mental ; and, falhng in love with her at sight, sought her acquaintance, wooed, won, and married her. And, though she never found time for extensive stiidy, her natural refinement was such that the deficiencies of her edu- cation were seldom or never perceptible. Her eldest daughter was too early stimulated to protracted, excessive mental labor by her fond, exacting, ambitious fa- ther, justly proud of her great natural powers, and ignorant of the peril of overtaxing them. I have heard that, when but eight years old, she had her " stint " of so many Latin verses to compose per day, ready to recite to him on his return to their suburban home from his day's work in the city. This may be idle gossip ; I only know that, when I first made her acquaintance, she was, mentally, the best instructed woman in America ; while she was, physically, one of the least envi- able, — a prey to spinal affliction, nervous disorder, and pro- tracted, fearfully torturing headaches. Those who knew her in early youth have assured me that she was then the picture of rude health, — red-cheeked, robust, vigorous, and comely, if not absolutely beautiful. Too much of this was sacrificed to excessive study. Her near friend and literary associate, Ealph Waldo Emerson, gives this account of his first impres- sions of her in her early prime of womanhood, ten years be- fore I met her : — " I still remember the first half-hour of Margaret's conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height ; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had noth- ing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly 172 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tones of her voice, all repelled ; and I said to myself, ' We shall never get far.' It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterward her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others ; and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dan- gerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the women did not like one who despised them. I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history ; and her talk was a comed}^, in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remem- ber that she made me laugh more than I liked ; for I was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of soli- tude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me ; and, when I returned to my library, had much to think of the crackling of thorns under a pot." Her beloved and loving cousin, Eev. "William H. Chan- ning, in liis account of a visit he paid her, somewhat lat- er, when she lived at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, in 1840, says : — " As, leaning on one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, turning now and then her full eyes upon me to see whether I caught her meaning, there was leisure to study her thoroughly. Her temperament was predominantly what the physiologist woiild call nervous-sanguine ; and the gray eye, rich brown hair, and light complexion, with the muscular and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor. Here Avas a sensitive yet powerful being, fit at once for raptiu-e or sustained effort, intensely active, prompt for adventure, finn for trial. She certainly had no beauty ; yet the high-arched dome of her head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dig- nity and imj)idse, gave her a commanding charm. Especially characteristic were two physical traits. The first was a contraction of the eyelids almost to a point, — a trick caught from near-sight- edness, — and then a sudden dilation, till the iris seemed to MARGARET FULLER. 173 emit flashes, — an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly magnetized condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebrae and muscles of the neck, enabling her, by a mere move- ment, to denote each varying emotion ; in moments of tenderness, or pensive feeling, its curves were swan-like in grace ; but, when she was scornful or indignant, it contracted, and made swift turns, like that of a bird of j)rey. Finally, in the .animation, yet abandon, of Margaret's attitude and look, were rarely blended the fiery course of northern, and the soft lan