Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 13

Yours, with no danger of forgetting,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. William Ware.

SHEFFIELD, July 3, 1851.

DEAR GWYLLYM (is n't that Welsh for William?)--I don't know whether your letter with nothing in it, and the postage paid on the contents, is on the way to me; but I am writing to all my friends, to celebrate the Independence-day of friendship and to help the revenue, and not to write to you would be lese-majesty to love and law.

Is it not a distinct mark higher up on the scale of civilization,--this cheap postage? The easier transmission of produce is accounted such a mark,--much more the easier transmission of thought.

Transmission, indeed! When I had got so far, I was called away to direct Mr. P. about the sink. And do you know what directing a man is, in the country? Why, it is to do half the work yourself, and to take all the responsibility. And, in consequence of Mr. P., you won't get a bit better letter than you proposed to send.

Where's your book? What are you doing? What do you think of your Miss Martineau now? Is n't the Seven Gables a subtile matter, both in thought and style?

Have n't I said the truth about the much preaching? Some of the clergy, I perceive, say with heat that [223] preaching is not cold and dull.

Better let the laity testify.

There is Mr. P. again.

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 1851.

. . . HAVE you seen the "great Hungarian"? Great indeed, and in a way we seem not to have thought of. Is n't there a story somewhere of a man uncaging, as he thought, a spaniel, and finding it to be a lion?

We thought we had released and were bringing over a simple, harmless, inoffensive, heart-broken emigrant, who would be glad to settle, and find rest, and behold, we have upon our hands a world-disturbing propagandist, a loud pleader for justice and freedom, who does not want to settle, but to fight; who will not rest upon his country's wrongs, nor let anybody else if he can help it; who does not care for processions nor entertainments, but wants help. Kossuth has doubtless made a great mistake in taking his position here; it is the mistake of a word-maker and of a relier on words, and he has not mended the matter by defining. But I declare he is infinitely more respectable in my eyes than if he had come in the character in which we expected him,--as the protege and beneficiary of our people, who was to settle down among us and be comfortable.

To Rev. William Ware.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3, 1852.

. . . I MUST fool a little, else I shan't know I am writing to you.

And really I must break out somewhere, [224] life is such a solemn abstraction in Washington to a clergyman. What has he to do, but what's solemn? The gayety pa.s.ses him by; the politics pa.s.s him by. n.o.body wants him; n.o.body holds him by the b.u.t.ton but some desperate, dilapidated philanthropist. People say, while turning a corner, "How do you do, Doctor?" which is very much as if they said, "How do you do, Abstraction?" I live in a "lone conspicuity," preach in a vacuum, and call, with much ado, to find n.o.body. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" one might say to a prophet in this wilderness.

What a curious fellow you are! calm as a philosopher, usually, wise as a judge, possessed in full measure of the very Ware moderation and wisdom, and yet every now and then taking some tremendous lurch--against England or for Kossuth! I go far enough, go a good way, please to observe,--but to go to war, that would I not, if I could help it. Fighting won't prepare men for voting. Peaceful progress, I believe, is the only thing that can carry on the world to a fitness for self-government. I have no idea that the Hungarians are fit for it. See what France has done with her free const.i.tution! Oh! was there ever such a solemn farce, before Heaven, as that voting,--those congratulations to the Usurper-President, and his replies?

To Rev. Henry W Bellows.

WASHINGTON, March 7, 1852.

. . . I HAVE seen a good deal of Ole Bull here within a week or two. I admire his grand and simple, reverent and affectionate Norwegian nature very much. He has come out here now with views connected with the welfare [225] of his countrymen; I do not yet precisely understand them. Is it not remarkable that he and Jenny Lind should have this n.o.ble nationality so beating at their very hearts?

To the Same.

I DON'T see but you must insert these articles in the "Inquirer" as "Communications." Some of them will have things in them that cannot possibly be delivered as Wegotisms. Don't be stiff about the matter. I tell you there is no other way; and indeed I think it no harm, but an advantage, to diversify the form, and leave out the solemn and juridical Wego sometimes, for the more sprightly and "sniptious" Ego.

To his Daughter Mary.

WASHINGTON, May, 1852.

DEAREST MOLLY,--To be sure, how could you? And, indeed, what did you for? Oh! for little K.'s sake. Well, anything for little K.'s sake.

Indeed, it's the duty of parents to sacrifice themselves for their children. It's the final cause of parents to mind the children. Poor little puss! We shall feel relieved when we hear she is in New York, and safe under the sisterly wing. I am afraid she is getting too big for nestling. How I want to see the good little comfort! Is she little? Tell us how she looks and does.

Yesterday, beside preaching a sermon more than half new, and attending a funeral (out of the society), I read skimmingly more than half Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens." I laid aside the book overwhelmed. What shall we do? What shall we think? Far from our [226] Milky Way,--there they lie, other universes,--rebuke resolved by Rosse's telescope into stars, starry realms, numerous, seemingly innumerable, and as vast as our system; and yet from some of them it takes the light thirty--sixty thousand years to come to us: nay, twenty millions, Nichol suggests, I know not on what grounds. And yet in the minutest details such perfection! A million of perfectly formed creatures in a drop of water!

I do not doubt that it is this overwhelming immensity of things that leads some minds to find a sort of relief, as it were, in the idea of an Infinite Impersonal Force working in all things. But it is a child's thought. Nay, does not the very fact that my mind can take in so vast a range of things lead me better to conceive of what the Infinite Mind can do? An ant's mind, if it had one, might find it just as hard to conceive of me.

With love to you two miserable creatures, away from your parents,

Thine ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same.

[Undated.]

What have I not written to you about, you cross thing? Oh! Kossuth.

Well, then, here is an immensely interesting person, whom we invited over here to settle, and who is much more likely to unsettle us. How far would you have him unsettle us? To the extent of carrying us into a war with Russia, or of banding us, with all liberal governments, in a war with the despotic governments, so that Europe should be turned into a caldron of blood for years to come, millions of people sacrificed, [227]

unutterable miseries inflicted, the present frame of society torn in pieces; and, when all is done, the human race no better off,--worse off?

You say, no. Well, anything short of that I am willing Kossuth should accomplish. Any expression of opinion that he can get here, from the people or the government, a.s.serting the rights of nations and the wrong of oppression, let him have,--let all the world have it. Moral influence, gradually changing the world, is what I want. But Kossuth and the Liberals of Europe want to bring on that great war of opinion, which, I fear, will come only too soon. I fear that Kossuth has fairly broached the question of intervention here, and that in two years it will enter the ballot box. I fear these tendencies to universal overthrow that are now revealing themselves all over the civilized world.

Kossuth is a man all enthusiasm and eloquence, but not a man, I judge, of deep practical sagacity. A sort of Hamlet, he seems to me,--graceful, delicate, thoughtful, meditative, moral, n.o.ble-minded; and I should not wonder if he was now feeling something of Hamlet's burden: "The time is out of joint: oh, cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

A lady, who saw him two days ago, told me that so sad a face she never saw; it haunted her.

It was on his return to his Berkshire home, after this winter in Washington, that the next merry little letter, describing his renewed acquaintance with his country neighbors, was sent to me. The custom of ringing the church bell at noon and at nine in the evening had not then been relinquished, although it has since died out.

[228] To his Daughter Mary.

SHEFFIELD, July 23, 1852.

DEAR MOLLY,--Dr. K. and H. called upon us the very evening after we arrived! Mrs. K. as usual. Mrs. B. is on a visit to her friends; the children with their grandmother. . . . Mr. D. does n't raise any tobacco this summer. I saw Mr. P. lying fiat on his back yesterday,--not floored, however, but high and dry on Mr. McIntyre's counter. Mr. M.

has succeeded Doten, Root, and Mansfield. These three gentlemen have all flung themselves upon the paper-mill, hardly able to supply the Sheffield authors. Mr. Austin continues to announce the solemn procession of the hours. Mr. Swift is building an observatory to see 'em as they pa.s.s. There are thoughts of engaging me to note 'em down, as I have nothing else to do.

I am particularly at leisure, having demitted all care of the farm to Mr. Charles, and committed all the income thereof to him, down to the smallest hen's-egg.

Your mother is always doing something, and always growing handsomer and lovelier, so that I told her yesterday I should certainly call her a sa-int, if she was n't always a do-int

I have nothing to tell of myself; no st.i.tches or aches to commemorate, being quite free and whole in soul and body, and, freely and wholly

Your loving father,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[229] To Rev. Henry W. Bellows.