Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 15

DEAR FRIEND,--Yesterday I was sixty-two years old. After lecturing in the evening right earnestly on "The Body and Soul," I came home very tired, and sat down with a cigar, and pa.s.sed an hour among the scenes of the olden time. I thought of my father, when, a boy, I used to walk with him to the fields. Something way-[238] ward he was, perhaps, in his moods, but prevailingly bright and cheerful,--fond of a joke,--strong in sense and purpose, and warm in affection,--steady to his plans, but somewhat impulsive and impatient in execution. Where is he now? How often do I ask! Shall I see him again? How shall I find him after thirty, forty years pa.s.sed in the unseen realm? And of my mother you will not doubt I thought, and called up the scenes of her life: in the mid-way of it, when she was so patient, and often weary in the care of us all, and often feeble in health; and then in the later days, the declining years, so tranquil, so gentle, so loving,--a perfect sunshine of love and gentleness was her presence.

But come we to this St. Charles Hotel, where we have been now for a week, as removed as possible from the holy and quiet dreamland of past days. Incessant hubbub and hurly-burly are the only words that can describe it, seven hundred guests, one thousand people under one roof.

What a larder! what a cellar! what water-tanks, pah! filled from the Mississippi, clarified for the table with alum. People that we have known cast up at all corners, and many that we have not call upon us,--good, kind, sensible people. I don't see but New Orleans is to be let into my human world.

You see how I blot,--I'm nervous,--I can't write at a marble table. Very well, however, and wife mainly so. Three weeks more here, and then back to Savannah, where I am to give four lectures. Then to Charleston, to stay till about the 25th May.

The lectures go here very fairly,--six hundred to hear. They call it a very large audience for lectures in New Orleans. . . . With our love to all your household,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[239]The Same

SHEFFIELD, Aug. 10, 1856.

DEAR FRIEND,--My time and thoughts have been a good deal occupied of late by the illness and death of Mr. Charles Sedgwick. The funeral was on last Tuesday, and Mr. Bellows was present, making the prayer, while I read pa.s.sages, and said some words proper for the time. They were hearty words, you may be sure; for in some admirable respects Charles Sedgwick has scarcely left his equal in the world. His sunny nature shone into every crack and crevice around him, and the poor man and the stranger and whosoever was in trouble or need felt that he had in him an adviser and friend. The Irish were especially drawn to him, and they made request to bear his body to the grave, that is, to Stockbridge, six miles. And partly they did so. . . . It was a tremendous rain-storm, but the procession was very long.

But I must turn away from this sad affliction to us all,--it will be long before I shall turn my thought from it,--for the world is pa.s.sing on; it will soon pa.s.s by my grave and the graves of us all. I do not wonder that this sweeping tide bears our thoughts much into the coming world,--mine, I sometimes think, too much.

But we have to fight our battle, perform our duties, while one and another drops around us; and one of the things that engages me just now, is to prepare a discourse to be delivered under our Elm Tree on the 21st.

The Elm Tree a.s.sociation, before which the address just alluded to was made, was a Village Improvement Society, of which my father was [240]

one of the founders, and which took its name from an immense tree, one of the finest in Ma.s.sachusetts, standing near the house of his maternal grandfather. To smooth and adorn the ground around the Great Elm, and make it the scene of a yearly summer festival for the whole town, was the first object of the Society, extending afterwards to planting trees, grading walks, etc., through the whole neighborhood; and it was one of the earlier impulses to that refinement of taste which has made of Sheffield one of the prettiest villages in the country. With its fine avenue of elms, planted nearly forty years ago, its gardens and well-shaven turf, it shows what care and a prevailing love of beauty and order will do for a place where there is very little wealth. It was about this time that my father planted in an angle of the main street the Seven Pines, which now make, as it were, an evergreen chapel to his memory, and with the proceeds of some lectures that he gave in the town, set out a number of deciduous trees around the Academy, many of which are still living, though the building they were intended to shade is gone.

The Elm Tree a.s.sociation, however, from one cause and another, was short-lived; but "It lived to light a steadier flame" in the Laurel Hill a.s.sociation, of Stockbridge, which, taking the idea from the Sheffield plan, continues to develop it in a very beautiful and admirable manner.

[241] The address at the gathering in 1856 was chiefly occupied with a review of the history of the town, and with the thoughts appropriate to the place of meeting; and at the close the speaker took occasion to explain to his townspeople his ideas upon the national crisis of the day, and the changed aspect that had been given to the slavery question by the fresh determination of the South to maintain the excellence of the system and to force it upon the acceptance of the North in the new States then forming. Against this he made earnest and solemn protest, with a full expression of his opinion as to the innate wrong to the blacks, and the destructive effects on the whites, of slavery; but at the same time he spoke with large and kindly consideration for the Southerners. After doing justice to the care and kindness of many of them for their slaves, he said, in close:--

"I have listened also to what Southern apologists have said in another view,--that this burden of slavery was none of their choosing; that it was entailed upon them; that they cannot immediately emanc.i.p.ate their people; that they are not qualified to take care of themselves; that this state of things must be submitted to for a while, till remedial laws and other remedial means shall bring relief. And so long as they said that, I gave them my sympathy. But when they say, 'Spread this system,--spread it far and wide,' I cannot go another step with them.

And it is not I that has changed, but they. When they say, 'Spread it, --spread it over [242] Kansas and Nebraska, spread it over the far West, annex Mexico, annex Cuba, annex Central America, make slavery a national inst.i.tution, make the compact of the Const.i.tution carry it into all Territories, cover it with the national images, set it up as part of our great republican profession, stamp on our flag and our shield and our scutcheon the emblem of human slavery,' I say,--no--never-G.o.d forbid!"

It seems strange now that so temperate and candid a speech should have raised a storm of anger when read in Charleston. But the sore lace was too tender for even the friendliest such, and of all those who had greeted him here so cordially the winter before, but two or three maintained and strengthened their relations with him after this summer.

It was one of many trials to which his breadth of view exposed him.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

SHEFFIELD, Aug. 11, 1856.

MY DEAR BELLOWS,--I do not complain of your Teter; but what if it should turn out that I cannot agree with you? What if my opinions, when properly understood, should displease many persons? Is it the first time that honest opinions have been proscribed, or the expression of them thought "unfortunate "?

I appreciate all the kindness of your letter, and your care for my reputation; but you are not to be told that here is something higher than reputation.

You write with the usual anti-slavery a.s.surance that our opinion is the correct one. It is natural; it is the [243] first-blush, the impromptu view of the matter. But whether there is not a juster view, coming out of that same deliberateness and impartiality that you accuse me of,--whether there is not, in fact, a broader humanity and a broader politics than yours or that of your party, is the question.

I don't like the tendencies of your mind (I don't say heart) on this question; your willingness to bring the whole grand future of this country to the edge of the present crisis; your idea of this crisis as a second Revolution, and of the cause of liberty as equally involved; your thinking it so fatal to be cla.s.sed with Tories, or with-, and-, and your regret that I should have gone down South to lecture. It all looks to me narrow.

I may address the public on this subject. But if I do, I shan't do it mainly for my own sake; at any rate, I shall write to you when I get leisure.

With love to E.,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. Ephraim Peabody, D.D.

SHEFFIELD, Nov. 10, 1856.

MY DEAR PEABODY,--I have written you several imaginary letters since I saw you, and now I'm determined (before I go to Baltimore to lecture, which is next week) that I will write you a real one. I desired H. T.

to inquire and let me know how you are, and she writes that you are very much the same as when I was in Boston,--riding out in the morning, and pa.s.sing, I fear, the same sad and weary afternoons. I wish I were near you this winter, that is, if I could help you at all through those heavy hours. [244] I am writing a lecture on "Unconscious Education;" for I want to add one to the Baltimore course. And is not a great deal of our education unconscious and mysterious? You do not know, perhaps, all that this long sickness and weariness and prostration are doing for you. I always think that the future scene will open to us the wonders of this as we never see them here.

Heine says that a man is n't worth anything till he has suffered; or something like that. I am a great coward about it; and I imagine sometimes that deeper trial might make something of me.

My dear friend, if I may call you so, I write to little purpose, perhaps, but out of great sympathy and affection for you. I do not know of a human being for whom I have a more perfect esteem than for you.

And in that love I often commend you, with a pa.s.sing prayer, or sigh sometimes, to the all-loving Father. We believe in Him. Let us "believe the love that G.o.d hath to us."

With all our affectionate regards to your wife and girls and to you,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

Within a few weeks the pure and lofty spirit to whom these words were addressed was called hence, and the following letter was written:--

SHEFFIELD, Dec. 17, 1856.

MY DEAR MRS. PEABODY,--Do you not know why I dread to write to you, and yet why I cannot help it? Since last I spoke to you, such an event has pa.s.sed, that I tremble to go over the abyss and speak to you again. But you and your children stand, bereft and stricken, on [245] the sh.o.r.e, as it were, of a new and strange world,--for strange must be the world to you where that husband and father is not,--and I would fain express the sympathy which I feel for you, and my family with me. Yet not with many words, but more fitly in silence, should I do it. And this letter is but as if I came and sat by you, and only said, "G.o.d help you," or knelt with you and said, "G.o.d help us all;" for we are all bereaved in your bereavement.

True, life pa.s.ses on visibly with us as usual; but every now and then the thought of you and him comes over me, and I exclaim and pray at once, in wonder and sorrow.

But the everlasting succession of things moves on, and we all take our place in it-now, to mourn the lost, and now, ourselves to be mourned--till all is finished. It is an Infinite Will that ordains it, and our part is to bow in humble awe and trust.

I had a letter once, from a most lovely woman, announcing to me the death of her husband, a worthless person; and she spoke of it with no more interest than if a log had rolled from the river-bank and floated down the stream. What do you think of that,--with affections, venerations, loves, sympathies, swelling around you like a tide?

I know that among all these there is an unvisited loneliness which nothing can reach. May G.o.d's peace and presence be there!

I could not write before, being from home. I do not write anything now, but to say to you and your dear children, "G.o.d comfort you."

From your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[246] To his Daughter Mary.

BALTIMORE, Nov. 24, 1856.

DEAREST MOLLY,--I must send you a line, though somehow I can't make my table write yet. I have just been out to walk in the loveliest morning, and yet my nerves are ajar, and I can't guide my pen. I preached very hard last evening. I don't know but these people are all crazy, but they make me feel repaid. The church was full, as I never saw it before. The lecture Sat.u.r.day evening was crowded. So I go.

I am reading Dr. Kane's book. Six pages could give all the actual knowledge it contains; but that fearful conflict of men with the most terrible powers of nature, and so bravely sustained, makes the story like tragedy; and I read on and on, the same thing over and over, and don't skip a page. But Mrs.--has just been in, and sat down and opened her widowed heart to me, and I see that life itself is often a more solemn tragedy than voyaging in the Arctic Seas. Nay, I think the deacon himself, when he accepted that challenge (how oddly it sounds!), must have felt himself to be in a more tragic strait than "Smith's Strait,"