Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 17

With our love to your wife and all,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Mrs. David Lane.

BOSTON, Dec. 1860.

DEAREST FRIEND (for I think friends draw closer to one another in troublous times),--Indeed I am sad and troubled, under the most favorable view that can be taken of our affairs; for though all this should blow over, as I prevailingly believe and hope it will, yet the crisis has brought out such a feeling at the South as we shall not easily forget or forgive. To be sure, as the irritation of an arraigned conscience, we may partly overlook it, as we do the irritation of a blamed child,--as an arraigned, and, I add, not quite easy conscience; for surely conscious virtue is calmer than the South is, today. I know that other things are mixed up with this feeling of the South; but if it felt that its moral position was high and honorable and unimpeachable before the world, it would not fly out into this outrageous pa.s.sion. If the ground it stood upon in former days were held now, it might be calm, as it was then; but ever since the day when it changed its mind,--ever since it has a.s.sumed that the slave system is right and good and admirable [255] and ought to be perpetual,--it has been growing more and more pa.s.sionate. Well, we must be patient with them. For my part, I am frightened at the condition to which their folly is bringing them. It is terrible to think that the distrust and fear of their slaves is spreading itself all over the South country. To be sure, they, in their unreasonableness, blame us for it. They might as well accuse England; they might as well accuse all the civilized world. For the conviction that slavery is wrong, that it ought not to be advocated, but to be condemned, and ultimately removed from the world,-this conviction is one of the inevitable developments of modern Christian thought and sentiment. It is not we that are responsible for the rise and spread of this sentiment; it is the civilized world; it is humanity itself.

And now what is it that the South asks of us as the condition of union with it? Why, that we shall say and vote that we so much approve of the slave-system, that we are willing, not merely that it should exist untouched by us,--that is not the question,--but that it should be taken to our bosom as a cherished national inst.i.tution.

I hope we shall firmly but mildly refuse to say it. It is the only honorable or dignified or conscientious position for us of the North. But, do you see the result of these munic.i.p.al elections in Ma.s.sachusetts? That does not look like firmness. There may be flinching.

But so it is, under the great Providence, that the world wears around questions which it cannot sharply meet.

These matters take precedence of all others now-adays, or else my first word would have been to say how glad we were to hear that C. is well again.

Yours as ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[256] To his Daughter Mary.

BOSTON, Feb. 10, 1861.

HAPPILY for my peace of mind, I have been over to the post-office this evening and got your letter. For my one want has been to know how that tremendous Thursday afternoon and night took you; that is, whether it took you off the ground, or the roof off the house. Here, it did not unroof any houses, but it blew over a carryall in Beacon Street; and when Dr. J. went out, like a good Samaritan, to help the people, it did not respect his virtue at all, but blew him over. Blew him over the fence, it was said; at any rate; landed him on his face, which was much bruised, and dislocated his shoulder. So you see I could not tell what pranks the same wind might play around the corners of certain houses or barns afar off.

Was there ever anything like the swing of the weather? Now it is warm here again, and ready to rain. Aga.s.siz told me that the change in Cambridge, on Thursday, was 71? in ten hours. In Boston it was Go?, being 100 or 1? colder in Cambridge.

I see Aga.s.siz often of late at Peirce's Lowell Lectures on "the Mathematics in the Cosmos." The object is to show that the same ideas, principles, relations, which the mathematician has wrought out from his own mind, are found in the system of nature, indicating an ident.i.ty of thought. You see of what immense interest the discussion is.

But Peirce's delivery of his thoughts is very lame and imperfect (extemporaneous). Two lectures ago, as I sat by Aga.s.siz, I said at the close, "Well, I feel obliged to apologize to myself for being here."

A. Why?

[257] D. Because I don't understand half of it.

A. No? I am surprised. I do.

D. Well, that is because you are learned. (Thinking with myself, however, why does he? For he knows no more of the mathematics than I do.

But I went on.)

D. Well, my apology is this; Peirce is like nature,-vast, obscure, mysterious,--great bowlders of thought, of which I can hardly get hold; dark abysses, into which I cannot see; but, nevertheless, flashes of light here and there, and for these I come.

A. Why, yes, I understand him. Just now, when he drew that curious diagram to ill.u.s.trate a certain principle, I saw it clearly, for I know the same thing in organic nature.

D. Aha! the Mathematics in the Cosmos!

Was it not striking? Here are the Mathematics (Peirce), and Natural Science (Aga.s.siz), and they easily understand each other, because the lecturer's principle is true.

The three or four years which Mr. Dewey spent in Boston with his family were full of enjoyment to him; but in December, 1861, he withdrew finally to Sheffield, which he never left again for more than a few weeks or months at a time.

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

SHEFFIELD, July 26, 1861.

MY DEAR BELLOWS,--G.o.d bless you for what you and your Sanitary Commission are doing for our people in the camps It goes to my heart to be sitting here in quiet and comfort, these lovely summer days, while they [258] are braving and enduring so much. And so, though of silver and gold I have not much, I send my mite, to help, the little that I can, the voluntary contribution for your purposes.

Last Monday night [Alluding to the battle and rout of Bull Run, July 1861] was the bitterest time we have had yet some, even in this quiet village, did not sleep a wink. Confound sensation newspapers and newspaper correspondents that fellow who writes is enough to drive one mad. The "Evening Post" is the wisest paper. But it is too bad that that rabble of civilians and teamsters should have brought this apparent disgrace upon us.

We have an immense amount of inexperience, and of rash, opinionated thinking to deal with; but we shall get over it all.

If you are staying in New York, I wish you could run up and take a little breathing-time with us. Come any time; we have always a bed for you.

We are all well, and all unite in love to you and E.

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Miss Catherine M. Seagwick.

SHEFFIELD, Feb. 5, 1862.

My FRIEND,--I must report myself to you. I must have you sympathize with my life, or--I will not say I shall drown myself in the Housatonic, but I shall feel as if the old river had dried up, and forsaken its bed.

I do not know how to set about telling you how happy I am in the old home. I feel as if I had arrived after a long voyage, or were reposing after a day's [259] work that had been forty years long. Indeed, it is forty-two years last autumn since I left Andover and began to preach.

And I have never before had any cessation of work but what I regarded as temporary. Indeed, I have never before had the means to retire upon. And although it is but a modest competence, $1,500 a year [FN: He had just received a legacy of $5,000 from Miss Eliza Townsend, of Boston]-yet I am most devoutly thankful to Heaven that I have it, and that I am not turned out, like an old horse upon the common. To be sure, I should be glad to be able to live nearer to the centres of society; but you can hardly imagine what comfort and satisfaction I feel in having enough to live upon, instead of the utter poverty which I might well have feared would be, and which so often is, the end of a clergyman's life.'

This house of ours is very pleasant, you would think so if you were in it,--all doors open, as in summer, a summer temperature from the furnace, day and night, moderate wood-fires in the parlor and library, cheering to the eye, and making of the chimneys excellent ventilators, and the air pure; and this summer house seated down amidst surrounding cold, and boundless fields of snow,--it seems a miracle of comfort.

And then, this surrounding splendor and beauty,-the valley, and the hills and mountains around,--the soft-falling snow, the starry crystals descending through the still air,--the lights and shadows of morning and evening,--this wondrous meteorology of winter--but you know all about it. Really, I think some days that winter is more beautiful than summer.

Certainly I would not have it left out of my year. . . . "Aha! all is rose-colored to him!" Well, nay, but it is literally [260] so. The white hill opposite, looking like a huge snow-bank, only that it is checkered with strips and patches of wood, dark as Indian-ink, is stained of that color every clear afternoon, and rises up at sundown into a bank of roseate or purple bloom all along above the horizon.

6th. I did n't get through last evening. No wonder, with so much heavy stuff to carry. Did I ever write such a stupid letter before? Well, do not say anything about it, but quickly cover it over with the mantle of one of your charming epistles. It is not often that one has a chance to show so much Christian generosity. Besides, consider that I do not altogether despair of myself. I am reviving; and you don't know what a letter I may write you one of these days, if you toll me along.

In the autumn his only son enlisted for nine months in the 49th Ma.s.sachusetts Regiment.

To his Daughters.

SHEFFIELD, Oct. 13, 1862.

MY DEAR GIRLS, Charles has enlisted. It was at a war-meeting at the town-hall last evening. You have known his feelings, and perhaps will not be surprised. I did not expect it, and must confess I was very much shaken in spirit by it. But, arriving through some sleepless hours at a calmer mood, I do not know that it is any greater sacrifice than we as a family ought to make.

Although it will throw a great deal of care upon me, and there is all this extra work to do, yet, that excepted, perhaps he could not go at any better time than now. [261] It is for the winter, and nine months is a fitter term for a family man, circ.u.mstanced as he is, than three years; and this enlistment precludes all liability to future draft. This is in the key of prudence; but I do think that men with young families dependent upon them should be the last to go. And yet I had rather have in C. the patriotic spirit that impels him, than all the prudence in the world.

To the Same.

Oct. 16, 1862.