Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 2

[63] But time went on, and work went on, reason as I might; though time would have lost its light and life, and work all cheer and comfort, if I had not believed. But work grew harder. I was obliged to take longer and longer vacations, one of them five months long at the home in Sheffield.

After this I went back to my work, preaching almost exclusively in my own pulpit, seldom going away, unless it was now and then for an occasional sermon.

I went over to Providence in 1832, to preach the sermon at Dr. Hall's installation as pastor of the First Church. Arrived on the evening before, some of us of the council went to a caucus, preparatory to a Presidential election, General Jackson being candidate for the Presidency and Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. Finding the speaking rather dull, after an hour or more we rose to leave, when a gentleman touched my arm and said, "Now, if you will stay, you will hear something worth waiting for." We took our seats, and saw John Whipple rising to speak. I was exceedingly grateful for the interruption of our purpose, for I never heard an address to a popular a.s.sembly so powerful; close, compact, cogent, Demosthenic in simplicity and force, not a word misplaced, not a word too many, and fraught with that strange power over the feelings, lent by sadness and despondency, a state of mind, I think, most favorable to real eloquence, in which all verbiage is eschewed, and the burden [64] upon the heart is too heavy to allow the speaker to think of himself.

Mr. Whipple was in the opposition, and his main charge against Van Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity, threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren, then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound victim, at his feet."

We have learned since more than we knew then of the direful influence of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully urged that his State, small though it was, should do its utmost to ward them off. As he went on, and carried us higher and higher, I began to consider how he was to let us down. But the skilful orator is apt to have some clinching instance or anecdote in reserve, and Mr. Whipple's close was this:

"There sleep now, within the sound of my voice, the bones of a man who once stood up in the revolutionary battles for his country. In one of them, he told me, [65] when the little American army, ill armed, ill clad, and with bleeding feet, was drawn up in front of the disciplined troops of England, General Washington pa.s.sed along our lines, and when he came before us, he stopped, and said, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.' And when I heard that," said he, "I clasped my musket to my breast, and said, d.a.m.n 'em; let 'em come!" "The immortal Chieftain" [said the orator] "is looking down upon us now; and he says, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.'"

And now, on the whole, what shall I say of my life in New Bedford?

It was, in the main, very happy. I thought I was doing good there; I certainly was thoroughly interested in what I was doing. I found cultivated and interesting society there. I made friends, who are such to me still. In the pastoral relation, New Bedford was, and long continued to be, the very home of my heart; it was my first love.

In 1827 I was invited to go to New York. I did not wish to go, so I expressly told the church in New York (the Second Church); but I consented, in order to accomplish what they thought a great good, provided my congregation in New Bedford would give their consent. They would not give it; and I remained. I believe that I should have lived and died among them, if my health had not failed.

But it failed to that degree that I could no longer do the work, and I determined to go abroad and recruit, and recover it, if possible. [66]

This was in 1833. The Messrs. Grinnell & Co., of New York, offered me a pa.s.sage back and forth in their ships, one of the thousand kind and generous things that they were always doing, and I sailed from New York in the "George Washington" on the 8th of June. It was like death to me to go. I can compare it to nothing else, going, as I did, alone. In London I consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease was in the brain, and that I must pa.s.s three or four years abroad if I would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all probability you will never get rid of it." Alas! it all proved true.

I came home in the spring of 1834, thinking myself well. I had had no consciousness of a brain for three months before I left Europe. I went to work as usual; in one month the whole trouble was upon me again, and it became evident that I must leave New Bedford. I could write no more sermons; I had preached every sermon I had, that was worth preaching, five times over, and I could not face another repet.i.tion. I retired with my family to the home in Sheffield, and expected to pa.s.s some years at least in the quiet of my native village. [67] I should like to record some New Bedford names here, so precious are they to me. Miss Mary Rotch is one, called by everybody "Aunt Mary," from mingled veneration and affection. It might seem a liberty to call her so; but it was not, in her case. She had so much dignity and strength in her character and bearing that it was impossible for any one to speak of her lightly. On our going to New Bedford, she immediately called upon us, and when she went out I could not help exclaiming, "Wife, were ever hearts taken by storm like that!" Storm, the word would be, according to the usage of the phrase; but it was the very contrary, a perfect simplicity and kindliness. But she was capable, too, of righteous wrath, as I had more than one occasion afterwards to see. Indeed, I was once the object of it myself. It was sometime after I left New Bedford, that, in writing a review of the admirable Life of Blanco White by the Rev. J. H. Thom, of Liverpool, while I spoke with warm appreciation of his character, I commented with regret upon his saying, toward the close of his life, that he did not care whether he should live hereafter; and I happened to use the phrase, "He died and made no sign," without thinking of the miserable Cardinal Beaufort, to whom Shakespeare applies it. Aunt Mary immediately came down upon me with a letter of towering indignation for my intolerance. I replied to her, saying that if ever I should be so [68] happy as to arrive at the blessed world where I believed that she and Blanco White would be, and they were not too far beyond me for me to have any communion with them, she would see that I was guilty of no such exclusiveness as she had ascribed to me. She was pacified, I think, and we went on, as good friends as ever. Her religious opinions were of the most catholic stamp, and in one respect they were peculiar. The Friends'

idea of the "inward light" seemed to have become with her coincident with the idea of the Author of all light; and when speaking of the Supreme Being, she would never say "G.o.d," but "that Influence." That Influence was constantly with her; and she carried the idea so far as to believe that it prompted her daily action, and decided for her every question of duty.

Miss Eliza Rotch had come from her English home shortly before my going to New Bedford, and had brought, with her English education and sense, more than the ordinary English powers of conversation. She, like all her family, had been bred in the Friends' Society; and she came with many of them to my church. She was a most remarkable hearer. With her bright face, and her full, speaking eye, and interested especially, no doubt, in the new kind of ministration to which she was listening, she gave me her whole attention, often slightly nodding her a.s.sent, unconsciously to herself and un.o.bserved by others. She married Professor John Farrar of Harvard, and [69] able mathematician, and one of the most genial and lovable men that ever lived.

Life, in our quiet little town, was more leisurely than it is in cities, and the consequence was an unusual development of amusing qualities.

There was more fun, and I ventured sometimes to say, there was more wit, in New Bedford than there was in Boston. To be sure, we could not pretend to compare with Boston in culture and in high and fine conversation, least of all in music, which was at a very low ebb with us. I remember being at an Oratorio in one of our churches, where the trump of Judgment was represented by a horn not much louder than a penny-whistle, blown in an obscure corner of the building!

Charles H. Warren was the prince of humorists among us, and would have been so anywhere. Channing said to me one day, "I want to see your friend Warren; I want to see him as you do." I could not help replying, "That you never will; I should as soon expect to hear a man laugh in a cathedral." I never knew a man quite so full of the power to entertain others in conversation as he was. Lemuel Williams, his brother lawyer, had perhaps a subtler wit. But the way Warren would go on, for a whole evening, letting off bon-mots, repartees, and puns, made one think of a magazine of pyrotechnics. Yet he was a man of serious thought and fine intellectual powers. He was an able lawyer, and, placed upon the bench at an uncommonly, early [70] age, he sustained himself with honor. I used to lament that he would not study more, that he gave himself up so much to desultory reading; but he had no ambition. Yet, after all, I believe that the physical organization has more to do with every man's career than is commonly suspected. His was very delicate, his complexion fair, and his face, indeed, was fine and expressive in a rare degree.

The sanguine-bilious, I think, is the temperament for deep intellectual power, like Daniel Webster's. It lends not only strength, but protection, to the workings of the mind within. It is not too sensitive to surrounding impressions. Concentration is force. Long, deep, undisturbed thinking, alone can bring out great results. I have been accustomed to criticise my own temperament in this respect, too easily drawn aside from study by circ.u.mstances, persons, or things around me, external interests or trifles, the wants and feelings of others, or their sports, a playing child or a crowing c.o.c.k. My mind, such as it is, has had to struggle with this outward tendency, too much feeling and sentiment, and too little patient thinking, and I believe that I should have accomplished a great deal more if I had had, not the sanguine alone, but the sanguine-bilious temperament.

Mana.s.seh Kempton had it. He was the deacon of my church. I used to think that n.o.body knew, or at least fairly appreciated, him as I did. Under that heavy brow, and phlegmatic aspect, [71] and reserved bearing, there was an amount of fire and pa.s.sion and thought, and sometimes in conversation an eloquence, which showed me that, with proper advantages, he would have made a great man.

James Arnold was a person too remarkable to be pa.s.sed over in this account of the New Bedford men. With great wealth, with the most beautiful situation in the town, and, yet more, with the aid of his wife, never mentioned or remembered but to be admired, his house was the acceptable resort of strangers, more than any other among us. Mr. Arnold was not only a man of unshaken integrity, but of strong thought; and if a liberal education had given him powers of utterance, the habit of marshalling his thoughts, equal to the powers of his mind, he would have been known as one of the remarkable men in the State.

One other figure rises to my recollection, which seems hardly to belong to the modern world, and that is Dr. Whittredge of Tiverton. In his religious faith he belonged to us, and occasionally came over to attend our church. I used, from time to time, to pay him visits of a day or two, always made pleasant by the placid and gentle presence of his wife, and by the brisk and eager conversation of the old gentleman. He was acquainted in his earlier days with my predecessor, of twenty-five years previous date, Dr. West, himself a remarkable man in his day, [72] and almost equally so, both for his eccentricity and his sense. An eccentric clergyman, by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former times it was a character as common as now it is rare. The commanding position of the clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they pleased brought that trait out in high relief. The great democratic pressure has pa.s.sed like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of everybody; everybody wants something, office, appointment, business, position, and he is to receive it, not from a high patron, but from the common vote or opinion.

Dr. West's eccentricity arose from absorption into his own thoughts, and forgetfulness of everything around him. He would pray in the family in the evening till everybody went to sleep, and in the morning till the breakfast was spoiled. He would preach upon some Scripture pa.s.sage till some one went and moved his mark forward. He once paid a visit to the Governor in Boston, and, having got drenched in the rain, was supplied with a suit of his host's, which unconsciously, he wore home, and arrayed in which, he appeared in his pulpit on Sunday morning. At the same time he was a man of strong and independent thought. I have read a "Reply" of his to Edwards on the Will, in which the subject was ably discussed, but without the needful logical coherence, perhaps, to make its mark in the debate. [73] The conversations of West with his friend, Dr. Whittredge, as the latter told me, ran constantly into theological questions, upon which they differed. West was a frequent visitor at Tiverton, and, when the debate drew on towards midnight, Whittredge was obliged to say, "Well, I can't sit here talking with you all night; for I must sleep, that I may go and see my patients to-morrow." He was vexed, he said, that he should thus seem to "cry quarter" in the controversy again and again, and he resolved that the next time he met West, he would not stop, be they where they might. It so happened that their next meeting was at the head of Acushnet River, three miles above New Bedford, where Whittredge was visiting his patients, and West his parishioners. This done, they set out towards evening to walk to New Bedford. Whittredge throwing the bridle-rein over his arm, they walked on slowly, every now and then turning aside into some crook of the fence, the horse meantime getting his advantage in a bit of green gra.s.s, and thus they talked and walked, and walked and talked, till the day broke!

But the most remarkable thing about my venerable parishioner remains to be mentioned. Dr. Whittredge was an alchemist. He had a furnace, in a little building separate from his house, where he kept a fire for forty years, till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold.

From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in his patient and mysterious search; and, indeed, no one could doubt that he was a most benevolent and kind-hearted man. The occasion was this: He had been to our church one day, indeed, it was his last attendance, and as we came down from the pulpit, where he always sat, the better to hear me, and as we were walking slowly through the broad aisle, he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Ah, sir, this is the true doctrine!

But it wants money, it wants money, sir, to spread it, and I hope it will have it before long."

While in Europe I had kept a journal, and I low published it under the t.i.tle of "The Old World and the New," and about the same time, I forget which was first, a volume of sermons ent.i.tled, "Discourses on Various Subjects." The idea of my book of travels, I think, was a good me, to survey the Old World from the experience of the New, and the New from the observation of the Old; but it was so ill carried out hat what I mainly proposed to myself on my second visit to Europe, ten years after, was to [75] fulfil, as far as I could, my original design. But my health did not allow of it. I made many notes, but brought nothing into shape for publication. I still believe that America has much to teach to Europe, especially in the energy, development, and progress lent to a people by the working of the free principle; and that Europe has much to teach to America, in the value of order, routine, thorough discipline, thorough education, division of labor, economy of means, adjustment of the means to living, etc. As to my first volume of sermons, if any one would see his thoughts laid out in a winding-sheet, let them be laid before him in printer's proofs; that which had been to me alive and glowing, and had had at least the life of earnest utterance, now, through this weary looking over of proof-sheets, seemed dead and shrouded for the grave. It did not seem to me possible that anybody would find it alive. I have hardly ever had a sadder feeling than that with which I dismissed this volume from my hands.

At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I could preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five earmarks upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit, and I consented. I was soon [76] invited to take charge of the church, but declined it. It was even proposed to me to be established simply as preacher, and to be relieved from parochial visiting; but as the congregation was small, and could not support a pastor beside me, I declined that also. But I went on preaching, and after about a year, feeling myself stronger, I consented to be settled in the church with full charge, and was installed on the 8th November, 1835, Dr. Walker preaching the sermon.

The church was on the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets; a bad situation, inasmuch as it was on a corner, that is, it was noisy, and the annoyance became so great that I seriously thought more than once of proposing to the congregation to sell and build elsewhere. On other accounts the church was always very pleasant to me. It was of moderate size, holding seven or eight hundred people, and became in the course of a year or two quite full. The stairs to the galleries went up on the inside, giving it, I know not what, a kind of comfortable and domestic air, very social and agreeable; and last, not least, it was easy to speak in. This last consideration, I am convinced, is of more importance, and is so in more ways, than is commonly supposed. A place hard to speak in is apt to create, especially in the young preacher just forming his habits, a hard and unnatural manner of speaking. More than one young preacher have I known, who began with good natural tones, in the course of a [77] year or two, to fall into a loud, pulpit monotone, or to bring out all his cadences with a jerk, or with a disagreeable stress of voice, to be heard. One must be heard, that is the first requisite, and to have one and another come out of church Sunday after Sunday, and touch your elbow, and say, "Sir, I could n't hear you; I was interested in what I could hear, but just at the point of greatest interest, half of the time, I lost your cadence," is more than any man can bear for a long time, and so he resorts to loud tones and monotonous cadences, and he is obliged to think, much of the time, more of the mere dry fact of being heard, than of the themes that should pour themselves out in full unfolding ease and freedom. I have fought through my whole professional life against this criticism, striving to keep some freedom and nature in my speech, though I have made every effort consistent with that to be heard. I have not always succeeded; but I have tried, and have always been grateful, a considerable virtue, especially when the hearer was himself a little deaf to every one who admonished me. This is really a matter that seriously concerns the very religion that we preach. Everybody knows what the preaching tone is; it can be distinguished the moment it is heard, outside of any church, school-house, or barn where it is uplifted; but few consider, I believe, of what immense disservice it is to the great cause we have at heart.

Preaching is the [78] princ.i.p.al ministration of religion, and if it be hard and unnatural, the very idea of religion is likely to be hard and unnatural, far away from the every-day life and affections of men. Stamp upon music a character as hard, technical, unnatural as most preaching has, and would men be won by it? I do not say that what I have mentioned is the sole cause of the "preaching tone;" false ideas of religion have, doubtless, even more to do with it. But still it is of such importance that I think no church interior should be built without especial nay, without sole reference to the end for which it is built, namely, to speak in. Let what can be done for the architecture of the exterior building; but let not an interior be made with recesses and projections and pillars and domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined by architectural devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching.

And the fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is sacrificed by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be heard in. [79] But to return: we were not long to occupy the pleasant little church in Mercer Street, pleasant memories I hope there are of it to others besides myself. On Sunday morning, the 26th November, 1837, it was burned to the ground. Nothing was saved but my library, which was flung out of the vestry window, and the pulpit Bible, which I have, a present from the trustees.

The congregation immediately took a hall for temporary worship in the Stuyvesant Inst.i.tute, and directed its thoughts to the building of a new church. Much discussion there was as to the style and the locality of the new structure, and at length it was determined to build in a semi-Gothic style, on Broadway. I was not myself in favor of Broadway, it being the great city thoroughfare, and ground very expensive; but it was thought best to build there. It was contended that a propagandist church should occupy a conspicuous situation, and perhaps that view has been borne out by the result. One parishioner, I remember, had an odd, or at least an old-fashioned, idea about the matter. "Sir," said he, "you don't understand our feeling about Broadway. Sir, there is but one Broadway in the world." It is now becoming a street of shops and hotels, and is fast losing its old fashionable prestige.

The building was completed in something more than a year, and on the 2d May, 1839, it was dedicated, under the name of the Church of the Messiah. The burning of our sanctuary had [80] proved to be our upbuilding; the position of the Stuyvesant Inst.i.tute on Broadway, and the plan of free seats, had increased our numbers, and we entered the new church with a congregation one third larger than that with which we left the old. The building had cost about $90,000, and it was a critical moment to us all, but to me especially, when the pews came to be sold.

It may be judged what was my relief from anxiety when word was brought me, two hours after the auction was opened, that $70,000 worth of pews were taken.

It was a strong desire with me that the church should have some permanent name. I did not want that it should be called Dewey 's church, and then by the name of my successor, and so on; but that it should be known by some fixed designation, and so pa.s.s down, gathering about it the sacred a.s.sociations of years and ages to come. I believe that it was the first instance in our Unitarian body of solemnly dedicating a church by some sacred name.

Another wish of mine was to enter the new church with the Liturgy of King's Chapel in Boston for our form of service. The subject was repeatedly discussed in meetings of the congregation; but although it became evident that there would be a majority in favor of it, yet as these did not demand it, and there was a considerable minority strongly opposed to it, we judged that there was not a state of feeling among us that would justify the introduction of what so essentially [81] required unanimity and heartiness as a new form of worship. And I am now glad that it was not introduced. For while I am as much satisfied as ever of the great utility of a Liturgy, I have become equally convinced that original, spontaneous prayer is likely to open the preacher's heart, or to stir up the gift in him in a way very important to his own ministration and to the edification of his people. The best service, I think, should consist of both.

And I cannot help believing that a church service will yet be arranged which will be an improvement upon all existing ones, Roman Catholic, Church of England, or any other. If in the highest ranges of human attainment there is to be an advancement of age beyond age, surely there is to be a progress in the spirit and language of prayer. From some forming hand and heart, by the united aid of consecrated genius, wisdom, and piety, something is to come greater than we have yet seen. No Homeric poem or vision of Dante is so grand as that will be. What is the highest idea of G.o.d, excluding superst.i.tion, anthropomorphism, and vague impersonality alike, what is the fit and true utterance of the deepest and divinest heart to G.o.d, this, I must think, may well occupy the sublimest meditations of human intellect and devotion. Not that the entire Liturgy, however, should be the product of any one man's thought.

I would have in a Liturgy some of the time-hallowed prayers, some of the Litanies [82] that have echoed in the ear of all the ages from the early Christian time. The churches of Rome and England and Germany have some of these; and in a service-book, supposed to be compiled by the Chevalier Bunsen, there are others, prayers of Basil and of Jerome and Augustine, and of the old German time. There are beautiful things in them, especially in the old German prayers there is something very filial, free, and touching; but they would want a great deal of expurgation, and I believe that better prayers are uttered today than were ever heard before; and it is from uttered, not written prayers, if I could do so by the aid of a stenographer or of a perfect memory, that I would draw contributions to a book of devotion. What would I not give for some prayers of Channing or of Henry Ware! some that I have heard by their own firesides, or of Dr. Gardiner Spring, or of Dr. Payson of Portland, that I heard in church many years ago, for the very words that fell from their lips! I do not believe that the right prayers were ever composed, Dr ever will be.

After the dedication of our church I went on with my duties for three years, and then again broke down in health, able indeed, that is, with physical strength, to preach, but not able to write sermons. The congregation increased; many of is members became communicants; in the last Tear before I went abroad once more, the church [83] was crowded; in the evening especially, the aisles as well as pews were sometimes filled.

It was this fulness of the attendance in the evening that reconciled me to a second service; especially it was that many strangers came, to whom I had no other opportunity to declare my views of religion. For I judge that, for any given congregation, one service of worship, and of meditation such as the sermon is designed to awaken, is enough for one day. In the "Christian Examiner," two or three years after this, I think it was; I published an article on this subject, in which I maintained that there was too much preaching, too much preaching for the preacher, and too much preaching for the people. It was received with great surprise and little favor, I believe, at the time; but since then not a few persons, both of the clergy and laity, have expressed to me their entire agreement with it. What I said, and say, is that one sermon, one discourse of solemn meditation, designed to make a distinct and abiding impression upon the heart and life, is all that anybody should preach or hear in one day, and that the other part of Sunday should be used for conference or Sunday-school, or instructive lecture, or something with a character and purpose different from the morning meditation, something to instruct the people in the history, or evidences, or theory, or scriptural exposition of our religion. Indeed, I did this myself as often as I was able, though it tried the [84] religious prejudices of some of my people, and my own too, about what a sermon should be. I discussed the morals of trade, political morality, civic duty, that of voters, jurymen, etc., social questions, peace and war, and the problem of the human life and condition. Some portions of these last were incorporated into the course of Lowell Lectures on this subject, which I afterwards published. And it is high time to take this matter into serious consideration; for in all churches where the hearing of two or three sermons on Sunday is not held to be a positive religious duty, the second service is falling away into a thin and spectral shadow of public worship, discouraging to the attendants upon it, and dishonoring to religion itself.

The pastor of a large congregation in the city of New York has no sinecure. The sermons to be written, the parochial visiting, once a year, at least, to each family, and weekly or daily to the sick and afflicted, my walks commonly extended to from four to seven miles a day, the calls of the poor and distressed, laboring under every kind of difficulty, the charities to be distributed, I was in part the almoner of the congregation, the public meetings, the committees to be attended, the constantly widening circle of social relations and engagements, the pressure, in fine, of all sorts of claims upon time and thought, all this made a very laborious life for me. Yet it was pleasant, and very interesting. I thought when I [85]first went to the great city, when I first found myself among those busy throngs, none of whom knew me, beside those ranges of houses, none of which had any a.s.sociation for me, that I should never feel at home in New York. But it became very home-like to me. The walls became familiar to my eye; the pavement grew soft to my foot. I built me a house, that first requisite for feeling at home. I chanced to see a spot that I fancied: it was in Mercer Street, between Waverley Place and Eighth Street, just in the centre of everything, a step from Broadway and my church, just out of the noise of everything; there we pa.s.sed many happy days. I have been quite a builder of houses in my life. I built one in New Bedford. My study had the loveliest outlook upon Buzzard's Bay and the Elizabeth Islands, I shall never have such a study again. Oh, the joy of that sea view! When I came to it again, after a vacation's absence, it moved me like the sight of an old friend. And I have built about the old home in Sheffield, till it is almost a new erection.

But to return to New York: I was very happy there. I had a congregation, I believe, that was interested in me. I made friends that were and are dear to me. When I first went to New York, I was elected a member of the Artists' Club, or Club of the Twenty-one, as it was called; by what good fortune or favor I know not, for I was the first clergyman that had ever been a member of it. It consisted of artists and other gentlemen, [86] an equal number of each. Cole and Durand and Ingham and Inman and Chapman and Bryant and Verplanck and Charles Hoffman were in it when I first became acquainted with it; and younger artists have been brought into it since, Gray and' Huntingdon and Kensett, and other non-professional gentlemen interested in art, and the meetings have been always pleasant. It was a kind of heart's home to me while I lived in New York, and I always resort to it now when I go there, sure of welcome and kindly greeting.'

Then, again, I had in William Ware, the pastor of the First Church, a friend and fellow-laborer, than whom, if I were to seek the world over, I could not find one more to my liking. Our friendship was as intimate as I ever had with any man, and our constant intercourse, to enter his house as freely as my own, his coming to mine was as a sunbeam, as cheering and undisturbing, I thought I could not get along without it. But I was obliged to do so. He had often talked of resigning his situation, and I had obtained from him a promise that he would never do it without consulting me. Great was my surprise, then, to learn, one day while in the country, that he had sent in his resignation. My first word to him on going to town was, "What is this? You have broken your promise." "I did not consult even [87] my father or my brothers," was his reply. I could say nothing. The truth was, that things had come to that pa.s.s in his mind that the case was beyond consultation. He considered himself as having made a fatal mistake in his choice of a profession. I have some very touching letters from him, in which he dwells upon it as his "mistake for a life." His nature was essentially artistic; he would have made a fine painter. He could have worked between silent walls. He could write admirably, as all the world knows; I need only mention "Zen.o.bia" and "Aurelian" and "Probus." But there was a certain delicacy and shrinking in his nature that made it difficult for him to pour himself out freely in the presence of an audience. And yet a congregation, consisting in part of some of the most cultivated persons in New York, held him, as preacher and pastor, in an esteem and affection that any man might have envied.

[FN: The well-known Century Club of New York is the modern development of what was first known as the Sketch Club, or the XXI. M. E. D.]

And to repair the circle of my happy social relations, broken by Ware's departure, came Bellows to fill his place. I gave him the right hand of fellowship at his ordination; and I remember saying in it, that I would not have believed it possible for me to welcome anybody to the place of his predecessor with the pleasure with which I welcomed him. The augury of that hour has been fulfilled in most delightful intercourse with one of the n.o.blest and most generous men I ever knew. With a singularly clear insight and penetration [88] into the deepest things of our spiritual nature, with an earnestness and fearlessness breaking through all technical rules and theories, with a buoyancy and cheerfulness that nothing can dampen, with a fitness and readiness for all occasions, his power as a preacher and his pleasantness as a companion have made him one of the most marked men of his day.

As to my general intercourse with society, whether in New York or elsewhere, I have always felt that its freedom lay under disagreeable restrictions, if not under a lay-interdict; and when travelling as a stranger I have always chosen not to be known as a clergyman, and commonly was not. I once had a curious and striking ill.u.s.tration of the feeling about clergymen to which I am alluding. I was invited by Mr.

Prescott Hall, the eminent lawyer, to meet the Kent Club at his house, a law club then just formed. As I arrived a little before the company, I said to him: "Mr. Hall, I am sorry you have formed this kind of club, a club exclusively of lawyers. In Boston they have one of long standing, consisting of our professions, and four members of each, that is of lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and merchants." "To tell you the truth,"

he answered, "I don't like the clergy." I said that I could conceive of reasons, but I should like to hear him state them. "Why," said, he, "they come over me; they don't put themselves on a level with me; they talk [89] ex cathedra." I was obliged to bow my head in acquiescence; but I did say, "I think I know a cla.s.s of clergymen of whom that is not true; and, besides, if I could bring all the clergy of this city into clubs of the Boston description, I believe those habits would be broken up in a single year."

There were two men who came to our church whose coming seemed to be by chance, but was of great interest to me, for I valued them greatly. They were Peter Cooper and Joseph Curtis. Neither of them, then, belonged to any religious society, or regularly attended upon any church.

They happened to be walking down Broadway one Sunday evening as the congregation were altering Stuyvesant Hall, where we then temporarily worshipped, and they said, "Let us go in were, and see what this is."

When they came out, is they both told me, they said to one another, "This is the place for us" And they immediately connected themselves with the congregation, to be among its most valued members.

Peter Cooper was even then meditating that plan of a grand Educational Inst.i.tute which he afterwards carried out. He was engaged in a large and successful business, and his one idea which he often discussed with me was to obtain the means of building that Inst.i.tute. A man of the gentlest nature and the simplest habits; yet his religious nature was his most remarkable quality. It seemed to breathe through his life as [90] fresh and tender as if it were in some holy retreat, instead of a life of business. Mr. Cooper has become a distinguished man, much engaged in public affairs, and much in society. I have seen him but little of late years; but I trust he has not lost that which is worth more than all the distinctions and riches in the world.

Joseph Curtis was a man much less known generally, and yet, in one respect, much more, and that was in the sphere of the public schools. He did more, I think, than any man to bring up the free schools of New York to such a point as compelled our Boston visitors to confess that they were not a whit inferior to their own. And his were voluntary and unpaid services, though his means were always moderate. He neither had, nor made, nor cared to make, a fortune. He cared for the schools as for nothing else; and there is no wiser or n.o.bler care. For more than twenty years he spent half of his time in the schools, walking among them with such intelligent and gentle oversight as to win universal confidence and affection, so that he was commonly called, by teachers and pupils, "Father Curtis."

At the same time, his hand and heart were open to every call of charity.

I remember once making him umpire between me and Horace Greeley, the only time that I ever met the latter in company. He was saying, after his fashion in the "Tribune,"--he was from nature and training a Democrat, and had no natural right ever to be in [91] the Whig party, he was saying that the miseries of the poor in New York were all owing to the rich; when I said, "Mr. Greeley, here sits Mr. Joseph Curtis, who has walked the streets of New York for more years than you and I have been here, and I propose that we listen to him." He could not refuse to make the appeal, and so I put a series of questions upon the point to Mr. Curtis. The answers did not please Mr. Greeley. He broke in once or twice, saying, "Am not I to have a chance to speak? ". But I persisted and said, "Nay, but we have agreed to listen to Mr. Curtis." The upshot was, that, in his opinion, the miseries of the poor in New York were not owing to the rich, but mainly to themselves; that there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that, but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those who fell into utter dest.i.tution and beggary came to that pa.s.s through their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was obliged to help them, to look after them, to go to their houses; my family was worn out with these offices. But I looked upon beggary as, in all ordinary cases, prima facie evidence that there was something wrong behind it.

The great evil and mischief lay in indiscriminate charity. Many were the walks we took to avoid this, and often with little satisfaction. I have walked across the whole breadth of the city, [92] on a winter's day, to find a man dressed better than I was, with blue broadcloth and metal b.u.t.tons and new boots, and just sitting down to a very comfortable dinner. The wife was rather taken aback by my entrance, it was she who had come to me, and the man, of course, must say something for himself, and this it was: He "had fallen behind of late, in consequence of not receiving his rents from England. He was the owner of two houses in Sheffield." "Well," I said, "If that is so, you are better off than I am;" and I took a not very courteous leave of them.

To give help in a better way, an Employment Society was formed in our church to cut out and prepare garments for poor women to sew, and be paid for it. A salesroom was opened in Amity Street, to sell the articles made up, at a trifling addition to their cost. The ladies of the congregation were in attendance at the church, in a large ante-room, to prepare the garments and give them out, and a hundred or more poor women came every Thursday to bring their work and receive more; and they have been coming to this day. It was thought an excellent plan, and was adopted by other churches. The ladies of All Souls joined in it, and the inst.i.tution is now transferred to that church.

One day, in the winter I think of 1837, I heard of an a.s.sociation of gentlemen formed to investigate this terrible subject of mendacity in our city, and to find some way of methodizing our chari-[93] ties and protecting them from abuse. I went down immediately to Robert Minturn, who, I was told, took a leading part in this movement, and told him that I had come post-haste to inquire what he and his friends were doing, for that nothing in our city life pressed upon my mind like this. I used, indeed, to feel at times and Bellows had the same feeling as if I would fain fling up my regular professional duties, and plunge into this great sea of city pauperism and misery.

Mr. Minturn told me that he, with four or five others, had taken up this subject; that, for more than a year past, they had met together one evening in the week to confer with one another upon it; that they had opened a correspondence with all our great cities, and with some in Europe; and sometimes had sent out agents to inquire into the methods that had been adopted to stem these enormous city evils. Mr. Minturn wished me to join them, and I expected to be formally invited to do so; but I was not, nor to a great public meeting called soon after, under their auspices. I suppose there was no personal feeling against me, only an Orthodox one. Well, no matter. It was a n.o.ble enterprise, better than any sectarianism ever suggested, and worthy of record, especially considering its spontaneity, labor, and expense.

Their plan, when matured, was this: to district the city; to appoint one person in each district to receive all applications for aid; to sell tickets [94] of various values, which we could buy and give the applicant at our doors, to be taken to the agent, who would render the needed help, according to his judgment. Of course the beggars did not like it. I found that, half the time, they would not take the tickets.