Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 24

ST. DAVID'S, March 7, 1872.

DEAR FRIEND--OF ALL MANKIND,--I see you have let them make you President of the Bellevue Local Visiting a.s.sociation. Was there n.o.body else that could take that charge? Was it not enough for you to have the Forty-ninth Street Hospital to look after? But M. says, "Let her; let her work." And she talks about "living while you live," and comes at me with such saws. Saws they may well be called, for they sever prudence from virtue, instead of making them a rounded whole. The fact is, n.o.body has any sense--I mean the perfect article--but me. For I say, what if "living while you live" comes to not living at all? Is that what you call working? And why not let other people work? Is Mrs. Lane to be made the queen bee of New York philanthropy, and to become such an enormous conglomeration of goodness [319] that she can't get out of her hospital hive to visit her friends, nor let them visit her, with any chance of seeing her? And is n.o.body worth caring for unless he has been knocked down in the street, and has got a broken leg or a fever?

I am quite serious, though you may not think so. I do not like your taking another hospital, or the visitation of it, in charge. It must devolve an immense deal of care and thinking upon somebody. There 's reason in all things, or ought to be. Your brains and eyes ought to be spared from overwork. We shall hear of you as blind or paralytic next.

Tell your mother that we have to "stand to our colors" for the climate of New England nowadays, else they would be all blown away. It 's awful weather in New York too, I hope. I don't go out much. Really, if this March were not-a march to spring, it would be a hard campaign. With love to all your house, I am, as affectionately and warmly as the weather will permit,

Yours,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

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

ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 21, 1873.

DEAR FRIEND,--I need not say we shall be rejoiced to see you. Don't be proud, but it is "real good" of you. If "a saint in c.r.a.pe is twice a saint in lawn," a friend in winter is twice a friend of any other season. "If I shall be away?" Only by being beside myself could I be away in winter. "Or have other guests." No, indeed, they don't fly like doves to our winter [320]windows. But the white snowflakes do, and it will do your eyes good to see the driven and drifted snow. We have had a very quiet winter, and few drifts, but to-night, I see, is blowing them up. I should not wonder if they blocked the road and kept my letter back a day or two.

To the Same.

March 5, 1873.

. . . WE thought you might be stopped somewhere, and not to go at all would be the worst "go" that could be. All Sunday we kept speaking about it, with a sort of feeling as if we were guilty of something; so that I felt it necessary to calm the family distress by setting up a new and original view of the whole matter, to this effect: "Well, if he has been stopped over Sunday at the State Line, or Chatham Four Corners, it may be the most profitable Sunday he ever pa.s.sed. What a time for calm meditation and patience!--better things than preaching. You know he lives in a throng; this will be a blessed 'retreat,' as the Catholics call it. He is stomach-full of prosperity; perhaps he needed an alterative. Introspection is a rare thing in our modern outward-bound life. He is accustomed to preach to great admiring audiences; to-day he will preach to his humble, non-admiring self."

Well, I am glad,--so ready, alas! are we to escape from discipline,--but I am glad that you got through, though by running a gauntlet that we shivered to read of. But you did get through, and got home, having accomplished what you went for. Any way, you did us so much good that it paid, on the great scale of disinterested [321] benevolence, for a great deal of trouble on your part.

"Shall we be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease?"

With our love to the entire quaternity of you, Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

On his eightieth birthday my father was surprised and touched by the gift acknowledged in the next letter to the old friend through whose hands it was conveyed to him. It will be seen, that in the private letter accompanying this response, he was under the mistaken impression that Mr. Bryant was writing a history of the United States, while, in fact, he was merely editing one written by Mr. Gay.

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

SHEFFIELD, March 30, 1874.

MY DEAR SIR AND FRIEND,--Your letter, which came to me to-day, crowns the birthday tokens and expressions of regard which I have received from many. It takes me entirely by surprise, only exceeded by the gratification I feel at having s: a generous gift from my friends in New York and elsewhere. I thank them, and more than thank them, and you, for being the medium of it. I am alike honored by both. Thanks is a little word, and dollars is called a vulgar one; but two thousand two hundred and sixty-two of the latter, and [322]the sense I have of the former, make up, I feel, no vulgar amount.

I don't know how you will convey to my old parishioners and friends my sense of their good will and good esteem, but I pray you will-do so as largely as you can; and to Dr. Osgood particularly for the care and trouble I cannot but suppose he has taken in this matter. I am sure it will please them to know, that on account of the increased expenses of living, and the failure of some stocks, this gift is especially convenient to me, and will help to smooth--for the steps now, perhaps, but few-my remaining path in life.

I am, as ever, with great regard,

Your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY. To the Same.

ST. DAVID'S, March 30, 1874.

DEAR BRYANT,--I send you enclosed my formal answer to your letter on behalf of my kind friends in New York and elsewhere, but I must have a little private word with you. . . . That speech of yours at the Cooper [A meeting at the Cooper Inst.i.tute] was one of the best, if not the very best, of the little speeches that you have ever made. But good gracious!

to think of your undertaking a Popular History of the United States! The only thing that troubles me for you is the taskwork of investigation.

Supposing you to have the whole subject in your mind, n.o.body can write the story better than you can. Put fire into it, my dear Senior; or rather do what you can do,--for I have seen it,--so state things in your calm way as to put fire into others.

[323] This is a great work that you have in hand; everybody will read it, and will be instructed by it, I trust, in sound politics, and stirred to holy patriotism.

Ever yours, faithfully,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same,

ST. DAVID'S, Aug. 6, 1874.

WE have had a good deal of conference together, you and I, old friend, but I do not know that we ever discussed the subject of bores. You have raised questions about it, both for the next world and this, which, though I said nothing about them in my book, as you facetiously remark, it may surprise you to know are quite serious with me. Thus, if there is to be society in the next world, what can save it from the weariness of society in this,--save it, in other words, from bores? The spiritists say that Theodore Parker gives lectures there to delighted audiences.

And, truth to say, I do not know of any other social occupation that would be so satisfactory as that of teaching or learning. What is all the highest conversation here, but that by which we help one another--teaching or being taught--to higher and juster thoughts? That would shake off the yoke of boredom under which so many groan now. If, instead of eternal surface-talk, we could strike down to reality, to something that interested our minds and hearts, fresh streams would flow over the arid waste of commonplace. Real thoughts would be a divining-rod. If, when a man calls upon me, he could, teach me something upon which he knows more than I do, or I could do the same for him, neither of us would be bored. [324] Do I not talk like a book? But, to be serious, so much am I bored with general society, that I am inclined to say I had rather live as I do here in Sheffield. Is n't c.u.mmington a blessed place for that?

But alas! it don't save you from being bored with letters,--vide, for example, this, perhaps, which I am now writing.

But, O excellent man! though you never bored me in talk, you have lately bored into me; I will tell you how.

A month or two ago a book agent came to me, asking me to subscribe for "Bryant's Pictorial America." I was astonished, and said, "Do you mean to say that Mr. Bryant's name will appear on the t.i.tle page of this work, and that it was written by him?"--"Certainly," was the reply; "not that he has written the whole, but much of it." I could n't believe that, and was declining to subscribe, when my wife--that woman has a great respect for you--called me aside and said, "I wish you would take this book." So I turned back and said, "My wife wants this book, and I will subscribe for it." Well, yesterday the first volume came to hand; and, turning to the t.i.tle page, I found edited by W. C. B., which means not that you wrote the book, but seem to father it. Next year a man will come along with "Bryant's Popular History of the United States of America," and the year after, for aught I know, with "Specimens of American Literature," by W. C. B. I do seriously beseech you, my friend, to look into this. These people take advantage of your good-nature; and ill-nature will spring up about it, if this kind of thing goes on. With love to J., and hoping to see you,

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[325] To the Same.

ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 14, 1874.

DEAR FRIEND,--It was very amiable in you to write to me on getting home; and, not to be outdone, I am going to write to you; and for the both sad and amusing story you repeated of Mr. G., I will give you a recital of the same mixed character.

I have been this evening to hear the Hampton Singers. Two of them, by the bye, are our guests,--for we offered to relieve the company of all expenses if they would come down here,--and very well behaved young men they are. The tunes they sing, remember, come from the tobacco and cotton fields of the South. I asked them how many they had. They said, two hundred, and that there were a great many more which were sung by the slaves of the old time. Is it not an extraordinary thing? I do not believe that more than ten are ever heard from the farms of New England.

I don't remember more than five. What a musical nature must these people have I imagine that no such musical development, no such number of songs, can be found among any other people in the world,

The chief interest with me in hearing them was thinking where they came from, what was the condition that gave birth to them. Their singing is both sad and amusing, but partakes more of aspiration than of dejection; and it has not a particle of hard or revengeful feeling towards their masters. But here again,--what sort of a people it is! The words of their songs are of the poorest; not a soul among them has arisen to give us anything like the German folk-songs, or like Burns's. Still, their songs are a wonderful revelation from the house of [326] bondage; such sadness, such domestic tenderness, such feeling for one another, such hopes and hallelujahs lifted above this world, where there was no hope

Heartily yours,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

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

ST. DAVID'S, Nov. 24, 1874.

DEAR FRIEND,--I have read and read again what you have written upon the Great Theme. What a subject for a letter! And yet the most we can say seems to avail no more than the least we can say. Some one, or more, of the old Asiatics--I forget who--says he "would have no word used to describe the Infinite Cause." I suppose no word can be found that is not subject to exceptions. The final words that I fall back upon are righteousness and love. Even the word intelligence is perhaps more questionable. If it implies anything like attention to one person and thing or another, anything like imagination, comparison, reasoning, we must pause upon the use of it. To say knowledge would perhaps be better, for there must be something that knows its own works and creatures. To suppose the cause of all things to be ignorant of all things seems like a contradiction in terms. It would be, in fact, to deny a cause; to say that the universe is what it is without any cause. Even that awful supposition, the only alternative to theism, comes over the mind sometimes; but if I were to accept it, "the very stones would cry out"

against me.

Oh, my friend, I lie down in my bed every night thinking of G.o.d; and I say sometimes, is it not a false idea of greatness, to suppose the Infinite Greatness cannot [327] regard me? Worldly great men shrink from little things, from little people. But it is not so with the most truly great. They come down in art, in poetry, in eloquence, in true learning, to instruct and lift up the lowly and ignorant.