Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 25

=_Timothy Flint, 1780-1840._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From "Recollections of the Mississippi Valley."

=_177._= THE WESTERN BOATMAN.

Three is no wonder that the way of life which the boatman, lead, in turn extremely indolent and extremely laborious, for days together requiring little or no effort, and attended with no danger, and then on a sudden laborious and hazardous beyond the Atlantic navigation, generally plentiful as it regards food, and always so as it regards whiskey, should always have seductions that prove irresistible to the young people that live near the banks of the river. The boats float by their dwellings on beautiful spring mornings, when the verdant forest, the mild and delicious temperature of the air, the delightful azure of the sky of this country, the fine bottom on the one hand, and the romantic bluff on the other, the broad, and smooth stream rolling calmly down through the forest, and floating the boat gently forward,--all these circ.u.mstances harmonize in the excited youthful imagination. The boatmen are dancing to the violin on the deck of their boat. They scatter their wit among the girls on the sh.o.r.e, who come down to the water's edge to see the pageant pa.s.s. The boat glides on until it disappears behind a point of wood; at this moment, perhaps, the bugle, with which all the boats are provided, strikes up its note in the distance, over the water.

These scenes, and these notes, echoing from the bluffs of the beautiful Ohio, have a charm for the imagination, which, although I have heard a thousand times repeated, and at all hours, and in all positions, is even to me always new, and always delightful. No wonder that to the young, who are reared in these remote regions, with that restless curiosity which is fostered by solitude and silence, who witness scenes like these so frequently,--no wonder that the severe and unremitting labors of agriculture, performed directly in the view of such scenes, should become tasteless and irksome.

=_Washington Irving, 1783-1839._= (Manual, pp. 478, 498.)

From "Knickerbocker's History of New York."

=_178._= FROM "t.i.tLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS."

A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty,... being the only authentic history of the times that ever hath been or ever will be published, by Diedrick Knickerbocker....

Book I., chap. i. Description of the World.... Book II., chap. i....

Also of Master Hendrick Hudson, his discovery of a strange country....

Chap. vii. How the people of Pavonia migrated from Communipaw to the Island of Manhattan.... Chap. ix. How the city of New Amsterdam waxed great under the protection of St. Nicholas, and the absence of laws and statutes. Book III., chap. iii. How the town of New Amsterdam arose out of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite, together with a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers.... Book IV., chap. vi. Projects of William the Testy for increasing the currency; he is outwitted by the Yankees. The great Oyster War.... Book V., chap.

viii. How the Yankee crusade against the New Netherlands was baffled by the sudden outbreak of witchcraft among the people of the East ... Book VII., chap. ii. How Peter Stuyvesant labored to civilize the community.

How he was a great promoter of holydays. How he inst.i.tuted kissing on New Year's Day.... Chap. iii. How troubles thicken on the province. How it is threatened by the Helderbergers,--the Merrylanders, and the Giants of the Susquehanna.

=_179._= THE ARMY AT NEW AMSTERDAM.

First of all came the Van b.u.mmels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were the first inventors of supp.a.w.n, or mush and milk.... Lastly came the Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahtic.o.ke, where the folks lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away.

These derive their name, as some say, from _Knicker_, to shake, and _Beker_, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were st.u.r.dy tosspots of yore; but in truth, it was derived from _Knicker_, to nod, and _Bocken_, books, plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over books; from them did descend the writer of this History.

From the "Tales of a Traveller."

=_180._= A MOTHER'S MEMORY.

A part of the church-yard is shaded by large trees. Under one of them my mother lay buried. You have no doubt thought me a light, heartless being. I thought myself so; but there are moments of adversity which let us into some feelings of our nature to which we might otherwise remain perpetual strangers.

I sought my mother's grave: the weeds were already matted over it, and the tombstone was half hid among nettles. I cleared them away, and they stung my hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for my heart ached too severely. I sat down on the grave, and read, over and over again, the epitaph on the stone.

It was simple,--but it was true. I had written it myself, I had tried to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my feelings refused to utter themselves in rhyme. My heart had gradually been filling during my lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the brim, and overflowed, I sunk upon the grave, and buried my face in the tall gra.s.s, and wept like a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is to find true sympathy;--how few love us for ourselves; how few will befriend us in our misfortunes--then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, even in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual had been my love. My heart melted as I retraced the days of infancy, when I was led by a mother's hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's arms, and was without care or sorrow. "O my mother!" exclaimed I, burying my face again in the gra.s.s of the grave, "O that I were once more by your side; sleeping never to wake again on the cares and troubles of this world."

I am not naturally of a morbid temperament, and the violence of my emotion gradually exhausted itself. It was a hearty, honest, natural discharge of grief which had been slowly acc.u.mulating, and gave me wonderful relief. I rose from the grave as if I had been offering up a sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been accepted.

I sat down again on the gra.s.s, and plucked one by one the weeds from her grave: the tears trickled more slowly down my cheeks, and ceased to be bitter. It was a comfort to think that she had died before sorrow and poverty came upon her child, and all his great expectations were blasted.

I leaned my cheek upon my hand, and looked upon the landscape. Its quiet beauty soothed me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining field came cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire hope and comfort with the free air that whispered through the leaves, and played lightly with my hair, and dried the tears upon my cheek. A lark, rising from the field before me, and leaving as it were a stream of song behind him as he rose, lifted my fancy with him. He hovered in the air just above the place where the towers of Warwick castle marked the horizon, and seemed as if fluttering with delight at his own melody. "Surely," thought I, "if there were such a thing as a transmigration of souls, this might be taken for some poet let loose from earth, but still revelling in song, and carolling about fair fields and lordly towers."

From "The Life and Voyages of Columbus."

=_181._= COLUMBUS A PRISONER.

The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, a prisoner, and in chains, produced almost as great a sensation as his triumphant return from his first voyage. It was one of those striking and obvious facts, which speak to the feelings of the mult.i.tude, and preclude the necessity of reflection.

No one stopped to inquire into the case. It was sufficient to be told that Columbus was brought home in irons from the world he had discovered. A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and its neighboring city, Seville, which was immediately echoed throughout all Spain.... However Ferdinand might have secretly felt disposed towards Columbus, the momentary tide of public feeling was not to be resisted.

He joined with his generous queen in her reprobation of the treatment of the admiral, and both sovereigns hastened to give evidence to the world, that his imprisonment had been without their authority, and contrary to their wishes.

=_182._= HIS ARRIVAL AT COURT.

He appeared at court in Granada, on the 17th of December, not as a man ruined and disgraced, but richly dressed, and attended by an honorable retinue. He was received by their majesties with unqualified favor and distinction. When the queen beheld this venerable man approach, and thought on all that he had deserved, and all that he had suffered, she was moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly against the rude conflicts of the world; he had endured with lofty scorn the injuries and insults of ign.o.ble men; but he possessed strong and quick sensibility.

When he found himself thus kindly received by his sovereigns, and beheld tears in the benign eyes of Isabella, his long-suppressed feelings burst forth. He threw himself upon his knees, and for some time could not utter a word for the violence of his tears and sobbings.

From Wolfert's Roost.

=_183._= "A TIME OF UNEXAMPLED PROSPERITY."

Every now and then the world is visited by one of these delusive seasons, when "the credit system," as it is called, expands to full luxuriance; every body trusts every body; a bad debt is a thing unheard of; the broad way to certain and sudden wealth lies plain and open, and men are tempted to dash forward boldly, from the facility of borrowing.

Promissory notes, interchanged between scheming individuals, are liberally discounted at the banks, which become so many mints to coin words into cash; and as the supply of words is inexhaustible, it may readily be supposed what a vast amount of promissory capital is soon in circulation. Every one now talks in thousands; nothing is heard but gigantic operations in trade, great purchases and sales of real property, and immense sums made at every transfer. All, to be sure, as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!"

Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the inflation he has contributed to produce.

Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation"

is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an immediate fortune. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind his ear, he is like La Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his books of chivalry. His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after pearls. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of wealth that break upon his imagination.

When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure, of distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming; railroads, ca.n.a.ls, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears the whole community joining in the theme of "unexampled prosperity."

let him look upon the whole as a "weather breeder," and prepare for the impending storm.

From The Life of Washington.

=_184._= DEATH AND BURIAL OF BRADDOCK.

The proud spirit of Braddock was broken by his defeat. He remained silent the first evening after the battle, only e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. at night, "Who would have thought it!" He was equally silent the following day; yet hope still seemed to linger in his breast, from another e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n: "We shall better know how to deal with them another time!"

He was grateful for the attentions paid to him by Captain Stewart and Washington, and more than once, it is said, expressed his admiration of the gallantry displayed by the Virginians in the action. It is said, moreover, that in his last moments, he apologized to Washington for the petulance with which he had rejected his advice, and bequeathed to him his favorite charger and his faithful servant, Bishop, who had helped to convey him from the field.

Some of these facts, it is true, rest on tradition, yet we are willing to believe them, as they impart a gleam of just and generous feeling to his closing scene. He died on the night of the 13th, at the Great Meadows, the place of Washington's discomfiture in the preceding year.

His obsequies were performed before break of day. The chaplain having been wounded, Washington read the funeral service. All was done in sadness, and without parade, so as not to attract the attention of lurking savages, who might discover and outrage his grave. It is doubtful even whether a volley was fired over it, that last military honor which he had recently paid to the remains of an Indian warrior.

The place of his sepulture, however, is still known, and pointed out.

Reproach spared him not, even when in his grave. The failure of the expedition was attributed both in England and America, to his obstinacy, his technical pedantry, and his military conceit. He had been continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but without avail. Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and others, to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would never have been so signally surprised and defeated.