Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 3

It would give them some trouble, but the special trouble, doubtless, with the reckless and dishonest among them, was that it would prevent them from availing themselves of the aid of twenty families, all acting in ignorance of what each was doing.

Jonathan Goodhue was a man whom n.o.body that knew him can ever forget.

Tall and fine-looking in person, simple and earnest in manners, with such a warmth in his accost that to shake hands with him was to feel happier for it all the day after. I remember pa.s.sing down Wall Street one day when old Robert Lenox was standing by his side. After one of those warm greetings, I pa.s.sed on, and Mr. Lenox said, "Who is that?"

"Mr. Dewey, a clergyman of a church in the city." "Of which church?"

said Mr. Lenox. "Of the Unitarian church." "The Lord have mercy upon him!" said the old man. It was a good prayer, and I have no doubt it was kindly made.

Alas! What I am writing is a necrology: they are all gone of whom I speak. George Curtis, too; he died before I left the Church of the Messiah, died in his prime. George William Curtis is [95] his son, well known as one of our most graceful writers and eloquent men: something hereditary in that, for his father had one of the clearest heads I knew, and a gifted tongue, though he was too modest to be a great talker. He could make a good speech, and once he made one that was more effective than I could have wished. The question was about electing Thomas Starr King to be my colleague. The congregation was immensely taken with him; but Mr. Curtis opposed on the ground that King was a Universalist, and he carried everything before him. He said, as it was reported to me, "I was born a Unitarian; I have lived a Unitarian; and, if G.o.d please, I mean to die a Unitarian!" He had the old-fas.h.i.+oned, and indeed well-founded, dislike of Universalism. But all that is changed now, was changing then; for the Universalists have given up their preaching of no retribution hereafter. They are in other respects, also, Unitarians, and the two bodies affiliate and are friends.

Moses Grinnell was a marked man in New York. A successful and popular merchant, his generosity was ample as his means; and I have known him in circ.u.mstances that required a higher generosity than that of giving money, and he stood the test perfectly. His mind, too, grew with his rise in the world. He was sent to Congress, and his acquaintance from that time with many distinguished men gave a new turn to his thoughts and a higher tone to his character and [96] conversation. At his house, where I was often a guest, I used to meet Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, whose niece he married. Of course everybody knows of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving; but there are one or two anecdotes, of which I doubt whether they appear in his biography, and which I am tempted to relate. He told me that he once went to a theatre in London to hear some music. (They use theatres in London as music-halls, and I went to one myself, once, to hear Paganini, and enjoyed an evening that I can never forget. His one string for he broke all the others was a heart-string.) Mr. Irving said that on entering the theatre he found in the pit only three or four English gentleman, who had evidently come early, as he had, to find a good place. Accordingly, he took his seat near them, when one of them rather loftily said, "That seat is engaged, sir." He got up and took a seat a little farther off, when they said, "That, too, is engaged." Again he meekly rose, and took another place. Pretty soon one of the party said, "Do you remember Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's description of a band of music?"

(It is indeed a most amusing caricature. One of the performers had blown his visnomy to a point. Another blew as if he were blowing his whole estate, real and personal, through his instrument. I quote from memory.) Mr. Irving said they went over with the whole description, with much entertainment and laughter. They little knew that they had thrust aside [97] the author of their pleasure, who sat there, like the great Caliph, incognito, and they would have paid him homage enough if they had known him.

Mrs. S. told me that one evening he strolled up to their piazza, they lived near to one another in the country, and fell into one of those easy and unpremeditated talks, in which, to be sure, he was always most pleasant, when he said, among other things, "Don't be anxious about the education of your daughters: they will do very well; don't teach them so many things,--teach them one thing." "What is that, Mr. Irving?" she asked. "Teach them," he said, "to be easily pleased."

Bryant, too, everybody knows of. Now he is chiefly known as poet; but when I went to New York-people thought most about him as editor of the "Evening Post," and that with little enough complacency in the circles where I moved. How many a fight I had for him with my Whig friends! For he was my paris.h.i.+oner, and it was known that we were much together. The "Evening Post" was a thorn in their sides, and every now and then, when some keen editorial appeared in it, they used to say, "There! What do you say of that?" I always said the same thing: Whether you and I like what he says or not, whether we think it fair or not, of one thing be sure, he is a man of perfect integrity; he is so almost to a fault, if that be possible, regarding [98] neither feelings nor friends.h.i.+ps, nor anything else, when justice and truth are in question.

Speaking of Bryant brings to mind Audubon, the celebrated naturalist.

I became acquainted with him through his family's attending our church, and one day proposed to Mr. Bryant to go with me to see him. Seating himself before the poet, Audubon quietly said, "You are our flower,"--a very pretty compliment, I thought, from a man of the woods.

I happened to fall in with Mr. Audubon one day in the cars going to Philadelphia, when he was setting out, I think, on his last great tour across the American wilderness. He described to me his outfit, to be a.s.sumed when he arrived at the point of departure, a suit of dressed deerskin, his only apparel. In this he was to thread the forest and swim the rivers; with his rifle, of course, and powder and shot; a tin case to hold his drawing-paper and pencils, and a blanket. Meat, the produce of the chase, was to be his only food, and the earth his bed, for two or three months. I said, shrinking from such hards.h.i.+p, "I could n't stand that."--"If you were to go with me," he replied, "I would bring you out on the other side a new man." He broke down under it, however, rather prematurely; for in that condition I saw him once more,--his health and faculties shattered,--near the end of his life.

[99] But to return,--turning and returning upon one's self must be the course of an autobiography, my health having a second time completely failed, I determined again to go abroad; and to make the measure of relief more complete, I determined to go for two years, and to take my family with me. The sea was a horror to me, but beyond it lay pleasant lands that I wanted to look upon once more, galleries of art by which I wished to sit down and study at my leisure, and, above all, rest: I wanted to be where no one could call on me to preach or lecture, to do this or do that.

We sailed for Havre in October, 1841, pa.s.sed the winter in Paris, the summer following in Switzerland, the next winter in Italy, and, returning through Germany, spent two months in England, and came home in August, 1843.

While in Geneva I was induced for my health to make trial of the "water-cure," and first to try what they call the "Arve bath." The Campagne at Champel, where we were pa.s.sing the summer, is washed for half a mile by the Arve. In hot August days I walked slowly by the river-bank, with cloak on, till a moderate perspiration was induced, then jumped in,--and out as quick! for the river, though it had run sixty miles from its source, seemed as cold as when it left the glacier of the Arveiron at Chamouni. Experiencing no ill effect, however, I determined to try the regular water-cure, and for this purpose, in [100] our travel through Switzerland, stopped at Meyringen in the Vale of Hasli. I was "packed,"-bundled up in bed blankets every morning at daybreak, went through the consequent furnace of heat and drench of perspiration for two or three hours,--then was taken by a servant on his back, me and my wrappages, the whole bundle, and carried down to the great bath, only 6 of Reaumur above ice (45 degrees Fahrenheit), plunged in, got out again in no deliberate way, was pushed under a shower-bath of the same glacier water, fought my way out of that, at arm's end with the attendant, when he enveloped me in warm, dry sheets, and made me comfortable in one minute. It was of no use, however. My brain grew more nervous, the doctor agreed that it did not suit me, and shortly I gave it up.

At Rome we were introduced with a small American party to the Pope, Gregory XVI. It was just after the Carnival and just before Lent. The old man expressed his pleasure that the people had enjoyed themselves in Carnival, "But now," said he, "I suppose a great many of them will find themselves out of health in Lent, and will want indulgences." I could not help thinking how much that last was like a Puritan divine.

What a life is life in Rome!--not common, not like any other, but as if the pressure of stupendous and crowding histories were upon every day.

A presence haunts you that is more than all you see. We Americans, with some invited [101] guests, celebrated Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday by a dinner.

In a speech I said, "I was asked the other day, what struck me most in Rome, and I answered,--To think that this is Rome!" Lucien Bonaparte, who sat opposite me at table, bowed his head with emphasis, as if he said, "That is true." He was ent.i.tled to know what great historic memories are; and those of his family, criticise them as we may,--and I am not one of their admirers,--do not, perhaps, fall below much of the Roman imperial grandeur.

On coming to England from the Continent, among many things to admire, there were two things we were especially thankful for,--comfort and hospitality. We had not been in London half a day before I had rented a furnished house, and we were established in it. That is, the owner, occupying the bas.e.m.e.nt, gave us the parlors above and ample sleeping-rooms, and the use of her servants,-we defraying the expense of our table,--for so much a month. We took possession of our apartments an hour after we had engaged them, and had nothing to do but order our dinner and walk out; and all this for less, I think, than it would have cost us to live at a good boarding-house in Broadway.

We visited various parts of England,--Warwick, Kenilworth, Oxford, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and made acquaintance with persons whom to know was worth going far, and whom [102] to remember has been a constant pleasure ever since.

Well, we came back in August, 1843, in the steamer "Hibernia." What a joy to return home! We landed in Boston. The railroad across Ma.s.sachusetts had been completed during our absence, and brought us to Sheffield in six or seven hours; it had always been a weary journey before, of three days by coach, or a week with our own horse. A few days' rest, and then six or eight hours more took us to New York, where we found the water fountains opened; the Croton had been brought in that summer. Did it not seem all very fit and festal to us? For we had come home!

My health, however, was only partially reestablished, and the recruiting which had got me for constant service in my church but three years more.

The winter of 1846-47 I pa.s.sed in Was.h.i.+ngton, serving the little church there. En the spring I returned to New York, struggled on with my duties in the church for another year; in the spring of 1848 sold my house, and retired to the Sheffield home, continuing to preach occasionally in New York for a number of months longer, when, early in 1849, my connection with the Church of the Messiah was finally dissolved. I would willingly have remained with it on condition of discharging a partial service, with a colleague to a.s.sist me: it was the only chance I saw [103] of continuing in my profession. The congregation, at my instance, had sought for a colleague, both during my absence in Europe and in the later years of my continuance with it, but had failed,--there appearing to be some singular reluctance in our young preachers to enter into that relation,--and there seemed nothing for the church to do but to inaugurate a new ministration.

It was in this crisis of my worldly affairs, so trying to a clergyman who is dependent on his salary, that I experienced the benefit of a rule that early in life I prescribed to myself; and that was, always to lay up for a future day some portion of my annual income. I insisted upon it that, with as much foresight as the ant or the bee, I might be allowed without question so to use the salary appointed to me as to make some provision for the winter-day of life, or for the spring that would come after, and might be to others bleak and cold and desolate without it. So often have I witnessed this, that I am most heartily thankful that, on leaving New York, I was not reduced to utter dest.i.tution, and that with some moderate exertion I am able to provide for our modest wants. At the same time I do not feel obliged to conceal the conviction, and never did, that the service of religion in our churches meets with no just remuneration. One may suffer martyrdom and not complain; but I do not think one is bound to say that it is a reasonable or pleasant thing.

[104] Another thing I will be so frank as to say on leaving New York, and that is, that it was a great moral relief to me to lay down the burden of the parochial charge. I regretted to leave New York; I could have wished to live and die among the friends I had there; I should make it my plan now to spend my winters there, if I could afford it: but that particular relation to society,--no man, it seems to me, can heartily enter into it without feeling it to weigh heavily upon him. Sympathy with affliction is the trial-point of the clergyman's office. In the natural and ordinary relations of life every man has enough of it.

But to take into one's heart, more or less, the personal and domestic sorrows of two or three hundred families, is a burden which no man who has not borne it can conceive of. I sometimes doubt whether it was ever meant that any man, or at least any profession of men, should bear it; whether the general ministrations of the pulpit to affliction should not suffice, leaving the application to the hearer in this case as in other cases; whether the clergyman's relations to distress and suffering should not be like every other man's,--general with his acquaintance, intimate with his friends; whether, if there were nothing conventional or customary about this matter, most families would not prefer to be left to themselves, without a professional call from their minister.

Suppose that there were no rule with regard to it; that the clergyman, like every [105] other man, went where his feelings carried him, or his relations warranted; that it was no more expected of him, as a matter of course, to call upon a bereaved family, than of any other of their acquaintance,--would not that be a better state of things? I am sure I should prefer it, if I were a paris.h.i.+oner. When, indeed, the minister of religion wishes to turn to wise account the suffering of sickness or of bereavement, let him choose the proper time: reflection best comes after; it is not in the midst of groans and agonies, of sobs and lamentations, that deep religious impressions are usually made.

I have a suspicion withal, that there is something semi-barbaric in these immediate and urgent ministrations to affliction, something of the Indian or Oriental fas.h.i.+on, or something derived from the elder time, when the priest was wise and the people rude. For ignorant people, who have no resources nor reflections of their own, such ministrations may be proper and needful now. I may be in the wrong about all this. Perhaps I ought to suspect it. There is more that is hereditary in us all, I suppose, than we know. My father never could bear the sight of sickness or distress: it made him faint. There is a firmness, doubtless, that is better than this; but I have it not. Very likely I am wrong. My friend Putnam [FN: Rev. George Putnam, D. D., of Roxbury, Ma.s.s.--M. E. D.]

lately tried to convince me of it, in a conversation we had; maintaining that the [106] parochial relation ought not to be, and need not be, that burden upon the mind which I found it. And I really feel bound on such a point, rather than myself, to trust him, one of the most finely balanced natures I ever knew. Why, then, do I say all these things? Because, in giving an account of myself, I suppose I ought to say and confess what a jumble of pros and cons I am.

Heaven knows I have tried hard to keep right; and if I am not as full as I can hold of one-sided and erratic opinions, I think it some praise.

. . . I do strive to keep in my mind a whole rounded circle of truth and opinion. It would be pleasant to let every mental tendency run its length; but I could not do so. It may be pride or narrowness; but I must keep on some terms with myself. I cannot find my understanding falling into contradiction with the judgments it formed last month or last year, without suspecting not only that there was something wrong then, but that there is something wrong now, to be resisted. That "there is a mean in things" is held, I believe, to be but a mean apothegm now-a-days; but I do not hold it to be such. All my life I have endeavored to hold a balance against the swayings of my mind to the one side and the other of every question. I suppose this appears in my course, such as it has been, in religion, in politics, on the subject of slavery, of peace, of temperance, etc. It may appear to be dulness or tameness or time-serving or cowardice [107] or folly, but I simply do not believe it to be either.

But to return: we were now once more in Sheffield, and I was without employment,--a condition always most irksome to me. Hard work, I am persuaded, is the highest pleasure in the world, and, from the day when I was in college, vacations have always proved to me the most tedious times in my life.

I determined, therefore, to pursue some study as far as I could, and my subject,--the choice of years before,--was the philosophy of history and humanity. While thus engaged, I received an invitation from Mr. John A.

Lowell, trustee of the Lowell Inst.i.tute, to deliver one of its annual popular courses of lectures in Boston. This immediately gave a direction to my thoughts, and by the winter of 1850-51 I was prepared to write the lectures, which I ventured to denominate, "Lectures on the Problem of Human Destiny," and I gave them in the autumn of 1851. My reason for adopting such a t.i.tle I gave in the first lecture, and I might add that, with my qualifications, I was ashamed to put at the head of my humble work such great words as "Philosophy of History and Humanity,"--the t.i.tle of Herder's celebrated treatise. The truth was, I had, or thought I had, something to say upon the philosophy of the human condition,--upon the end for man, and upon the only way in which it could be [108] achieved,--upon the terrible problem of sin and suffering in this world,--and I tried to say it. I so far succeeded with my audience in Boston, that, either from report of that, or from the intrinsic interest of the subject, I was invited to repeat the lectures in various parts of the country; and during the four or five years following I repeated them fifteen times,--in New Bedford, New York, Brooklyn, Was.h.i.+ngton, Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, Madison, Cincinnati, Nashville, Sheffield, Worcester, Charleston, S. C., New Orleans, and Savannah in part, and the second time also, I gave them, by Mr. Lowell's request, in the Boston Inst.i.tute. At the same time, I was not idle as a preacher, having preached every Sunday in the places where I lectured, besides serving the church in Was.h.i.+ngton two long winters.

I also wrote another course of lectures for the Lowell Inst.i.tute, on the "Education of the Human Race," and repeated it in several places.

At the time that I was invited to Was.h.i.+ngton, I received, in February, 1851, a doc.u.ment from the Government, which took me so much by surprise that I supposed it must be a mistake. It was no other than a commission as chaplain in the Navy. I wrote to a gentleman in Was.h.i.+ngton, asking him to make inquiry for me, and ascertain what it meant. He replied that there was no mistake about it, and that it was intended for me. I then concluded, as there was a Navy Yard in Was.h.i.+ngton, and as the President, Mr.[109] Fillmore, attended the church to which I was invited, that he intended by the appointment to help both the church and me, and I accepted it. On going to Was.h.i.+ngton I found that there was a chaplain already connected with the Navy Yard, and on his retirement some months later, and my offering to perform any duties required there, being answered that there was really nothing to be done, I resigned the commission.

Life in Was.h.i.+ngton was not agreeable to me, and yet I felt a singular attachment to the people there. This mixture of repulsion and attraction I could not understand at the time, or rather,-as is usually the case with our experience while pa.s.sing,--did not try to; but walking those streets two or three years later, when experience had become history, I could read it. In London or Paris the presence of the government is hardly felt; the action of public affairs is merged and lost in the life of a great city; but in Was.h.i.+ngton it is the one, all-absorbing business of the place. Now, whether it be pride or sympathy, one does not enjoy a great movement of things going on around him in which he has no part, and the thoughts and aims of a retired and studious man, especially, sever him from the views and interests of public men. But, on the other hand, this very pressure of an all-surrounding public life brings private men closer together. There they stand, while the tides of successive Administrations sweep by them, and their relation be-[110]

comes constantly more interesting from the fluctuation of everything else. It is really curious to see how the private and resident society of Was.h.i.+ngton breathes freer, and prepares to enjoy itself when Congress is about to rise and leave it to itself.

Among the remarkable persons with whom I became acquainted in Was.h.i.+ngton, at this or a-former time, was John C. Calhoun. I had with him three interviews of considerable length, and remember each of them, the more distinctly from the remarkable habit he had of talking Ton subjects,--not upon the general occurences of the day, but upon some particular topic. The first two were at an earlier period than that to which this part of my narrative creates; it was when he was Vice-President of the United States, under the administration of John Quincy Adams. I went to his room in the Capitol to present my letter of introduction; it was just before the a.s.sembling of the Senate, and I said, of course, that I would not intrude upon his time at that moment, and was about to withdraw; but he kindly detained me, saying, "No: it will >e twenty minutes before I go to the Senate; sit down." And then, in two minutes, I found him talking upon a purely literary point,--I am sure do not know how he got to it; but it was this, hat the first or second book of every author, so le maintained, was always his best. He cited a [111] number of instances in support of his position. I do not remember what they were; but it occurred to me in reflecting upon it afterwards, that, in purely literary composition, there were some reasons why it might be true. An author writes his first books with the greatest care; he naturally puts into them his best and most original thoughts, which he cannot use again; and if he succeeds, and gains reputation, he is liable to grow both careless and confident,--to think that the things which people admire are his peculiarities, and not his general merits, and so to fall into mannerism and repet.i.tion. I remember Mrs. George Lee, of Boston, a sagacious woman, saying to me one day, when I told her I was going to write a second sermon on a certain subject,--she had praised the first,--"I have observed that the second sermon, on any subject, is never so good as the first; even Channing's are not."

Mr. Calhoun, on my leaving him, invited me to pa.s.s the evening with him at his house in Georgetown. I went, expecting to meet company, but found myself alone with him, and then the subject of conversation was the advantage and necessity of an Opposition in Government. He was himself then, of course, in the Opposition, and he was very candid: he said he did not question the motives of the Administration, while he felt bound to oppose it. I was struck with his candor,--a thing I did not look for in a political [112] opponent,--but especially with what he said about the benefit of an Opposition; both were rather new to me.

My third interview with him was at a later period, when his discourse turned upon this question: What is the greatest thing that a man can do?

His answer was characteristic of the statesman. "It is," he said, "to speak the true and saving word in a great national emergency. For it implies," he continued, "the fullest knowledge of the past, the largest comprehension of the present, and the clearest foresight of the future."

He might have added, to complete the idea, that this word was sometimes to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known--so we of the North thought--as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on a railroad."

I was introduced to Mr. Adams, but saw him little, and heard him less, as I will relate. Mr. Reed, of Barnstable, introduced me,--"Father Reed," as they used to call him, from his having been longer a member of Congress than any other man in the House,--and I said to him, as we were entering the White House, "Now tell Mr. Adams who I am and where from; for I think he must be puzzled what to talk about, with so many strangers coming to him." Well, I was intro-[113]duced accordingly, and Mr. Reed retired. I was offered a seat, and took it. I was a young man, and felt that it did not become me to open a conversation. And there we sat, five minutes, with>t.i.t a word being spoken by either of us! I rose, took my leave, and went away, I don't know whether more angered or astonished. I once, by the by, visited his father, old John Adams, then lying in retirement at Quincy. Mr. Josiah Quincy took me to see him. He was not silent, but talked, I remember, full ten minutes--for ye did not interrupt him--about Machiavelli and in language so well chosen that I thought it night have been printed.

But the most interesting person, as statesman, hat I saw in Was.h.i.+ngton, was Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, commonly called Tom Corwin. This was a later period.

Circ.u.mstances, or the chances of conversation, sometimes lead to acquaintance and friends.h.i.+p, which years of ordinary intercourse fail to bring about. It happened, the first time I saw Mr. Corwin, that some observation I made upon political normality seemed to strike him as a new thought; suppose it was a topic seldom touched upon in Was.h.i.+ngton society. It led to a good deal of conversation, then and afterwards; and I must say that a more high-principled and religiously minded statesman I have never met with than Mr. Corwin.

When he was preparing to deliver his celebrated [114] speech in the Senate against the war with Mexico, he told me what he was going to say, and asked me if I thought he could say it and not be politically ruined by it. I answered that I did not know; but that I would say it if it did ruin me.

The day came for his speech, and I never saw the Senate Chamber so densely packed as it was to hear him. He told me that he should not speak; more than half an hour; but he did speak three hours, not only against the Mexican war, but against the system of slavery, in the bitterest language. His friends in Ohio told me, years after, that it did ruin him. But for that, they said, he would have been President of the United States.

Thackeray came to Was.h.i.+ngton while I was here. He gave his course of lectures on "the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." His style, especially in his earlier writings, had one quality which the critics did not seem to notice; it was not conventional, but spun out of the brain. With the power of thought to take hold of the mind, and a rich, deep, melodius voice, he contrived, without one gesture, or my apparent emotion in his delivery, to charm away an hour as pleasantly as I have ever felt it in a lecture. What he told me of his way of composing confirms me in my criticism on his style.-He did not dash his pen on paper, like Walter Scott, and write off twenty pages without stop-[115] ping, but, dictating to an amanuensis,--a plan which leaves the brain to work undisturbed by the pen-labor,--dictating from his chair, and often from his bed, he gave out sentence by sentence, slowly, as they were moulded in his mind.

Thackeray was sensitive about public opinion; no writer, I imagine, was ever otherwise. I remember, one morning, he was sitting in our parlor, when letters from the mail came in. They were received with some eagerness, of course, and he said, "You seem to be pleased to have letters; I am not."--"No?" we said.--"No. I have had letters from England this morning, and they tell me that 'Henry Esmond' is not liked."

This led to some conversation on novels and novel-writing, and I ventured to say: "How is it that not one of the English novelists has ever drawn any high or adequate character of the clergyman? Walter Scott never gave us anything beyond the respectable official. Goldsmith's Dr.

Primrose is a good man, the best we have in your English fiction, but odd and amusing rather than otherwise. Then d.i.c.kens has given us Chadband and Stiggins, and you Charles Honeyman. Can you not conceive,"

I went on to say, "that a man, without any chance of worldly profit, for a bare stipend, giving his life to promote what you must know are the highest interests of mankind, is engaged in a n.o.ble calling, worthy of being n.o.bly described? Or have you no examples in England to draw from?"

[116] This last sentence touched him, and I meant it should.

With considerable excitement he said, "I delivered a lecture the other evening in your church in New York, for the Employment Society; would you let me read to you a pa.s.sage from it?" Of course I said I should be very glad to hear it, and added, "I thank you for doing that."--"I don't know why you should thank me," he said; "it cost me but an hour's reading, and I got $1,500 for them. I thought I was the party obliged.

But I did tell them they should have a dozen s.h.i.+rts made up for me, and they did it." He then went and brought his lecture, and read the pa.s.sage, which told of a curate's taking him to visit a poor family in London, where he witnessed a scene of distress and of disinterestedness very striking and beautiful to see. It was a very touching description, and Thackeray nearly broke sown in reading it.

A part of the winter of 1856-57 I pa.s.sed with my family at Charleston, S. C. I went to preach in Dr. Gilman's pulpit, and to lecture. I had been there the spring before, and made very agreeable acquaintance with the people. My reception, both in public and in private, was as kindly and hospitable as I could desire. I was much interested in society there, and strongly attached to it. But in August following, in an address under our Old Elm-tree in Sheffield,[117] I made some observations upon the threatened extension of the slave-system, that dashed nearly all my agreeable relations with Charleston. I am not a person to regard such a breach with indifference: it pained me deeply.

My only comfort was, that what I said was honestly said; that no honorable man can desire to be respected or loved through ignorance of his character or opinions; and that the ground then recently taken at the South--that the inst.i.tution of human slavery is intrinsically right, just, and good--seems to me to involve such a wrong to humanity, such evil to the South, and such peril to the Union of the States, that it was a proper occasion for speaking earnestly and decidedly.

I was altogether unprepared for the treatment I received. One year before, I had been in the great Charleston Club, when the question of the perpetuity of the slave-system was discussed; when, indeed, an elaborate essay was read by one of the members, in which the ground was taken, that the dark cloud would sink away to the southwest, to Central America perhaps, from whence the slave population would find an exodus across the water to Africa; and of twenty members present, seventeen agreed with the essayist.

And I take occasion here to say, that this position of the seventeen was mainly satisfactory to me. I would, indeed, have had the South go farther. I would have had it take in hand the business of putting an end to slavery, by laws [118] providing for its gradual abolition, and by preparing the slaves for it; but I did not believe then, and do not now, [FN: The date of this pa.s.sage must be in or about 1868.-M. E. D.] that immediate emanc.i.p.ation was theoretically the best plan. It was forced upon us by the exigencies of the war. And, independently of that, such was the infatuation of the Southern mind on the subject that there seemed to be no prospect of its ever being brought to take that view of it which was prevailing through the civilized and Christian world. But if it had taken that view, and had gone about the business of preparing for emanc.i.p.ation, I think the general public sentiment would have been satisfied; and I believe the result would have been better for the slaves, and better for the country. To be sure, things are working better perhaps now than could have been expected, and it may turn out that instant emanc.i.p.ation was the best thing. But the results of great social changes do not immediately reveal themselves. We are feeling, for instance, the pressure and peril of the free system in government more than we did fifty years ago, and may have to feel and fear it more than we do now. The freedmen are, at present, upon their good behavior, and are acting under the influence of a previous condition. But when I look to the future, and see them rising to wealth, culture, and refinement, and, as human beings, ent.i.tled to consideration as much as any other, [119] and yet forbidden intermarriage with the whites, as they should be for physiological reasons,-when, in fine, they see that they have not any fair and just position in American society and government,--they may be sorry that they were not gradually emanc.i.p.ated, and colonized to their own native country; and for ourselves-for our own country--the seeds may be sowing, in the dark bosom of the future, which may spring up in civil wars more terrible than ever were seen before.