Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860 Part 1

Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860.

by Henrietta Christian Wright.

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY LITERATURE

One Sunday morning, about the year 1661, a group of Indians was gathered around a n.o.ble-looking man, listening to a story he was reading. It was summer and the day was beautiful, and the little Indian children who sat listening were so interested that not even the thought of their favorite haunts by brookside or meadow could tempt them from the spot. The story was about the life of Christ and his mission to the world, and the children had heard it many times, but to-day it seemed new to them because it was read in their own language, which had never been printed before. This was the Mohegan tongue, which was spoken in different dialects by the Indians generally throughout Ma.s.sachusetts; and although it had been used for hundreds of years by the tribes in that part of the country its appearance on paper was as strange to them as if it had been a language of which they knew not a single word. It was just as strange to them, in fact, as if they had heard one of their war cries or love songs set to music, or had seen a picture of their dreams of the happy hunting grounds in that invisible western world where the sun went every night, and which they expected to see only after death.

The man who was reading the old story was John Eliot, an English missionary, who had devoted his life to the Indians, and whose ambition it was to leave behind him as his greatest gift the Bible translated into their own tongue. With this in view he set about making them familiar with the Christian faith, and established Sunday-schools among them, where men, women, and children alike were instructed.

From time to time they heard read stories from the New Testament which Eliot had translated, and in which he was greatly helped by one or two Indians who had gifts as translators, and could express the English thought into Indian words more fitting and beautiful than Eliot himself could have done. In all his earlier missionary work he also had the a.s.sistance of the great sachem Waban, because, as it happened, the first sermon Eliot ever preached to the Indians was delivered in Waban's wigwam. The text was from the old poetic words of Ezekiel--"Say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord G.o.d," etc.

The Indian name for wind was Waban, the old sachem's name, and he thought the sermon was addressed to him. He became an ardent convert and helped Eliot greatly in his work of Christianizing the tribes, and in particular in his trouble to keep peace among the sachems, who objected to the freedom of thought which the new religion taught, thinking that it interfered with their own authority over their people.

In a little book in which Eliot describes these grievances of the chiefs he calls them _Pills for the Sachems_, and says they were much harder to swallow than even the nauseous doses of their medicine men.

For the better instruction of the Indian children Eliot prepared a small primer, which was printed in 1669, eight years after the New Testament was printed. It was a curious little book, having the alphabet in large and small letters on the fly-leaf, and containing the Apostles' Creed, the Catechism, and the Lord's Prayer, with other religious matter. Out of this primer the Indian youth learned to read and to spell in words of one syllable. When he was able to master the whole Bible, which was printed in 1663, his education was considered complete.

This old Indian Bible, which Eliot was ten years in translating, was printed at Cambridge and bound in dark blue morocco, it being the first Bible and one of the first books ever printed in America. Two hundred copies were made, and a second edition contained a dedication to Charles II. of England, praising him for his goodness in distributing the word of G.o.d among his colonies, which had not yielded him gold and silver as the Spanish colonies had yielded their sovereign, but which would nevertheless redound to his immortal glory as the first-fruits of Christianity among those heathen tribes. The dedication took up two pages, which was about all the English the old book contained, the rest being in that curious, half-musical, half-guttural tongue of the Mohegans, which Cotton Mather said had been growing since the time of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. Certainly some of the words are of such mighty length and awful sound that we may well believe the same old preacher when he says that he knew from personal knowledge that demons could understand Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but that they were utterly baffled by the speech of the American Indians.

Very few of these Bibles now exist, and those are of priceless value to lovers of old books.

One of the earliest books that may be claimed as belonging to American letters was a volume descriptive of the early settlements in Virginia by Captain John Smith. It has great value as a representation of Indian life before its contact with white civilization. Smith had followed the army of England through the greater part of Europe and Asia and knew the life of a soldier of fortune. He had fought with Turks, hunted Tartars, and had always been the hero of the occasion.

The Indian to him was but another kind of heathen to subdue, and the book is full of adventures, in which he describes himself as always intrepid and victorious. This is the earliest book that brings the Indians of the colonies closely before our eyes, and its style is good, and shows that strong, terse, English fibre which characterized the writings of the adventurous Englishman of that time. In another book Smith gives a charming description of inland Virginia, whose birds, flowers, wild animals, rivers, and scenery are discussed in a poetic fas.h.i.+on that throws a new light on the character of the adventurous soldier. There is in both volumes a richness of description in the details of Indian life that possesses a rare value to the student. The story of Smith's visit to Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, reads like a bit of oriental fairy lore, and the great Indian chief, seated upon his couch of skins, with his savage guard around him, is brought as vividly before our eyes as the hero of a romance. And so Smith's books stand for good literature, though written only with the idea of familiarizing the people at home with the condition of the new colony, and they make no mean showing as the beginning of American letters.

In New England literature from the first partook inevitably of the Puritan character. There were long journals of the pilgrim fathers, books on books of sermons, and volume after volume of argument on the burning religious questions that had been heard in England since the first Puritan defied the king and openly declared for freedom of conscience. Among the most celebrated of these old books is the _Bay Psalm Book_ of 1640, in which the psalms of David were done into metre for the use of congregations. This book, in which the beautiful Hebrew poetry is tortured into the most abominable English, is a fair example of the religious verse-making of the day.

A curious book was the first almanac, published at Cambridge in 1689, and which contained prognostications of the weather, dates of historical events, general news of the world, and bits of poetry, having also blank s.p.a.ces for the use of the owner, who could either utilize them for preserving his own verses, as Cotton Mather did, or keep therein his accounts with his wig maker and hair-dresser, as did that worthy Puritan Thomas Prince.

Perhaps the greatest poet of those early times was Anne Bradstreet, who wrote her famous poems on the a.s.syrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman monarchies, and who was called the tenth muse by an admiring public. These works are long and learned, but they show less the poetic spirit of the age than do the short but pointed ballads that sprang up from time to time and which indicated the popular feeling over the events that were making the history of New England. These ballads were on every conceivable subject, from the Day of Judgment to the sale of a cow. The war between England and France for the possession of Canada gave rise to many ditties the tunes of which remained popular long afterward. The Indian wars also furnished material for many. They were printed in almanacs, or loose sheets, and sometimes not printed at all. They served as news-venders long before the first newspaper was published (in 1690) and they expressed, as nothing else could have done, the att.i.tude of the people toward the church, the state, the governor, and even the "tidy man"

(t.i.thing-man), whose duty it was to tickle with a hazel rod any youngster who was unlucky enough to fall asleep in church. Later, in revolutionary times, the ballad became a power second to none.

Here first appears that great hero Yankee Doodle, who comes, like will-o'-the-wisp, from no one knows where, although many learned pages have been written to show his nationality. He seems to have been as great a traveller as Marco Polo or Baron Munchausen, and, like them, he must have seen many strange sights and countries. Perhaps he may have a trace of the gypsy in him and could recall, if he liked, strange wanderings through the Far East. He may have been a camp-follower through the German and Flemish wars. It is more than probable that he hobn.o.bbed with the Italian banditti, and took an elfish delight in depriving honest travellers of their wits and purses. We know that he lived for a time in Holland, where he seems to have preferred a peaceful life and was content with the humdrum existence of those worthy Dutch farmers who invited him to their feasts, welcomed him to their roofs, and sang his praises in their harvest-fields in such stirring words as these:

Yanker didel doodel down, Didel dudel lanter; Yanke viver voover vown, Botermilk un tanther;

which means that if the lads and la.s.sies reaped and gleaned faithfully they should be rewarded by a tenth of the grain, and an unlimited supply of b.u.t.termilk.

Afterward Yankee Doodle seems to have tired of pastoral life, for we find him in the midst of Roundhead and Cavalier upon the battle-fields of England during the Civil War. No doubt such a jolly comrade felt a tinge of sadness at the misfortunes of the unlucky Charles I., and he could not have found the long-faced Puritans, with their nasal voices, very good company for such a happy-go-lucky as himself. At any rate he never became an Englishman, and seems only to have paused in England while making up his mind where to settle down and spend his old age.

He probably made his first bow in America in 1775, and it is evident that he took a fancy to the new country, and was pleased, and perhaps flattered, by the reception he met. With his old abandon he threw himself heart and soul into the conflict, and became, in fact, the child of the Revolution. He was a leading spirit everywhere. Throwing all recollections of English hospitality to the winds, he chased the red coats at Bunker Hill, gave them a drubbing at Bennington, and remained bravely in the rear to watch their scouts while Was.h.i.+ngton retreated from Long Island. Many a time he was the sole support of the faithful few stationed to guard some important outpost; many a time he marched along with the old Continentals, grim and faithful, expecting every moment would reveal danger and perhaps death.

He crossed the Delaware with Was.h.i.+ngton on that eventful Christmas night, in 1775, though the Italian blood in him must have shrunk a little from the cold. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the great leader through all the misery and hopelessness of Valley Forge. He was joyously welcomed by the soldiers in all their daring escapades when breaking loose from the restraints of camp life; and the women and children who had to remain home and suffer danger and privation alone, never saw his honest face without a smile.

Such devotion met with its reward. When the war was over the old veteran retired from the service with full military rank, and was brevetted an American citizen besides. It is pleasant to think that he has at last found a resting place among a people who will always honor and love him.

Two other ballads very popular at that time were _The Battle of Trenton_ and _The Ma.s.sacre of Wyoming_, while innumerable ones of lesser note were sung by fireside and camp-fire, all through the colonies.

In New York the first liberty pole raised in the country was planted by the Sons of Liberty, a band of patriotic Americans, who set it up again and again as it was cut down by the Tories, accompanying their work by singing every imaginable kind of ballad that would irritate the breast of the British sympathizers.

During the war of 1812, came the _Star Spangled Banner_, written to the accompaniment of shot and sh.e.l.l, while the author, Francis S. Key, was a prisoner on s.h.i.+pboard watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British, in the harbor of Baltimore. The song was born in the darkness of a night of terrible anxiety, and when the dawn broke and found the flag still floating over the fort, an earnest of the victory to come, its triumphant measures seemed the fitting paean of American liberty.

The ballad of the camps had developed into the national anthem.

CHAPTER II

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

1780-1851

In the days when Louisiana was a province of Spain a little dark-eyed boy used to wander among the fields and groves of his father's plantation studying with eager delight the works of nature around him.

Lying under the orange-trees watching the mocking-bird, or learning from his mother's lips the names of the flowers that grew in every corner of the plantation, he soon came to feel that he was part of that beautiful world, whose language was the songs of birds and whose boundaries extended to every place where a blossom lifted its head above the green sod. To him, as he said years afterward, the birds were playmates and the flowers dear friends, and before he could distinguish between the azure of the sky and the emerald of the gra.s.s he had formed an intimacy with them so close and endearing that whenever removed from their presence he felt a loneliness almost unbearable. No other companions suited him so well, and no roof seemed so secure as that formed of the dense foliage under which the feathered tribes resorted, or the caves and rocks to which the curlew and cormorant retired to protect themselves from the fury of the tempest. In these words, recorded by himself, we read the first chapter of the life history of John James Audubon, the American naturalist and the author of one of the early cla.s.sics of American literature.

In those early days his father was Audubon's teacher, and hand in hand they searched the groves for new specimens, or lingered over the nests where lay the helpless young. It was his father who taught him to look upon the s.h.i.+ning eggs as 'flowers in the bud,' and to note the different characteristics which distinguished them. These excursions were seasons of joy, but when the time came for the birds to take their annual departure the joy was turned to sorrow. To the young naturalist a dead bird, though beautifully preserved and mounted, gave no pleasure. It seemed but a mockery of life, and the constant care needed to keep the specimens in good condition brought an additional sense of loss. Was there no way in which the memory of these feathered friends might be kept fresh and beautiful? He writes that he turned in his anxiety to his father, who in answer laid before him a volume of ill.u.s.trations. Audubon turned over the leaves with a new hope in his heart, and although the pictures were badly executed the idea satisfied him. Although he was unconscious of it, it was the moment of the birth of his own great life work. Pencil in hand he began to copy nature untiringly, although for a long time he produced what he himself called but a family of cripples, the sketches being burned regularly on his birthdays. But no failure could stop him. He made hundreds of sketches of birds every year, worthless almost in themselves because of bad drawing, but valuable as studies of nature.

Meantime for education the boy had been taken from Louisiana to France, the home of his father, who wished him to become a soldier, sailor, or engineer. For a few hours daily Audubon studied mathematics, drawing, and geography, and then would disappear in the country, returning with eggs, nests, or curious plants. His rooms looked like a museum of natural history, while the walls were covered with drawings of French birds.

Learning mathematics with difficulty Audubon became easily proficient in fencing and dancing, and learned to play upon the violin, flute, flageolet, and guitar. His drawing lessons were his greatest delight, the great French artist, David, being his teacher and critic. Once, on the elder Audubon's return from a long sea-voyage, he was chagrined to find that although his son had probably the largest amateur natural-history collection in France, he had neglected his equations, angles, and triangles, and the lad was sent to his father's station, given one day to visit the s.h.i.+ps and fortifications, and then set to the study of mathematics, and mathematics only.

For one year he wrestled with problems and theorems, counting himself happy if by any chance he could fly to the country for an hour to take up his acquaintance with the birds; and then the father admitted his son's unfitness for military pursuits and sent him to America to take charge of some property.

Audubon was then seventeen years of age, and had but one ambition in life--to live in the woods with his wild friends. As his father's estate was rented by a very orderly minded Quaker there was little for Audubon to do except enjoy himself. Hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, drawing, and studying English from a young English girl he afterward married, filled the day, while he never missed the b.a.l.l.s and skating parties for which the neighborhood was famous. He was the best marksman in the region, able to bring down his quarry while riding at full speed.

He was the best skater to be found; at b.a.l.l.s and parties he was the amateur master of ceremonies, gayly teaching the newest steps and turns that obtained in France. In the hunt it was Audubon--dressed, perhaps, in satin breeches and pumps, for he was a great dandy--who led the way through the almost unbroken wilderness. Add to this that he was an expert swimmer, once swimming the Schuylkill with a companion on his back; that he could play any one of half a dozen instruments for an impromptu dance; that he could plait a set of picnic dishes out of willow rushes; train dogs, and do a hundred other clever things, and it is easy to see why he was a general favorite.

His private rooms were turned into a museum. The walls were covered with festoons of birds' eggs, the shelves crowded with fishes, snakes, lizards, and frogs; the chimney displayed stuffed squirrels and opossums, and wherever there was room hung his own paintings of birds.

It was the holiday of life for the young lover of nature, and he enjoyed it with good will.

Here the idea of his great work came to him as he was one day looking over his drawings and descriptions of birds. Suddenly, as it seemed to him, though his whole life had led to it, he conceived the plan of a great work on American ornithology. He began his gigantic undertaking as a master in the school of nature wherein he had been so faithful a student, for he now saw with joy that the past, which had often seemed idle, had been in reality rich with labors that were to bear fruit.

He began at once to put his work into scientific form, and nothing better ill.u.s.trates his energy and ambition than the fact that he entered on it alone and unaided, though none knew better than he the toil and ceaseless endeavor necessary for its completion. Except in a very immature form, American ornithology at that time did not exist; it was a region almost as unknown to human thought as the new world which Columbus discovered. Season after season, from the Gulf to Canada and back again, these winged creatures of the air wended their way, stopping to hatch and breed their young, becoming acquainted with Louisiana orange-groves and New England apple-orchards, now fluttering with kindly sociability round the dwellings of men and again seeking lonely eeries among inaccessible mountain tops, pursuing their course at all times almost without the thought and cognizance of man. It was Audubon who was the conqueror, if not the discoverer of this aerial world of song, of which he became the immortal historian. It was his untiring zeal which gave thus early to American literature a scientific work of such vast magnitude and importance that it astonished the scientists of Europe and won for itself the fame of being the most gigantic biblical enterprise ever undertaken by a single individual. To do this meant a life of almost constant change, and Audubon can hardly have had an abiding place after his first serious beginning. The wide continent became his home and he found his dwelling wherever the winged tribes sought shelter from the wind and storm. His pursuit was often interrupted by occupations necessary for the support of his family, for at his father's death he had given to his sister his share of the estate and so became entirely dependent upon his own efforts for a livelihood; but at all times, no matter what his situation, his heart was in the wild retreats of nature.

Travelling through the West and South in search of fortune as well as of specimens his experiences were often disenchanting. At Louisville and New Orleans he would be forced to make crayon portraits of the princ.i.p.al citizens in order to raise the money for family expenses.

Again he taught drawing; he served as tutor in private families, and in order to secure funds for the publication of his work he earned $2,000 by dancing lessons, the largest sum he had ever earned.

Many business speculations enlisted Audubon's hopes, but all failed utterly. Once he embarked his money in a steam mill, which, being built in an unfit place, soon failed. At another time he bought a steamboat, which, proving an unlucky speculation, was sold to a shrewd buyer who never paid the purchase money. Again he was cheated in the clearing of a tract of timber. But his studies in natural history always went on. When he had no money to pay his pa.s.sage up the Mississippi he bargained to draw the portrait of the captain of the steamer and his wife as remuneration. When he needed boots he obtained them by sketching the features of a friendly shoemaker, and more than once he paid his hotel bills, and saved something besides, by sketching the faces of the host and his family.

On the other hand, his adventures in search of material for his work were romantic enough to satisfy the most ambitious traveller. From Florida to Labrador, and from the Atlantic to the then unknown regions of the Yellowstone he pursued his way, often alone, and not seldom in the midst of dangers which threatened life itself. He hunted buffalo with the Indians of the Great Plains, and lived for months in the tents of the fierce Sioux. He spent a season in the winter camp of the Shawnees, sleeping, wrapped in a buffalo robe, before the great camp-fire, and living upon wild turkey, bear's grease, and opossums.

He made studies of deer, bears, and cougars, as well as of wild turkeys, prairie hens, and other birds. For days he drifted down the Ohio in a flat-bottomed boat, searching the uninhabited sh.o.r.es for specimens, and living the life of the frontiersman whose daily food must be supplied by his own exertions. Sometimes his studies would take him far into the dense forests of the West, where the white man had never before trod, and the only thing that suggested humanity would be the smoke rising miles away from the evening camp-fire of some Indian hunter as lonely as himself.

Once as he lay stretched on the deck of a small vessel ascending the Mississippi he caught sight of a great eagle circling about his head.

Convinced that it was a new species, he waited patiently for two years before he again had a glimpse of it, flying, in lazy freedom, above some b.u.t.ting crags where its young were nested. Climbing to the place, and watching like an Indian in ambush until it dropped to its nest, Audubon found it to be a sea-eagle. He named it the Was.h.i.+ngton Sea Eagle, in honor of George Was.h.i.+ngton. Waiting two years longer, he was able to obtain a specimen, from which he made the picture given in his work. This is but one example of the tireless patience with which he prosecuted his studies, years of waiting counting as nothing if he could but gain his end.

Some of his discoveries in this kingdom of the birds he relates with a romantic enthusiasm. Throughout the entire work there runs the note of warmest sympathy with the lives of these creatures of the air and suns.h.i.+ne. He tells us of their hopes and loves and interests, from the time of the nest-making till the young have flown away. The freedom of bird life, its happiness, its experiences, and tragedies appeal to him as do those of humanity. The discovery of a new species is reported as rapturously as the news of a new star. Once in Labrador, when he was making studies of the eggers, his son brought to him a great hawk captured on the precipice far above his head. To Audubon's delight, it was that rare specimen, the gerfalcon, which had heretofore eluded all efforts of naturalists. While the rain dripped down from the rigging above, Audubon sat for hours making a sketch of this bird and feeling as rich as if he had discovered some rare gem.