Carlyle’s Laugh, And Other Surprises E-Book

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

• Herausgeber: Full Well Ventures
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Chiefly pen portraits of the author’s friends and contemporaries. As the title indicates, many of the papers have a peculiar interest, either because they bring out an unfamiliar phase of a well known character, or because they introduce the reader to some little known but unique personality.

Leseprobe

CARLYLE’S LAUGH, AND OTHER SURPRISES

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

This text was originally published in the United States in the year 1909

The text is in the public domain.

The edits and layout of this version are Copyright © 2022

by Full Well Books

This publication has no affiliation with the original Author or publication company.

The publishers have made all reasonable efforts to ensure this book is indeed in the Public Domain in any and all territories it has been published, and apologise for any omissions or errors made..

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CONTENTS

Note

1. Carlyle’s Laugh

2. A Shelley Manuscript

3. A Keats Manuscript

4. Massasoit, Indian Chief

5. James Fenimore Cooper

6. Charles Brockden Brown

7. Henry David Thoreau

8. Emerson’s “Foot-Note Person,” — Alcott

9. George Bancroft

10. Charles Eliot Norton

11. Edmund Clarence Stedman

12. Edward Everett Hale

13. A Massachusetts General, Rufus Saxton

14. One Of Thackeray’s Women

15. John Bartlett

16. Horace Elisha Scudder

17. Edward Atkinson

18. James Elliot Cabot

19. Emily Dickinson

20. Julia Ward Howe

21. William James Rolfe

22. Göttingen And Harvard A Century Ago

23. Old Newport Days

24. A Half-Century Of American Literature

Historical Context

Notes

NOTE

The two papers in this volume which bear the titles “A Keats Manuscript” and “A Shelley Manuscript” are reprinted by permission from a work called “Book and Heart,” by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, copyright, 1897, by Harper and Brothers, with whose consent the essay entitled “One of Thackeray’s Women” also is published. Leave has been obtained to reprint the papers on Brown, Cooper, and Thoreau, from Carpenter’s “American Prose,” copyrighted by the Macmillan Company, 1898. My thanks are also due to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for permission to reprint the papers on Scudder, Atkinson, and Cabot; to the proprietors of “Putnam’s Magazine” for the paper entitled “Emerson’s Foot-Note Person”; to the proprietors of the New York “Evening Post” for the article on George Bancroft from “The Nation”; to the editor of the “Harvard Graduates’ Magazine” for the paper on “Göttingen and Harvard”; and to the editors of the “Outlook” for the papers on Charles Eliot Norton, Julia Ward Howe, Edward Everett Hale, William J. Rolfe, and “Old Newport Days.” Most of the remaining sketches appeared originally in the “Atlantic Monthly.”

T. W. H.

CHAPTER1

CARLYLE’S LAUGH

None of the many sketches of Carlyle that have been published since his death have brought out quite distinctly enough the thing which struck me more forcibly than all else, when in the actual presence of the man; namely, the peculiar quality and expression of his laugh. It need hardly be said that there is a great deal in a laugh. One of the most telling pieces of oratory that ever reached my ears was Victor Hugo’s vindication, at the Voltaire Centenary in Paris, of that author’s smile. To be sure, Carlyle’s laugh was not like that smile, but it was something as inseparable from his personality, and as essential to the account, when making up one’s estimate of him. It was as individually characteristic as his face or his dress, or his way of talking or of writing. Indeed, it seemed indispensable for the explanation of all of these. I found in looking back upon my first interview with him, that all I had known of Carlyle through others, or through his own books, for twenty-five years, had been utterly defective,—had left out, in fact, the key to his whole nature,—inasmuch as nobody had ever described to me his laugh.

It is impossible to follow the matter further without a little bit of personal narration. On visiting England for the first time, in 1872, I was offered a letter to Carlyle, and declined it. Like all of my own generation, I had been under some personal obligations to him for his early writings,—though in my case this debt was trifling compared with that due to Emerson,—but his “Latter-Day Pamphlets” and his reported utterances on American affairs had taken away all special desire to meet him, besides the ungraciousness said to mark his demeanor toward visitors from the United States. Yet, when I was once fairly launched in that fascinating world of London society, where the American sees, as Willis used to say, whole shelves of his library walking about in coats and gowns, this disinclination rapidly softened. And when Mr. Froude kindly offered to take me with him for one of his afternoon calls on Carlyle, and further proposed that I should join them in their habitual walk through the parks, it was not in human nature—or at least in American nature—to resist.

We accordingly went after lunch, one day in May, to Carlyle’s modest house in Chelsea, and found him in his study, reading—by a chance very appropriate for me—in Weiss’s “Life of Parker.” He received us kindly, but at once began inveighing against the want of arrangement in the book he was reading, the defective grouping of the different parts, and the impossibility of finding anything in it, even by aid of the index. He then went on to speak of Parker himself, and of other Americans whom he had met. I do not recall the details of the conversation, but to my surprise he did not say a single really offensive or ungracious thing. If he did, it related less to my countrymen than to his own, for I remember his saying some rather stern things about Scotchmen. But that which saved these and all his sharpest words from being actually offensive was this, that, after the most vehement tirade, he would suddenly pause, throw his head back, and give as genuine and kindly a laugh as I ever heard from a human being. It was not the bitter laugh of the cynic, nor yet the big-bodied laugh of the burly joker; least of all was it the thin and rasping cackle of the dyspeptic satirist. It was a broad, honest, human laugh, which, beginning in the brain, took into its action the whole heart and diaphragm, and instantly changed the worn face into something frank and even winning, giving to it an expression that would have won the confidence of any child. Nor did it convey the impression of an exceptional thing that had occurred for the first time that day, and might never happen again. Rather, it produced the effect of something habitual; of being the channel, well worn for years, by which the overflow of a strong nature was discharged. It cleared the air like thunder, and left the atmosphere sweet. It seemed to say to himself, if not to us, “Do not let us take this too seriously; it is my way of putting things. What refuge is there for a man who looks below the surface in a world like this, except to laugh now and then?” The laugh, in short, revealed the humorist; if I said the genial humorist, wearing a mask of grimness, I should hardly go too far for the impression it left. At any rate, it shifted the ground, and transferred the whole matter to that realm of thought where men play with things. The instant Carlyle laughed, he seemed to take the counsel of his old friend Emerson, and to write upon the lintels of his doorway, “Whim.”

Whether this interpretation be right or wrong, it is certain that the effect of this new point of view upon one of his visitors was wholly disarming. The bitter and unlovely vision vanished; my armed neutrality went with it, and there I sat talking with Carlyle as fearlessly as if he were an old friend. The talk soon fell on the most dangerous of all ground, our Civil War, which was then near enough to inspire curiosity; and he put questions showing that he had, after all, considered the matter in a sane and reasonable way. He was especially interested in the freed slaves and the colored troops; he said but little, yet that was always to the point, and without one ungenerous word. On the contrary, he showed more readiness to comprehend the situation, as it existed after the war, than was to be found in most Englishmen at that time. The need of giving the ballot to the former slaves he readily admitted, when it was explained to him; and he at once volunteered the remark that in a republic they needed this, as the guarantee of their freedom. “You could do no less,” he said, “for the men who had stood by you.” I could scarcely convince my senses that this manly and reasonable critic was the terrible Carlyle, the hater of “Cuffee” and “Quashee” and of all republican government. If at times a trace of angry exaggeration showed itself, the good, sunny laugh came in and cleared the air.

We walked beneath the lovely trees of Kensington Gardens, then in the glory of an English May; and I had my first sight of the endless procession of riders and equipages in Rotten Row. My two companions received numerous greetings, and as I walked in safe obscurity by their side, I could cast sly glances of keen enjoyment at the odd combination visible in their looks. Froude’s fine face and bearing became familiar afterwards to Americans, and he was irreproachably dressed; while probably no salutation was ever bestowed from an elegant passing carriage on an odder figure than Carlyle. Tall, very thin, and slightly stooping; with unkempt, grizzly whiskers pushed up by a high collar, and kept down by an ancient felt hat; wearing an old faded frock coat, checked waistcoat, coarse gray trousers, and russet shoes; holding a stout stick, with his hands encased in very large gray woolen gloves,—this was Carlyle. I noticed that, when we first left his house, his aspect attracted no notice in the streets, being doubtless familiar in his own neighborhood; but as we went farther and farther on, many eyes were turned in his direction, and men sometimes stopped to gaze at him. Little he noticed it, however, as he plodded along with his eyes cast down or looking straight before him, while his lips poured forth an endless stream of talk. Once and once only he was accosted, and forced to answer; and I recall it with delight as showing how the unerring instinct of childhood coincided with mine, and pronounced him not a man to be feared.

We passed a spot where some nobleman’s grounds were being appropriated for a public park; it was only lately that people had been allowed to cross them, and all was in the rough, preparations for the change having been begun. Part of the turf had been torn up for a road-way, but there was a little emerald strip where three or four ragged children, the oldest not over ten, were turning somersaults in great delight. As we approached, they paused and looked shyly at us, as if uncertain of their right on these premises; and I could see the oldest, a sharp-eyed little London boy, reviewing us with one keen glance, as if selecting him in whom confidence might best be placed. Now I am myself a child-loving person; and I had seen with pleasure Mr. Froude’s kindly ways with his own youthful household: yet the little gamin dismissed us with a glance and fastened on Carlyle. Pausing on one foot, as if ready to take to his heels on the least discouragement, he called out the daring question, “I say, mister, may we roll on this here grass?” The philosopher faced round, leaning on his staff, and replied in a homelier Scotch accent than I had yet heard him use, “Yes, my little fellow, r-r-roll at discraytion!” Instantly the children resumed their antics, while one little girl repeated meditatively, “He says we may roll at discraytion!”—as if it were some new kind of ninepin-ball.

Six years later, I went with my friend Conway to call on Mr. Carlyle once more, and found the kindly laugh still there, though changed, like all else in him, by the advance of years and the solitude of existence. It could not be said of him that he grew old happily, but he did not grow old unkindly, I should say; it was painful to see him, but it was because one pitied him, not by reason of resentment suggested by anything on his part. He announced himself to be, and he visibly was, a man left behind by time and waiting for death. He seemed in a manner sunk within himself; but I remember well the affectionate way in which he spoke of Emerson, who had just sent him the address entitled “The Future of the Republic.” Carlyle remarked, “I’ve just noo been reading it; the dear Emerson, he thinks the whole warrld’s like himself; and if he can just get a million people together and let them all vote, they’ll be sure to vote right and all will go vara weel”; and then came in the brave laugh of old, but briefer and less hearty by reason of years and sorrows.

One may well hesitate before obtruding upon the public any such private impressions of an eminent man. They will always appear either too personal or too trivial. But I have waited in vain to see some justice done to the side of Carlyle here portrayed; and since it has been very commonly asserted that the effect he produced on strangers was that of a rude and offensive person, it seems almost a duty to testify to the very different way in which one American visitor saw him. An impression produced at two interviews, six years apart, may be worth recording, especially if it proved strong enough to outweigh all previous prejudice and antagonism.

In fine, I should be inclined to appeal from all Carlyle’s apparent bitterness and injustice to the mere quality of his laugh, as giving sufficient proof that the gift of humor underlay all else in him. All his critics, I now think, treat him a little too seriously. No matter what his labors or his purposes, the attitude of the humorist was always behind. As I write, there lies before me a scrap from the original manuscript of his “French Revolution,”—the page being written, after the custom of English authors of half a century ago, on both sides of the paper; and as I study it, every curl and twist of the handwriting, every backstroke of the pen, every substitution of a more piquant word for a plainer one, bespeaks the man of whim. Perhaps this quality came by nature through a Scotch ancestry; perhaps it was strengthened by the accidental course of his early reading. It may be that it was Richter who moulded him, after all, rather than Goethe; and we know that Richter was defined by Carlyle, in his very first literary essay, as “a humorist and a philosopher,” putting the humorist first. The German author’s favorite type of character—seen to best advantage in his Siebenkäs of the “Blumen, Frucht, und Dornenstücke”—came nearer to the actual Carlyle than most of the grave portraitures yet executed. He, as is said of Siebenkäs, disguised his heart beneath a grotesque mask, partly for greater freedom, and partly because he preferred whimsically to exaggerate human folly rather than to share it (dass er die menschliche Thorheit mehr travestiere als nachahme). Both characters might be well summed up in the brief sentence which follows: “A humorist in action is but a satirical improvisatore” (Ein handelnder Humorist ist blos ein satirischer Improvisatore). This last phrase, “a satirical improvisatore,” seems to me better than any other to describe Carlyle.

CHAPTER2

A SHELLEY MANUSCRIPT

Were I to hear to-morrow that the main library of Harvard University, with every one of its 496,200 volumes, had been reduced to ashes, there is in my mind no question what book I should most regret. It is that unique, battered, dingy little quarto volume of Shelley’s manuscript poems, in his own handwriting and that of his wife, first given by Miss Jane Clairmont (Shelley’s “Constantia”) to Mr. Edward A. Silsbee, and then presented by him to the library. Not only is it full of that aroma of fascination which belongs to the actual handiwork of a master, but its numerous corrections and interlineations make the reader feel that he is actually traveling in the pathway of that delicate mind. Professor George E. Woodberry had the use of it; he printed in the “Harvard University Calendar” a facsimile of the “Ode to a Skylark” as given in the manuscript, and has cited many of its various readings in his edition of Shelley’s poems. But he has passed by a good many others; and some of these need, I think, for the sake of all students of Shelley, to be put in print, so that in case of the loss or destruction of the precious volume, these fragments at least may be preserved.

There occur in this manuscript the following variations from Professor Woodberry’s text of “The Sensitive Plant”—variations not mentioned by him, for some reason or other, in his footnotes or supplemental notes, and yet not canceled by Shelley:—

“Three days the flowers of the garden fair

Like stars when the moon is awakened, were.”

III, 1-2.

[Moon is clearly morn in the Harvard MS.]

“And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant.”

III, 100.

[The prefatory And is not in the Harvard MS.]

“But the mandrakes and toadstools and docks and darnels

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.”

III, 112.

[The word brambles appears for mandrakes in the Harvard MS.]

These three variations, all of which are interesting, are the only ones I have noted as uncanceled in this particular poem, beyond those recorded by Professor Woodberry. But there are many cases where the manuscript shows, in Shelley’s own handwriting, variations subsequently canceled by him; and these deserve study by all students of the poetic art. His ear was so exquisite and his sense of the balance of a phrase so remarkable, that it is always interesting to see the path by which he came to the final utterance, whatever that was. I have, therefore, copied a number of these modified lines, giving, first, Professor Woodberry’s text, and then the original form of language, as it appears in Shelley’s handwriting, italicizing the words which vary, and giving the pages of Professor Woodberry’s edition. The cancelation or change is sometimes made in pen, sometimes in pencil; and it is possible that, in a few cases, it may have been made by Mrs. Shelley.

“Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky.”

“Gazed through its tears on the tender sky.”

I, 36.

“The beams which dart from many a star

Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar.”

“The beams which dart from many a sphere

Of the starry flowers whose hues they bear.”

I, 81-82.

“The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie

Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,

Then wander like spirits among the spheres

Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears.”

“The unseen clouds of the dew, which lay

Like fire in the flowers till dawning day,

Then walk like spirits among the spheres

Each one faint with the odor it bears.”

I, 86-89.

“Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.”

“Like windless clouds in a tender sky.”

I, 98.

“Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress.”

“Whose waves never wrinkle, though they impress.”

I, 106.

“Was as God is to the starry scheme,”

“Was as is God to the starry scheme.”

I, 4.

“As if some bright spirit for her sweet sake

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake.”

“As some bright spirit for her sweet sake

Had deserted the heaven while the stars were awake.”

II, 17-18.

“The freshest her gentle hands could pull.”

“The freshest her gentle hands could cull.”

II, 46.

“The sweet lips of the flowers and harm not, did she.”

“The sweet lips of flowers,” etc.

II, 51.

“Edge of the odorous cedar bark.”

“Edge of the odorous cypress bark.”

II, 56.

“Sent through the pores of the coffin plank.”

“Ran through,” etc.

III, 12.

“Between the time of the wind and the snow.”

“Between the term,” etc. [probably accidental].

III, 50.

“Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.”

“Dammed it with,” etc.

III, 69.

“At noon they were seen, at noon they were felt.”

“At noon they were seen & noon they were felt.”

III, 73.

[“&” perhaps written carelessly for “at.”]

“Their decay and sudden flight from frost.”

“Their decay and sudden flight from the frost.”

III, 98.

“To own that death itself must be.”

“To think that,” etc.

III, 128.

These comparisons are here carried no further than “The Sensitive Plant,” except that there is a canceled verse of Shelley’s “Curse” against Lord Eldon for depriving him of his children,—a verse so touching that I think it should be preserved. The verse beginning—

“By those unpractised accents of young speech,”

opened originally as follows:—

“By that sweet voice which who could understand

To frame to sounds of love and lore divine,

Not thou.”

This was abandoned and the following substituted:—

“By those pure accents which at my command

Should have been framed to love and lore divine,

Now like a lute, fretted by some rude hand,

Uttering harsh discords, they must echo thine.”

This also was erased, and the present form substituted, although I confess it seems to me both less vigorous and less tender. Professor Woodberry mentions the change, but does not give the canceled verse. In this and other cases I do not venture to blame him for the omission, since an editor must, after all, exercise his own judgment. Yet I cannot but wish that he had carried his citation, even of canceled variations, a little further; and it is evident that some future student of poetic art will yet find rich gleanings in the Harvard Shelley manuscript.

CHAPTER3

A KEATS MANUSCRIPT

“Touch it,” said Leigh Hunt, when he showed Bayard Taylor a lock of brown silky hair, “and you will have touched Milton’s self.” The magic of the lock of hair is akin to that recognized by nomadic and untamed races in anything that has been worn close to the person of a great or fortunate being. Mr. Leland, much reverenced by the gypsies, whose language he spoke and whose lore he knew better than they know it, had a knife about his person which was supposed by them to secure the granting of any request if held in the hand. When he gave it away, it was like the transfer of fairy power to the happy recipient. The same lucky spell is attributed to a piece of the bride’s garter, in Normandy, or to pins filched from her dress, in Sussex. For those more cultivated, the charm of this transmitted personality is best embodied in autographs, and the more unstudied and unpremeditated the better. In the case of a poet, nothing can be compared with the interest inspired by the first draft of a poem, with its successive amendments—the path by which his thought attained its final and perfect utterance. Tennyson, for instance, was said to be very indignant with those who bore away from his study certain rough drafts of poems, justly holding that the world had no right to any but the completed form. Yet this is what, as students of poetry, we all instinctively wish to do. Rightly or wrongly, we long to trace the successive steps. To some extent, the same opportunity is given in successive editions of the printed work; but here the study is not so much of changes in the poet’s own mind as of those produced by the criticisms, often dull or ignorant, of his readers,—those especially who fail to catch a poet’s very finest thought, and persuade him to dilute it a little for their satisfaction. When I pointed out to Browning some rather unfortunate alterations in his later editions, and charged him with having made them to accommodate stupid people, he admitted the offense and promised to alter them back again, although, of course, he never did. But the changes in an author’s manuscript almost always come either from his own finer perception and steady advance toward the precise conveyance of his own thought, or else from the aid he receives in this from some immediate friend or adviser—most likely a woman—who is in close sympathy with his own mood. The charm is greatest, of course, in seeing and studying and touching the origina page, just as it is. For this a photograph is the best substitute, since it preserves the original for the eye, as does the phonograph for the ear. Even with the aid of photography only, there is as much difference between the final corrected shape and the page showing the gradual changes, as between the graceful yacht lying in harbor, anchored, motionless, with sails furled, and the same yacht as a winged creature, gliding into port. Let us now see, by actual comparison, how one of Keats’s yachts came in.

There lies before me a photograph of the first two stanzas of Keats’s “Ode on Melancholy,” as they stood when just written. The manuscript page containing them was given to John Howard Payne by George Keats, the poet’s brother, who lived for many years at Louisville, Kentucky, and died there; but it now belongs to Mr. R. S. Chilton, United States Consul at Goderich, Ontario, who has kindly given me a photograph of it. The verses are in Keats’s well-known and delicate handwriting, and exhibit a series of erasures and substitutions which are now most interesting, inasmuch as the changes in each instance enrich greatly the value of the word-painting.

To begin with, the title varies slightly from that first adopted, and reads simply “On Melancholy,” to which the word “Ode” was later prefixed by the printers. In the second line, where he had half written “Henbane” for the material of his incantation, he blots it out and puts “Wolfsbane,” instantly abandoning the tamer suggestion and bringing in all the wildness and the superstition that have gathered for years around the Loup-garou and the Wehr-wolf. This is plainly no amendment suggested afterward by another person, but is due unmistakably to the quick action of his own mind. There is no other change until the end of the first stanza, where the last two lines were originally written thus:—

“For shade to shade will come too heavily

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.”

It is noticeable that he originally wrote “down” for “drown,” and, in afterward inserting the r, put it in the wrong place—after the o, instead of before it. This was a slip of the pen only; but it was that word “heavily” which cost him a struggle. The words “too heavily” were next crossed out, and under them were written “too sleepily”; then this last word was again erased, and the word “drowsily” was finally substituted—the only expression in the English language, perhaps, which could have precisely indicated the exact shade of debilitating languor he meant.

In the other stanza, it is noticeable that he spells “melancholy,” through heedlessness, “melanancholy,” which gives a curious effect of prolonging and deepening the incantation; and this error he does not discover or correct. In the same way he spells “fit,” “fitt,” having perhaps in mind the “fytte” of the earlier poets. These are trifles, but when he alters the line, which originally stood,—

“But when the melancholy fit shall come,”

and for “come” substitutes “fall,” we see at once, besides the merit of the soft alliteration, that he gives more of the effect of doom and suddenness. “Come” was clearly too business like. Afterwards, instead of—

“Then feed thy sorrow on a morning rose,”

he substitutes for “feed” the inexpressibly more effective word “glut,” which gives at once the exhaustive sense of wealth belonging so often to Keats’s poetry, and seems to match the full ecstasy of color and shape and fragrance that a morning rose may hold. Finally, in the line which originally stood,—

“Or on the rainbow of the dashing wave,”

he strikes out the rather trite epithet “dashing,” and substitutes the stronger phrase “salt-sand wave,” which is peculiar to him.

All these changes are happily accepted in the common editions of Keats; but these editions make two errors that are corrected by this manuscript, and should henceforth be abandoned. In the line usually printed,—

“Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be,”

the autograph text gives “or” in the place of the second “nor,” a change consonant with the best usage; and in the line,—

“And hides the green hill in an April shroud,”

the middle word is clearly not “hill,” but “hills.” This is a distinct improvement, both because it broadens the landscape and because it averts the jangle of the closing ll with the final words “fall” and “all” in previous lines.

It is a fortunate thing that, in the uncertain destiny of all literary manuscripts, this characteristic document should have been preserved for us. It will be remembered that Keats himself once wrote in a letter that his fondest prayer, next to that for the health of his brother Tom, would be that some child of his brother George “should be the first American poet.” This letter, printed by Milnes, was written October 29, 1818. George Keats died about 1851, and his youngest daughter, Isabel, who was thought greatly to resemble her uncle John, both in looks and genius, died sadly at the age of seventeen. It is pleasant to think that we have, through the care exercised by this American brother, an opportunity of coming into close touch with the mental processes of that rare genius which first imparted something like actual color to English words. To be brought thus near to Keats suggests that poem by Browning where he speaks of a moment’s interview with one who had seen Shelley, and compares it to picking up an eagle’s feather on a lonely heath.

CHAPTER4

MASSASOIT, INDIAN CHIEF

There was paid on October 19, 1907, one of the few tributes ever openly rendered by the white races to the higher type of native Indian leaders. Such was that given by a large company at Warren, Rhode Island, to Massasoit, the friendly Indian Sachem who had first greeted the early Pilgrims, on their arrival at Plymouth in 1620. The leading address was made by the author of this volume.

The newspaper correspondents tell us that, when an inquiry was one day made among visitors returning from the recent Jamestown Exposition, as to the things seen by each of them which he or she would remember longest, one man replied, “That life-size group in the Smithsonian building which shows John Smith in his old cock-boat trading with the Indians. He is giving them beads or something and getting baskets of corn in exchange.”1 This seemed to the speaker, and quite reasonably, the very first contact with civilization on the part of the American Indians. Precisely parallel to this is the memorial which we meet to dedicate, and which records the first interview in 1620 between the little group of Plymouth Pilgrims and Massasoit, known as the “greatest commander of the country,” and “Sachem of the whole region north of Narragansett Bay.”2

“Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,” says the poet Pope; and nothing is more remarkable in human history than the way in which great events sometimes reach their climax at once, instead of gradually working up to it. Never was this better illustrated than when the Plymouth Pilgrims first met the one man of this region who could guarantee them peace for fifty years, and did so. The circumstances seem the simplest of the simple.

The first hasty glance between the Plymouth Puritans and the Indians did not take place, as you will recall, until the newcomers had been four days on shore, when, in the words of the old chronicler, “they espied five or sixe people with a Dogge coming towards them, who were savages: who when they saw them ran into the Woods and whistled the Dogge after them.” (This quadruped, whether large or small, had always a capital letter in his name, while human savages had none, in these early narratives.) When the English pursued the Indians, “they ran away might and main.”3 The next interview was a stormier one; four days later, those same Pilgrims were asleep on board the “shallope” on the morning of December 8, 1620 (now December 19), when they heard “a great and strange cry,” and arrow-shots came flying amongst them which they returned and one Indian “gave an extraordinary cry” and away they went. After all was quiet, the Pilgrims picked up eighteen arrows, some “headed with brass, some with hart’s horn” (deer’s horn), “and others with eagles’ claws,”4 the brass heads at least showing that those Indians had met Englishmen before.

Three days after this encounter at Namskeket,—namely, on December 22, 1620 (a date now computed as December 23),—the English landed at Patuxet, now Plymouth. (I know these particulars as to dates, because I was myself born on the anniversary of this first date, the 22d, and regarded myself as a sort of brevet Pilgrim, until men, alleged to be scientific, robbed me of one point of eminence in my life by landing the Pilgrims on the 23d). Three months passed before the sight of any more Indians, when Samoset came, all alone, with his delightful salutation, “Welcome, Englishmen,” and a few days later (March 22, 1621), the great chief of all that region, Massasoit, appeared on the scene.