Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851

Editor's Drawer

The "monitory season" of Nature has come. The faded garniture of the fields; the many-colored, gorgeous woods; the fitful winds, sighing for the flowers "whose fragrance late they bore: " the peculiar yellow-green of the sky at the horizon, in the twilight gloaming; all these proclaim that "summer is ended" and autumn is here. Brainard, a poet of true tenderness and feeling, once asked, "What is there saddening in the autumn leaf?" Perhaps it would be difficult to tell what it is, but that it is saddening, in the midst of its dying beauty, most persons have felt. One of our own poets, too early called away,10 wrote many years since, on the first day of October, the following sad and tender lines:

"Solemn, yet beautiful to view,Month of my heart! thou dawnest here,With sad and faded leaves to strewThe Summer's melancholy bier;The moaning of thy winds I hear,As the red sunset dies afar,And bars of purple clouds appear,Obscuring every western star."Thou solemn month! I hear thy voice,It tells my soul of other days,When but to live was to rejoice,When earth was lovely to my gazeOh, visions bright – oh, blessed hours,Where are their living raptures now?I ask my spirit's wearied powers,I ask my pale and fevered brow."I look to Nature, and beholdMy life's dim emblems rustling round,In hues of crimson and of gold —The year's dead honors on the ground.And sighing with the winds, I feel,While their low pinions murmur by,How much their sweeping tones revealOf life and human destiny."When Spring's delightsome moments shone,They came in zephyrs from the West:They bore the wood-lark's melting tone,They stirred the blue lake's glassy breastThrough Summer, fainting in the heat,They lingered in the forest shade;But changed and strengthened now, they beatIn storm, o'er mountain, glen, and glade."How like those transports of the heart,When life is fresh and joy is new;Soft as the halcyon's downy nest,And transient all as they are true!They stir the leaves in that bright wreathWhich Hope about her forehead twines,Till Grief's hot sighs around it breathe,Then Pleasure's lip its smile resigns."Alas, for Time, and Death, and Care,What gloom about our way they flingLike clouds in Autumn's gusty air,The burial-pageant of the SpringThe dreams that each successive yearSeemed bathed in hues of brighter pride,At last like withered leaves appear,And sleep in darkness, side by side!"

Carlyle, in his "Sartor Resartus," gives a condensed, but exceedingly forcible picture of the "net purport and upshot of war," by taking thirty able-bodied men from a French and English village, and making them face each other on a pleasant morning, when they blow each other's souls out, and straightway become "shells of men." We were speaking of this the other evening with a friend, who was with our army in Mexico, and in the course of much chat, touching war and its accompaniments, he mentioned an anecdote of as brave a fellow as there was in his command, but who had an unfortunate and irresistible habit of occasional intoxication, whenever, by hook or by crook, he could procure a "horn" of brandy or whiskey. One evening, the day after an engagement, in which his coolness and determined bravery had won the admiration and warm commendation of his superior officers, he was brought before his commanding officer, who was on parade, in a state of beastly intoxication. Remembering his services of the day before, the officer was reluctant to punish him, at least without first trying to make him ashamed of his offense by exhortation and remonstrance. "Are you not ashamed of yourself?" he asked, "to be brought before me in this condition? – you that can be so good a soldier? There was not a braver man in the regiment yesterday than you; and now you go and spoil all the honor you acquired, by disobeying orders, and coming before me drunk. Take him away! – I'm ashamed of him!" "Here – hello – hold on!" said the soldier – "hold on a minute: you've rep-rep-ri-manded me some, and praised me a good deal: now look o' here, cap'n, do you expect to buy all the human virtues for seven dollars a month? It's too cheap, cap'n – too cheap!" He probably thought with Lowell's Yankee, writing from Saltillo after his first engagement:

"I wish that I was furder!Ninepence a day for killin' folksComes kind o' low, for murder;I worked out to slaughterin' someFor Deacon Cephas Billin's,And in the hardest times there was,I allers fetch'd ten shillins!"

As we sat looking at a conjurer or necromancer performing his tricks the other evening, at which were some hundreds of other lookers-on, we fell to meditate upon the influence which any thing that is at all mysterious has upon the human mind. "To him," says Dr. Chatfield, "who has been sated, and perhaps disappointed by the actual and the intelligible, there is an indefinable charm in the unattainable and inscrutable." And it is so. Infants stretch out their hands for the moon; children delight in puzzles and riddles, even when they can not discover their solution; and "children of a larger growth" desire, oftentimes, no better employment than to follow their example. Look at the fanaticism engendered by Rev. Edward Irving's "Unknown Tongues; at which," says the authority we have quoted, "we need not wonder, when we remember the confession of the pious Baxter, that in order to awaken an interest in his congregation, he made it a rule, in every sermon, to say something above their capacity." There are not wanting ministers nowadays who follow the Baxterian practice, with the difference only, that what they sometimes preach is as much above their own comprehension as that of their audience.

Is it not a "little curious" that Harriet Martineau, an old maid, a "benign cerulean of the second sex," as Lord Byron calls her class, who "never loved," or if she did, yet who, if published accounts are true, shrunk from the nuptial bonds, and left her affianced lord in the lurch at the last moment – is it not a little curious, we say, that such a woman, should have written so exquisite a picture of true love as that which ensues? We once heard a distinguished American author remark, sitting by his "Dutchman's Fireside," that he kept for days out of the literary lady-traveler's way when she was trying to meet him. "There she was," said he, "going about with that long India-rubber ear-trumpet of hers, taking in every thing that was offered to it, just like an elephant going round with his trunk, drawing in here an apple, there a piece of cake, now a handful of nuts, and next, perhaps, a chew of tobacco. I wasn't going to contribute to her trunk, nor to the lining any others, when she had got home and printed her notes!" If the authoress, however, had met this unwilling host, and had told this "tale of love," doubtless he would have listened in "mute admiration." But we are forgetting the passage: "There is no other such crisis in human life as the crisis of Love. The philosopher may experience uncontrollable agitation in verifying his principle of balancing systems of worlds, feeling perhaps as if he actually saw the creative hand in the act of sending the planets forth on their everlasting way; but he knows at such a moment no emotions so divine as those of the spirit becoming conscious that it is beloved; be it the peasant-girl in the meadow, or the daughter of the sage, or the artisan beside his loom, or the man of letters musing by his fire-side. The warrior about to strike the decisive blow for the liberties of a nation is not in a state of such lofty resolution as those who, by joining hearts, are laying their joint hands on the whole wide realm of futurity for their own. The statesman, in the moment of success, is not conscious of so holy and so intimate a thankfulness as they who are aware that their redemption has come in the presence of a new and sovereign affection. And these are many: they are in all corners of every land. The statesman is the leader of a nation; the warrior is the grace of an age; the philosopher is the birth of a thousand years; but the Lover – where is he not? Wherever parents look round upon their children, there he has been: wherever children are at play together there he soon will be; wherever there are roofs under which men dwell, wherever there is an atmosphere vibrating with human voices, there is the lover, and there is his lofty worship going on – unspeakable, perchance, but revealed in the brightness of the eye, the majesty of the presence, and the high temper of the discourse. Men have been ungrateful and perverse; they have done what they could to counteract it, to debate this most heavenly influence of their life; but the laws of their Maker are too strong, the benignity of their Father is too patient and fervent, for their opposition to withstand; and true love continues, and will continue, to send up its homage amidst the meditations of every eventide, and the busy hum of noon, and the song of the morning stars."

Some lively French writer, whose name has quite escaped us, once wrote a vivid sketch, entitled, "L'Homme Rouge," or "The Red Man." There was an under-plot of sentiment in the story, we well remember, but the great feature of the romance was, that whenever there was a fire to happen in any part of Paris, whether by accident or design, there suddenly appeared "L'Homme Rouge;" sometimes in the midst of a party of revelers at a masked-ball; sometimes surprising nuns at their devotions, and not unfrequently where crime was hatching, or unnatural orgies making night hideous. But he was a good, benevolent deity, and always came to warn against or to suppress conflagration. Such, it would appear, and without fable, hereafter, will be the man who can command the great "Fire-Annihilator," which is making such a sensation, and proving so unerringly effective in England. A man, bearing one of these easily-carried machines, enters his blazing domicil, all a-glow with a bright flame, which is curling its forked tongues around every thing which resists its progress, and touching a spring, a cloud of smoke-like vapor issues forth, before which the flame flickers, grows pale, and at once fades entirely out, and the conflagration is stopped. It has been tested in so many instances, that its success is now considered wholly infallible. A company for the sale of the "Annihilator" has been formed in this country, the "central bureau" of which is in New York, the president being Hon. Elisha Whittlesey, of the American Congress. The age of rail-roads, magnetic telegraphs, and fire-exterminators, will signalize this era as one of the most remarkable in the world's history.

Seneca complains that the ancients had compelled him to borrow from them what they would have taken from him, had he been lucky enough to have preceded them! "Every one of my writings," says Goethe, in the same candid spirit, "has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand different things: the learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish, infancy and old age have come in turn, generally without having the least suspicion of it, to bring me the offering of their thoughts, their faculties, their experience. Often have they sowed the harvest I have reaped. My works are an aggregation of human beings, taken from the whole of nature." It is in the power of any writer, says a commentator upon this passage, to be original, by deserting nature, and seeking the quaint and the fantastical. "When I was a young man," says Goldsmith, "being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions; but I soon gave this over, for I found that generally what was new was false."

Dean Swift's remark at the close of a charity-sermon, from the text "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord," is well known – ("If you like the security, down with your dust!") But the two following eccentricities of speech, which are attributed to him, we never saw before: "My brethren," said he, on one occasion, "there are three sorts of pride – pride of birth, of riches, and of talents. I shall not now speak of the latter, none of you being addicted or liable to that abominable vice!" "I fear," said he, on another occasion, to his flock, "I fear, when I explained to you, in my last charity-sermon, that philanthropy was the love of our species, you must have misunderstood me to say specie, which may account for the smallness of the collection. You will prove, I hope, by your present contributions, that you are no longer laboring under the same mistake!" A surer way of securing a good collection was recently adopted by a benevolent lecture-giver in a sister city. The audience were admitted free; but when the lecture was closed, no one was permitted to pass out until he or she had disbursed twenty-five cents!

Some fourteen years ago there appeared in one of the English magazines an amusing article, showing up the aristocratic stupidity of the large and costly English annuals, which were indebted almost exclusively to the nobility for their contents. Until then, we had not been made aware that the Duke of Wellington was a poet. But it seems that we were mistaken; the "noble Duke" is a master of the military sonnet, a specimen of which is subjoined. Its "terse composition," the "boldness of its character," its "laconic simplicity," and martial "determination," were very highly commended by the editor:

Halt! Shoulder arms! Recover! As you were!Right wheel! Eyes left! Attention! Stand at ease!O Britain! oh, my country! words like theseHave made thy name a terror and a fearTo all the nations. Witness Ebro's bankAssays, Toulouse, Nivelle, and Waterloo,Where the grim despot muttered, "Sauve qui peut!"And Ney fled darkling. Silence in the ranks!Inspired by these, amidst the iron crashOf armies in the centre of his troop,The soldier stands – immovable, not rashUntil the forces of the foemen droop;Then knock the Frenchmen to eternal smash,Pounding them into mummy. Shoulder, hoop!

Thus the "Conquerer of Napoleon" conquers the stubborn rhyme!

"I suppose," writes a contemplative and elegant modern English author, now unnamed, but who can not long remain stat nominis umbra, "that it has happened to most men who observe their thoughts at all, to notice how some expression returns again and again in the course of their meditations, or, indeed, of their business, forming, as it were, a refrain to all they think or do, for any given hour. Sometimes, too, this refrain has no particular concern with the thought or business of the day, but seems as if it belonged to some under-current of thought and feeling. This at least is what I experienced to-day myself, being haunted by a bit of old Spanish poetry, which obtruded itself, sometimes inopportunely, sometimes not so, in the midst of all my work or play. The words were these:

'How quickly passes pleasure awayHow, after being granted.It gives pain:How, in our opinion,Any past timeWas better,'

(than that we passed in pleasure). It was not that I agreed with the sentiment, except as applied to vicious pleasure; being rather of Sydney Smith's mind, that the remembrance of past pleasure is present pleasure; but I suppose the words chimed in with reflections on the past which formed the under-current of my thoughts, as I went through the wood of beeches which bounded my walk to day… In a moment I went back, not to the pleasures, but to the ambitious hopes and projects of youth. And when a man does reflect upon the ambitions which are as characteristic of that period of life as reckless courage or elastic step, and finds that at each stage of his journey since, some hope has dropped off as too burdensome or too romantic, till at last it is enough for him to carry only himself at all upright in this troublesome world – what thoughts come back upon him! How he meditates upon his own errors and short-comings, and sees that he has had not only the hardness, oiliness, and imperturbability of the world to contend with; but that he himself has generally been his worst antagonist. In this mood I might have thrown myself upon the mound under a great beech-tree that was near, the king of the woods, and uttered many lamentations; but instead of doing any thing of the kind, I walked sedately by it; for, as we go on in life, we find we can not afford excitement, and we learn to be parsimonious in our emotions."

One of the Boston newspapers, in allusion to the great Railroad Festival which is about taking place, as the last sheets of our Magazine are passing through the press, observes: "The Canadian Judiciary Courts have adjourned for the whole of the next week, in order to give an opportunity to our Canadian friends to be present at the great Railroad Jubilee, to be celebrated in our city. They are expected to arrive in great numbers on Tuesday of next week. That day will be devoted to an examination of our city. On Wednesday there will be a formal reception; and the City Government will accompany their English guests to the Bunker Hill Monument and other places of interest." Now we can not dissociate that word 'interest,' from the same word which forms the nucleus of an anecdote, which we will venture to relate, in illustration of the kind of 'interest' which a loyal English subject might be supposed to feel in paying a visit to Bunker Hill. At Bladensburgh battle-field, there is a very non-committal guide who shows visitors over the ground, enlightening those who are ignorant as to the character of the ground, where the different forces lay, how they advanced, and the like. The guide, however, is a 'prudent man,' for his situation depends upon being 'all things to all men' who may chance to be obliged to avail themselves of his services. If he is showing an English party over the ground, he fancies that he knows it, and therefore 'governs himself accordingly;' if an American party, he throws his 'balance of power' in the other scale. But he was sadly puzzled once. He could get no 'cue' from the gentleman and his friend, who had secured his services, as to whether they were English or Americans – the conversation was so vague and so limited. "Why was it," said one of these visitors, "that the Americans fled on this occasion?" "Fled!" he exclaimed, as if with impromptu dignity – "fled!" "Yes," said his interrogator, "why did the Americans retreat on that occasion? – why did they run away!" "Retreat! – run away! – guess not! Yes: well – perhaps they did. Yes; I b'lieve they did. The reason was, that somehow or 'nother they didn't seem to take no interest!"

Most readers have heard the story of the connoisseur in the fine arts who said one day to a friend, "I wish you would come down and see a picture I bought last week. I'd like to have you give me your candid opinion of it. A friend of mine had the impudence to say this morning that it was not an original! I should like to hear another man say that it was not an original! But you come and see it, and tell me honestly what you think of its authenticity." It strikes us that a man would not be apt to give a very "candid" opinion under those circumstances. This freedom of opinion is not unlike the liberty of action said to have been granted by Col. M'Lane to the troops under his command, before going into winter-quarters at Valley Forge. They were suffering for provisions and clothing, and Congress had been repeatedly petitioned for that relief which it was not in their power to bestow. Under this state of things, Colonel M'Lane paraded his band of suffering soldiers, and thus addressed them: "Fellow-soldiers, you have served your country faithfully and truly. We've fought hard fights together against our common enemy. You are in a bad way for comfortable clothes, it is true, and it grieves my very heart to see you tracking your feet in blood on the frozen ground. But Congress can not help it, nor can General Washington or I. But if any of you wish to return home, you can go. Let such of you as would like to go home step out four paces in front —but the first man that steps out, if I don't shoot him my name is not M'Lane." It is perhaps needless to add, that not a solitary "volunteer" homeward was to be found.

Editor's Easy Chair

After our more severe Editorial work is done – the scissors laid in our drawer, and the Monthly Record made as full as our pages will bear, of history, we have a way of throwing ourselves back into an old red-backed Easy Chair, that has long been an ornament of our dingy office, and indulging in an easy, and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in such chit-chat with chance visitors, as keeps us informed of the drift of the town-talk, while it relieves greatly the monotony of our office hours.

We have before now sailed over seas with some rollicking, red-faced captain, who, after a good day's run with his yards well braced to the wind, would, as evening began to fall, and the breezes to lull, rig out his studding-sail booms, and set new bits of canvas to catch every puff of the dying zephyrs. In like manner, we, having made our course good, out of mere whim, add to our sail, and mean to catch up in these few additional pages, those lighter whiffs from the great world of opinion, which come floating to us, as we sit here in our Easy Chair.

Nor are we altogether bent on choosing mere gossip; but, rather, we shall be on the watch for such topics or incidents as give a handle to the conversation of the town; and instead of treating them in any such philosophic fashion, as most writing men think it necessary to do, we shall try and set them down with all that gloss, and that happy lack of sequence, which makes every-day talk so much better than every-day writing.

There are hundreds of monthly occurrences which go into the journals as mere skeletons of facts; and yet, if a body had but the art of embalming by language, that fleshy covering which the every-day talk is sure to wrap about them, they would prove (these facts, we mean) the cheerfullest companions in the world.

And this is just the thing that we shall try to do. If the Cubans, down in Havanna, shoot some fifty men, we shall not be content with entering it upon our record: we shall not take up what we consider (as the Daily Journals consider they do) some impregnable position, and thunder away at some one else who has an equally impregnable position of precisely the opposite character; but we shall try and get hold of the actual situation of this new provision for the town maw, in that great feeding-place of the town, viz. – Public Talk. We shall say who are the most voracious feeders, and may possibly comment, in an amiable humor, upon the different modes of consumption.

The French have a most happy way of commuting the dull coinage of every-day facts into the most mailable matter in the world: and as we sit in our Easy Chair, and catch up, as we sometimes do, a leaf of a Parisian journal, we find ourselves unconsciously creeping into the heart of some street-story, which, in any English journal, would have been the merest item of Police!

Take, for instance, a single one – entered on all the commercial sheets after this fashion: "We understand that a suicide was committed under deplorable circumstances, not long since, in the Rue St. George. It appears that a French gentleman, owing to pecuniary embarrassments, had long been melancholy, and last evening killed himself with the fumes of charcoal. It is reported that he had been twice married, and (horribile dictu) that he exhumed his first wife, previous to committing the fatal deed. He leaves a very respectable property."

Now look at our Easy Chair survey of such an unfortunate matter:

"Monsieur B – , a widower of great respectability, was married to his second wife several years previous to the Revolution of 1848. The embarrassments which this event occasioned to several of the most considerable of his debtors, involved him in pecuniary difficulties of a serious character.

"Being of a sensitive nature, and unable to meet at that period his more immediate engagements, he became the victim of an intense mortification, which no efforts of his friends could relieve, and which gradually settled into entire mental alienation.

"He had still ample fortune, and lived in the enjoyment of his usual luxuries. His attentions to his new wife (who is represented as exceedingly beautiful) were, of course, less decided and punctilious than before, but there were observed no indications of any special hostility.