The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn, parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English slave-trade.

He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River of May to obtain a supply.

Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter, overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.

Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline, "accompanied," says Laudonnière, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled, yet unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head, however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonnière declined, upon which Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.

Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset Laudonnière's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver, whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort, with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too, a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the voyage, receiving in payment Laudonnière's note,—"for which," adds the latter, "I am until this present indebted to him." With a friendly leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.

Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.

On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier, came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death: betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing boats. Still no response. Laudonnière was almost defenceless. He had given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were French, commanded by John Ribaut.

At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families, and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.

No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to blow them out of the water. Laudonnière issued from his stronghold to welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians; and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonnière. Why, then, had they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it. Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonnière declined his friendly proposals.

Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.

Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of the River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at rest!" exclaims the unhappy Laudonnière. Behind the light and cheer of renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.

At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September, the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air the portentous banner of Spain.

Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.

SEAWARD

TO –.

How long it seems since that mild April night,When, leaning from the window, you and IHeard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,The loon's unearthly cry!Southwest the wind blew; million little wavesRan rippling round the point in mellow tune;But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,That laughter of the loon.We called to him, while blindly through the hazeUpclimbed the meagre moon behind us, slow,So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,Moored lightly, just below.We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear,I sent the note back. Echoing rock and bayMade melancholy music far and near;Slowly it died away.That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!Her canvas catching every wandering beam,Aërial, noiseless, past the glimmering coastShe glided like a dream.Would we were leaning from your window now,Together calling to the eerie loon,The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,This sumptuous night of June!So many sighs load this sweet inland air,'T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief;However lightly touched, we all must shareThe nobleness of grief.But sighs are spent before they reach your ear,Vaguely they mingle with the water's rune;No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,Wild laughter of the loon.

SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY

It happened to me once to "assist" at the celebration of Class-Day at Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior Class, and marks its completion of college study and release from college rules. It is also an institution peculiar, I believe, to Harvard, and I was somewhat curious to observe its ceremonials, besides feeling a not entirely unawful interest in being introduced for the first time to the arcana of that renowned Alma Mater.

She has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be. At all events, there is sufficient groundwork for any quantity of euphuism about "classic shades," "groves of Academe," et cetera. Trollope had his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to conceive,—angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,—and the farther in you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the amenities of life that they can safely dispense with the conditions of amenity? When I entered those brick boxes, I felt as if I were going into a stable. Wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything unhomelike, unattractive, narrow, and rickety. Think, now, of taking a boy away from his home, from his mother and sisters, from carpets and curtains and all the softening influences of cultivated taste, and turning him loose with dozens of other boys into a congeries of pens like this! Who wonders that he comes out a boor? I felt a sinking at the heart in climbing up those narrow, uncouth staircases. We talk about education. We boast of having the finest system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country; but, in my opinion, formed in the entry of the first Harvard house I entered, Harvard has not begun to hit the nail on the head. Education! Do you call it education, to put a boy into a hole, and work out of him a certain amount of mathematics, and work into him a certain number of languages? Is a man dressed, because one arm has a spotless wristband, unquestionable sleeve-buttons, a handsome sleeve, and a well-fitting glove at the end, while the man is out at the other elbow, patched on both knees, and down at the heels? Should we consider Nature a success, if she concerned herself only with carrying nutriment to the stomach, and left the heart and the lungs and the liver and the nerves to shift for themselves? Yet so do we, educating boys in these dens called colleges. We educate the mind, the memory, the intellectual faculties; but the manners, the courtesies, the social tastes, the greater part of what goes to make life happy and genial, not to say good, we leave out of view. People talk about the "awkward age" of boys,—the age in which their hands and feet trouble them, and in which they are a social burden to themselves and their friends. But one age need be no more awkward than another. I have seen boys that were gentlemen from the cradle to the grave,—almost; certainly from the time they ceased to be babies till they passed altogether out of my sight. Let boys have the associations, the culture, the training, and the treatment of gentlemen, and I do not believe there will be a single moment of their lives in which they will be clowns.

And among the first necessities are the surroundings of a gentleman. When a man is grown up, he can live in a sty and not be a pig; but turn a horde of boys in, and when they come out they will root out. A man is strong and stiff. His inward, inherent power, toughened by exposure and fortified by knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude, if it is left rude, and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place, have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity. If he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.

Do you laugh at all this? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the angels had the right of it for all that.

I am told that it would all be useless,—that the boys would deface and destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface? Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,—as I did have once, but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?—I would not be afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college students,—that is, if I could have the managing of them. I would make them "a speech," when they came back at the end of one of their long vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and the objections that had been urged against doing it. Then I would put the matter entirely into their hands. I would appeal solely to their honor. I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no possibility betray it. We don't trust people half enough. We hedge ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.

It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers. I am marauding for, not against them.

The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but, arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat and broke into the vestibule; but what is more "trying" to a frail temper than laughter in which one cannot join? So we tarried long enough to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old trees till the hour for the "collation" came; and this is the second point on which I purpose to dwell.

Each member of the Senior Class prepares a banquet,—sometimes separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to five hundred dollars,—to which he invites as many friends as he chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience. The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory symposium. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,—whether there was generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. I think it is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any exaltation of life, any real elevation of character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences and impatient of the restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history. It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at home for the sake of a quarter of a dollar when the rest of the school went to see Tom Thumb, the late bewritten bridegroom. I call it virtuous, because I had the quarter and could have gone, and could not explain the reason why I did not go. And though a senior class in Harvard College may reasonably be supposed to be beyond the eminent domain of Tom Thumb and quarter-dollars, the principle is precisely the same,—only the temptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is larger. Have they self-poise enough to refrain from these festive expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the observance?

When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began. The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became

"Embrouded … as it were a medeAlle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"—

"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of costumes,—rich, majestic, floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,—

"A fine, sweet earthquake gently movedBy the soft wind of whispering silks."

Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.

Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth and gayety and beauty—and in summer we are all young and gay and beautiful—mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.