The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862

The contemptible efforts at Washington to build up a separate and distinct Democratic party, when no party save that of the Union existed, will condemn to everlasting opprobrium the Vallandighams, Carlisles, Garret Davises, and other false friends of freedom, who at such a time crowded together like hungry political cormorants, to hatch out the egg of faction, and secure a prospective share of the spoils. Have these 'Conservatives' reflected on the disgraceful show which their names will make in history, in after-years, when freedom shall have been proclaimed throughout the land, and when those who opposed its progress will appear like nothing else than traitors! Heaven help the men who, at a time when others were gathering in full measure of glory in a holy cause, were piling up naught but shame for their posterity. For it is not more certain that God is just, than that the full measure of iniquity will be heaped upon their names in the after-chronicles of freedom.

Even to the present moment, the 'Conservative' alias the 'Democratic'—or the Black, alias the White—party struggles with might and main to defend and protect its old Southern whippers-in, even at the risk of dividing and distracting the Union. To effect this, it has—almost successfully—insolently thrust the Commander-in-chief forward as its centre, and broadly slandered the Secretary of War and President in no measured terms, as having toiled to defeat McClellan and prolong the war. Through all the glossy web of lies, the light of truth shines or will shine to their disgrace.

Chiefly and most unwisely is the conservative hand shown at present in opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out 'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the South gives fresh instances of desperation, and while we search in vain for a trace of proof that there is the slightest hope of reconciliation, we are still entreated to restore every thing in statu quo ante bellum, and bear all the results of the war ourselves, as if forsooth we had been after all in the wrong. And so the Vallandighams and Davises declare that we were. 'Abolitionism caused it all,' they say, 'nothing but Abolition.'

Meanwhile, the question urges itself on us every day with more pressing power, how we are really to settle the whole difficulty? We see but one course—the 'Northing' of the South. We are content to waive for the present all theory or project of confiscation, save so far as promoting the settlement of those soldiers and emigrants who may wish to settle in the South is concerned. This question demands consideration, and must have it. Whether the lands to be appropriated for this purpose come from rebel estates which have ministered to the war, or whether they are to be taken from State property, they must be had; for the settlement of the South and the proper rewarding of the army are matters of paramount importance. The South can no longer exist in its present social condition. People who believe, to use the language of their most respectable journal, the Richmond Whig, that:

'Yankees are the most contemptible and detestable of God's creation; vile wretches, whose daily sustenance consists in the refuse of all other people; for they eat nothing that any body else will buy;… who have long very properly looked upon themselves as our social inferiors, as our serfs:'

People, we say, who believe this of us, must be taught to think differently and truthfully. If they lived in China, it would be otherwise; but linked to us as they are, we can no longer tolerate such outrageous superciliousness as they manifest. Those among them who will learn, may be taught; those who will not, must be supplanted by people who are not too proud to work, who do not 'abominate the system of free schools, because the schools are free,'2 and revile free labor, because it consists of 'greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, and small-fisted farmers.' The task is great; but it must be accomplished. The war is drawing to an end; but a greater and nobler task lies before the soldiers and the free men of America—the extending of civilization into the South. Let us lift our minds above the narrow limits of 'party,' and realize the mighty work which we have in hand. Let the introduction of free labor to the South be in future the subject to which every thinking American mind shall be devoted. Let them stream in by millions!—the free laborers of all the world!—there is room for them all; and the right of man to work never yet had such fair and just opportunity to have justice done it. Agricultural aristocracy, supported by involuntary servitude and unsupported by manufactures, has been tried, and found worse than wanting. Let its place be filled as promptly as possible by that truly higher aristocracy of industry and of culture which is at present common to Europe and our own portion of America. The turn of the North to rule has at length come. Let its reign be inaugurated by great, noble, and philanthropic efforts to extend the blessings of true civilization to all the continent.

I WAIT

I wait—watching and weary, I wait;    You wander from the way!My heart lies open, however late,    However you delay!I wait—watching and weary, I wait;    But day must dawn at last!Together, beyond the reach of fate,    Love shall redeem my past.I wait, ah! forever I can wait;    Forever? I am brave:Time can not fathom a love so great—    It waits beyond the grave!

TAKING THE CENSUS

Moses Grant sat in his vine-grown arbor one fine afternoon in August. A fine afternoon, I call it—a little sultry, to be sure, which made Moses Grant's eyes heavy; but the hum of the bees that played around the white clover-blossoms, and the sound of the leaves as they rustled in the warm wind, and the richly colored clouds that floated around in the deep, deep blue of the summer sky, and a thousand other things which I will not pause to note, but which every observing reader has noted on many an August day, made the afternoon I speak of as glorious as any afternoon could be in all our glorious summer.

Moses Grant's eyes were heavy—or eye-lids, if the reader should be a critic. He had brought a book from his daughter's book-case. He remembered the volume—it was called A Book of a Thousand Stories—as the one his daughter Mary read aloud one evening, when the witty turns of speech put all the company into the best of humor. But, somehow, the wit had now lost its point—the joke had lost its zest—and let him try as he would to collect his scattered thoughts, and let him set his eyes on his book never so firmly, his fancy would go on long journeys into the past, and come back again, wearied more and more with each journey, till at last it had sunk to rest, and Moses Grant's eyes were closed. The bees buzzed on, the leaves quivered as before, and the great world moved in its wonted way, yet our hero did not heed it; the world moved on just the same, O reader! as it will one day move—one long, long day—when you and I will not heed it.

Suddenly Moses Grant heard his name spoken. When aroused, he saw his neighbor, Johnson, seated in the rustic chair that mated the one in which he himself sat.

'Good-day, neighbor Johnson,' said Moses Grant. 'What in the world are you doing with that great book?'

'I am taking the census.' And he began turning the leaves as if searching for a lost place, remarking, laconically: 'Sultry.'

'Yes, a very close afternoon. But is it ten years since the census was taken? It seems but as many months. Oh! well, time flies!'

And he looked at the beautiful sky and at the beautiful landscape, and lingeringly at his own stately mansion, guarded by venerable trees that his own hand had transplanted from the forest—and the great truth, half-realized, yet almost as common as our daily life, that time was sweeping all things into the dead past, day by day and year by year, gave him a passing thought of how much he loved them.

The name of Moses Grant was duly inscribed in the book. Then the question was asked by neighbor Johnson:

'When were you born?'

'In the year 1800—sixty years ago the day before yesterday—though I declare I forgot all about my birthday.'

'Well, how much real estate shall I set down to you?'

'I have said that I owned about fifty thousand dollars in that kind of property, perhaps a little more, but not half as much as some persons estimate.'

'Well, how much personal property?'

'I guess about twenty thousand will not go far out of the way, reckoning mortgages and all.'

After a few minutes, which neighbor Johnson occupied by telling how Sime Jones tried to get the appointment of census-taker by wriggling about in an undignified way, and in talking about the prospects of his political party, the visitor left the old man, (such we have a right to call him since he has confessed his age,) and the old man (he would not thank us for using the term so often, for he tries to think he is still young—the old man, I must again repeat) fell a thinking. His eyes were no longer closed, although his book was; he leaned forward in his rustic chair, and commenced to talk aloud—which is said to be a growing habit with most old men:

'Sixty years of human life!' The words were uttered slowly, as though their full meaning were felt in the speaker's heart. After a little while they were repeated: 'Sixty years of human life!' There was a mournfulness in his voice now; it had sunk to the low, tender tones that, years before, when his faithful wife vanished from earth, revealed to all his friends that there was sadness in his heart, while there seemed cheerfulness in his words. 'Welladay!' he continued; 'I have, at any rate, been a successful man. My business has prospered beyond my expectations, and I am what people call a rich man. There was a time when I feared I should come to want; but now, if I could but think so, I have enough. And mine has been an industrious life. When I was elected to the State Senate wasn't my name held up in the newspapers as an example for young men? Wasn't my reputation admitted to be spotless? Yes, I have been a successful man—more successful than nearly all who started with me.'

And he began to look more cheerful and contented. He again looked at his mansion and broad fields, and again he opened his book. The jokes were better now than a little while before.

But the bees buzzed on; the trees sang their old soothing song; the air remained warm; and soon Moses Grant began to nod assent to his book, though the matters it contained were not of opinion, but of fancy. By which I mean that he grew sleepy.

Sudden darkness fell upon the earth. The sun, after sending its rays to glitter in the river so brightly that Moses Grant put his hand over his eyes as he looked from his arbor-door, went out, and the blackness of night wrapped itself about the world. The elms, that had rattled their deep green leaves in the wind, and the birch, that had so gracefully bowed its slender, yellowish head, were all colorless now. There was no storm-cloud to veil the heavens, and yet the sad-faced moon came not out to remind the world of their lost loves and deferred hopes—nor the stars, to twinkle in their silence, as though there were a great Soul in the skies that longed to speak to men, but had no utterance save a thousand love-lit eyes. All was darkness—dense, universal.

Yet Moses Grant had sat unmoved in his vine-grown arbor. His soul was passionless, his face was calm. His book had fallen to the ground, and his head rested on the back of his chair.

Suddenly there came a visitor to the arbor. Moses raised his head and saw a being—whether man or woman I can not tell—with a face, oh! so bright and calm, with eyes that looked from the deepest soul, and a pure forehead that spoke of unworldly rest—a face that shone in its own vista of light when all around was dark. The Presence bore an open book in its hands, and came and stood before Moses Grant and looked earnestly into his face.

'Who are you?' he cried, half in fear, before the calm look of his visitor, and half in confidence, because of the look of love.

'I am the census-taker.'

'No, no; it was he who came a little while ago.'

'He was one census-taker—he came to learn how much you seemed to possess; I come to learn your real possessions. I am the real census-taker.'

Moses Grant knew not what it meant; he sat speechless, in wonder. He would have fled, but he knew not where he could flee in the darkness; he must remain with his strange visitor, as all men must one day stand alone with an awakened Conscience.

'When were you born?' asked the Presence.

'Sixty years ago,' answered Moses.

'You understand me not. I do not ask for the time when you were born into your outward show of life, but when you commenced to live.'

'Still I do not know your meaning,' said Moses.

'Then you have not yet been born. You exist—you do not live. Say not again that you have lived sixty years, for your being has not yet expanded into life.'

Oh! what great thoughts and dark memories came into the mind of Moses Grant! Great thoughts of a nobler life of love than he had ever known—of realities to which he was fast approaching—and a thousand dark memories that he had often tried to obliterate from his mind. A little while before, he thought he possessed a spotless reputation—and so he did possess a spotless reputation when judged by human law. No man ever knew him to steal; no man ever knew him to transgress any important law. Nevertheless, he had had his own ends to gain, and he had gained them. Yes—we might as well confess it—Moses Grant had lived a selfish life. He knew how to take advantage of the technicalities of law, and he knew how to be severe and unmerciful toward the poor. He remembered how, years before, his son had longed for an education, and how the mother had pleaded that he might go to school and to college, and how sternly he said, 'No, I want him in my business;' and he remembered how he kept him slaving at his uncongenial tasks, how he scolded because he still pored over his books, until at last the mother had laid the poor boy in the grave before he had attained to manhood. He remembered how the mother grew paler day by day—she who had been such a help-meet in all his selfish schemes of hoarding and saving; how she had talked more and more about her 'dear lost boy,' till he, Moses Grant, commanded her never to utter that name again in his presence; how the mother still faded and faded, till at last she too, was laid in a quiet grave beside her boy. All this came into the mind of Moses Grant. And then he remembered how he had taken a poor widow's cottage, because his mortgage-deed gave him the privilege—he never thought the right—to take it; he remembered her sad face, that told of silent suffering, when she moved with her children from the cottage her husband had built. 'How,' he asked, in the silence of his own mind, 'oh! how could they say my reputation was unspotted?' Yet he had transgressed no outward law, had forged no mortgage-deed. He only acted like a man who thought that this world could only be enjoyed when he possessed a title-deed to it all; like one who thought that above and beyond this world there was nothing.

All this time has the Presence stood before Moses Grant, looking into his troubled face with its piercing eyes, and reading his every thought.

'Answer me now,' it said, 'have you yet begun to live?'

Then there was another and greater struggle in the mind of Moses. Pride said to him: 'Send this intrusive visitor away, or flee yourself.' But still the visitor stood there, waiting so calmly, and again Moses realized that the great world had faded from his vision; so he could neither send away the intruder, nor fly himself. Still those calm eyes looked into his inmost soul.

'Oh!' he cried at last, 'you have searched me through and through. No, I have not lived—I have not been born, I have no life for you to record in your book. Now, pray leave me—leave me in peace!'

'That were impossible,' said the Presence, 'you know not peace. You pride yourself on your possessions; but how can you have life or possessions, if they are not recorded in my book? The earth, that you love so well, has faded away. It will return to you for a brief moment, and then it will fade forever. What you now possess is but a shadow, like a sun-gilt cloud in a summer sky—changing and changing, and fading and fading, till at last it disappears. You have, if God wills, a few more years of mortal existence, and then, oh! then, you must exchange shadows for realities.'

'Leave me, oh! leave me!' cried Moses.

'Not yet; my mission is not fulfilled. Here in this book your name was written sixty years age, as one to be born. Here your ledger has been kept, though you knew it not. Read the pages with your soul, and see how your account stands.'

Oh! how dark the page. A line was drawn through the middle, from top to bottom, and the good deeds were recorded on one side, in letters of gold, and the bad deeds on the other side in letters of ink. As the pages were turned, Moses looked eagerly for the bright letters, but they were few—too few; while every page was almost filled with the black records of selfish and sinful deeds. Every page made Moses Grant sicker at heart, and he would gladly have withdrawn his eyes from the book, but they were riveted, and he could not.

'O poor man!' exclaimed the Presence, in pity; 'how poor do you find yourself, you who were a little while ago so rich! But you must read no more, lest you sink in despair.'

And the book was closed. Moses Grant said not a word; his heart was too full to speak—too full of grief—too empty of hope.

'Despair not,' continued the strange Presence. 'Your record is not yet completed. You may yet cancel all those black letters by writing golden ones over them—which is to pray with your remaining strength and days for forgiveness. You have been a hard, selfish man, for sixty years. Men, for their own interests, have called you respectable; but before God you have merited displeasure and disapprobation. In the little time you have left, perhaps you may not be able to leave the world as pure as you began it; but you may hope for wonderful mercy and forbearance from God our Father. Have courage, and faith, and hope, and you will yet be rich indeed—rich in love and joy and peace undefiled, that fadeth not away.'

Then the Presence vanished. Still Moses sat in his chair. But a hand was laid on his forehead, and he awoke as he heard Mary say: 'Father, supper is ready.' He drew his hand across his eyes, and arose from his chair. He looked from his arbor-door. The world was all bathed in the light of the declining sun. As he came out and looked on the landscape, he thought that never before had he seen it so dreamy—never before had he seen it so beautiful and so glorious, for never before had he so felt the use of this world as a place in which to attain to the good and to shun the evil, to overcome temptation and to aspire to life.

His daughter wondered what caused his tone to be so tender that night; the next day his neighbors wondered that he visited a certain poor, struggling widow, and gave her the house her husband once owned; and in the months that have since passed, many a poor family has wondered what has turned their former oppressor into such a provident friend.

I only wonder that so old and selfish a man could have had so bright and heavenly a dream.

A SENSIBLE EPITAPH

'Reader, pass on: ne'er waste your timeOn bad biography or bitter rhyme:For what I am, this cumbrous clay insures,And what I was, is no affair of yours.'

THE PELOPONNESUS IN MARCH

'Fair clime I where every season smiles.There, mildly dimpling, Ocean's checkReflects the tints of many a peakCaught by the laughing tides that laveThese Edens of the Eastern wave.And if, at times, a transient breezeBreak the blue crystal of the seas,Or sweep one blossom from the trees,How welcome is each gentle airThat wakes and wafts the odors there!'

It was with thoughts like these running in our heads, that we found ourselves, at about half-past four o'clock, on a dark, cloudy, windy morning, March fifteenth, 18—, rolling slowly along the uneven road that leads from Athens to the Piraeus. Our guide was Dhemetri, of course—who ever heard of a guide that was not named Dhemetri? An excellent guide he was, too, never missing his way, answering correctly all our questions to which he knew the answers, and fabricating answers to the rest as near the truth as his moderate knowledge of antiquity would permit; providing us sedulously with creature comforts, and besieging our hearts daily with delicious omelettes and endless strings of figs. Arrived at the Piraeus, we were transferred, with beds, cooking apparatus, and baggage, to the Lloyd steamer, whose cloud of steam and smoke was seen dimly in the gray morning. At a reasonable time after the hour advertised, we sailed into the open bay, passed near enough the island of Ægina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights—almost to count its columns—then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis, which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of Napoli, or Nauplia, once the capital of Greece.

It had been our intention to procure horses that night, and ride as far as Mycenæ, but we were too late, so contented ourselves with a walk to Tiryus, and a rapid examination of its ruins. The massive walls of this venerable town—they were a wonder in the age of Pericles as in ours—still stand in their whole circuit, and here and there apparently in their whole hight. It is a small, steep, mound-like hill—you can walk around it in fifteen minutes—and within the walls the terraced slope, thickly sprinkled with fragments of ruins, is grown over with the tall purple flowers of the asphodel—a fit monument to the perished city. From the citadel of Tiryus the view over the wide plain of the Inachus, the broad bay beyond, covered with sails, the bold headland of Napoli crowned with the ruined castle, the noble citadel of Argos, and the mountain ranges on every side, made a picture beautiful even under the dull sky of that March evening. Our walk—quickened by the fear that the city gates would be found closed—gave us a hearty appetite, and a classic smack was imparted to our modest viands by the fact that Orestes himself waited on our table. We slept well, notwithstanding the uncomfortable reputation of the inn, and set off early the next morning upon our wanderings.

Traveling in Greece is no child's play. Roads there are none, except between some large towns; indeed, the nature of the country hardly allows of them, as it is made up chiefly of mountain ridges and ravines. Neither would the poverty-stricken inhabitants be able at present to make much use of them. When I expressed to Dhemetri the great benefits I conceived that roads would confer upon the community, he asked contemptuously: 'What good would roads be to them, when they have no carriages?' Inns, too, there are none, or almost none; after leaving Napoli we found none until we returned to Athens. In their stead, each village has its khan, a house rather larger than ordinary, and containing one large unfurnished room for guests. Here a fire is made on the hearth, (the smoke escaping, or intended to escape, through a hole in the roof, for chimneys do not exist,) and the traveler pitches his tent metaphorically in this apartment. The beds, which he carries with him, are spread on the floor, to do double duty as seats during the evening and beds by night. Thus the accommodations are reduced to their lowest terms—shelter and fire; to which add a lamb from the flock, eggs in abundance, or sometimes a chicken, loaf of bread, or string of figs. Wine, too, flavored with resin in true classic style, and tasting like weak spirits of turpentine, is to be had every where. But for any entertainment beyond this, the host is no-way responsible. If you do not choose to sleep on the bare floor, you must bring beds and bedding with you. If you wish the luxury of a knife and fork, you must furnish them yourself. Kettles, plates, saucepans, cups, coffee, sugar, salt, candles, all came from that mysterious basket which rode on the pack-horse with the baggage. Were I visiting Greece again, I would eschew all these vanities—carry nothing but a Reisesack, or travel-bag, as the Germans are wont to call every variety of knapsack—a shawl, and a copy of Pausanias, and live among the Greeks as the Greeks do; but I was inexperienced then.