The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862

Yes, many Wisconsin banks have yielded up their lives in the past year, and in one of these fatal safes our little pile of 'ready' irrevocably evaporated! Ah! the palmy days! when we had rooms at the –; when our tables were marble-topped and our mirrors presented full-length portraits of us; when every dinner was a feast for epicures; when servants awaited our nod or beck; when Davis's best turn-out bowled us away to the purple bluffs yonder, at every sunset, and bowled us back again happy in pocket and in heart! Those days have gemmed themselves in the past.

We find it necessary to 'put in for repairs,' as they say of a steamboat when her smoke-stacks are snapped off by a Lake Pepin gale, and she goes ashore. At no distant day we will again go out into the tide. From any quantity of 'wild lands'—which we have the felicity of paying taxes on—we have selected a ten-acre patch in the neighborhood of the city, and are living something after the style of Thoreau, except that we have a better cook!

From our modestly architectured porch we look out upon the broad, far-stretching valley of the Mississippi. It is a vast view—so that a shower becomes a part of the landscape, and it is delightful to watch it trailing over the hills. Alexander Smith is ahead of me in this idea, but no matter. East and west the picturesque bluffs mingle in hazy softness with the sky; the roofs and steeples of the city glimmer in the sunny distance; now and then, away through the wooded banks we see columns of pearly steam, as some stately boat goes gliding by. I shall always have a weakness for these proud, screeching steamboats, for there is one among them—the dear old 'Milwaukee'—for which I entertain a confirmed infirmity! We went honey-mooning in the 'Milwaukee.' Its musical and far-heard whistle is doomed for evermore to deluge my soul in a 'sea of soft-blue memories.'

Our carpets are of matting and oil-cloth, islanded here and there with a choice bit of rug. My little kitchen is exultant in shining tins, a glittering 'Hotspur,' patented 1860, and a capacious cupboard, through the glass doors of which shines forth a complete set of 'Ironstone.' On Mondays a little Bohemian—with surprising strength in her diminutive person—comes, and out from the fury of suds and steam issues a line of snowy, flapping clothes. She receives her 'tri shealing' and trots home. Aside from washing, I am addicted to that unpoetical, homely, dry, and utterly plebeian practice of doing my own work. Think you I could endure to have a poetic mood burst in upon by a red-faced girl, smelling of dish-water, exclaiming, 'The tay's out'? Besides, I never was born to, had thrust upon me, or achieved, any surplus amount of 'greatness,' consequently my laurels will not suffer from being in contact with sauce-pans and toasting-forks. (But fancy the idea of Mrs. Browning a-frying flapjacks!) I have lived for the most part in the country, you know, and at the old home I was applauded on by an appreciative mamma to rare feats in this department of humble life. I combine the artist with the cook—the ideal with the material. I consult color and the nice shades of taste. Indeed, I make cooking and furniture-arranging an art. The emerald lettuce I mingle with the ruby radish; the carefully browned trout I surround with a wall of snowy and hot potatoes; the roseate shavings of beef and ham flank the golden butter, which is stamped in a very superior manner, I may say, with the American Eagle; the amber honey sides with the royal purple of grape-jelly; and the creamy biscuit contrasts with the deep chrome of the sponge-cake beside it, etc., etc. Of various pastries and entrees—of which I alone hold the original recipes—I will not speak. Suffice to say, that it may be of interest to some housekeepers to send me a prepaid envelope!

Should you go Minnehahaing this summer, I shall hope that you may fail to make connections with the St. Paul Packet Company, so that while waiting a boat you may find it convenient to immortalize 'The Hermitage' by breaking fast beneath its humble roof.

Hermetically thine,Marie.

We would that we could. Alas! there is very little 'ha-ha-ing' of any kind this serious 'battle-summer'—least of all for us toward the rosy West. Well, a time may come, and when it does, of a verity the Hermitage shall become well known to 'Esquire Continental.'

A correspondent, whose style, by the way, is quaint enough to be printed with black-letter, thus favors us with his protest against certain merely 'bread-and-butter' notions of Woman:

I object to the current newspaper 'Advice for Girls.' A woman may know how to cook, sweep, sew, tend babies; but is this what a young man—Spanish, virgen—most looks, or cares for, or thinks of, when he seeks life-companionship—a Somebody to get him dinner, tidy his room, fasten his shirt-buttons, and bear him children? 'Tis not for spread tables, kept house, mended clothes, nor pleasure, that the young man's soul thirsts. For sympathy, for love, for the object of his manliness, for its complement, for his wife—and not a servant, nor a mistress.

He does indeed holily choose the mother of their little ones, but newspaper-notice hints nothing of that; it teaches bodily, not spiritually, and simply trains up a female able to bear offspring of healthy flesh.

However, the husband requires a lover fit to join with him in spirit also, for the total benefit of posterity.

The education which best suits a woman, then, is it carnal or soulful? to make a kitchen-drudge or a soft-eyed maiden? a prudent housewife or a thoughtful heartsweet? 'a special breeder' (Pope) or a trusted bosomer? Cattle and machinery are for this labor-saving. The true end of woman is feminity. Therefore, if she is any brighter and heartsomer for playing in the fields, any more pensive and sober for meditating there, who shall deny her God's free air and sunshine?

If she is more delicate and softer to handle the light embroidery, or plan the curious patchwork, who shall restrict her busy ingenuity to garments of wear—coarse jackets, trowsers, shirts?

If she is more earnest and devoted for loving and suffering through a romance, who shall hinder from reading and writing, or limit the one to Pilgrim's Progress, the other to a letter, or confine her pity to street-beggars, for whom alms-giving is act of charity not more than tears are for imagined woes?

If she is more winning and tender by dwelling with old friendships and memorable passages of trial or happiness, who shall fetter her thoughts to the selfish indifference of the present, or the dull routine of daily toil called duty?

If she is gentler and meeker, purer and loftier, Christlier, for contemplating God and the angels, who can bind her conscience to worship her husband or 'God in him'? (Milton.)

Summarily and concisely, if she is more womanly, in any sort, for doing, saying, thinking, whatsoever, howsoever, whithersoever, is not what she ought the term and measure of what she may? or else who shall presume to prescribe other bounds to her nature, and undertake to restrain its ongoings in this or that direction?

Is female determined by male? woman's mind by the wind of man's caprice? or both mutually interdetermined by the law of their correlation, his wants and her capacities, her wants and his abilities? And if he preaches utility, but she follows taste, whether is to be concluded, that he needs more of practicality in her, or she more of æstheticality in him? Is it that women lack usefulness or that men lack beautifulness?

The sterner sex, by assuming to itself superior desires, can stigmatize the other because the female disposition does not meet its own; but truth and right may be much upon the other side. Women may be nearer standard, just in this land and age, than men; and their unsatisfied longings for handsome, chaste, and noble men are swifter witnesses than all the low complaint about feminine finery and extravagance. When men can seem to better understand that it is not necessarily madness to prefer (as Nero) a fortune in marble to a fortune in gold, or a Raphael's painting to 'money in the bank,' when they shall come to recognize the utility of beauty and holiness, then will not women be slow to acknowledge the use and usefulness of so much utility.

Honor to Sigel! honor to Heintzelman! Whatever may have been said or sung against others, there is no doubt as to the ability, faithfulness, perseverance, and courage of these gallant Deutschers, and with them of many others of their glorious nation who have followed their national and instinctive hatred of tyranny, and taken part with us in battle against the South. Hurrah then for our German Generals. Sigel soll leben, vivat hoch!

Wir geh'n die Waffen in der Hand,Zu retten unser Vaterland,Und unser Kampf ist Sieg.Wir tragen nicht Erober-Schwerdt,Wir schützen Weib und Kind und Heerd,Gerecht ist unser Krieg.(ENGLISH.)'We go with weapon in our hand,And all to free our Father-land,A victory is our fight.We seek to win no foreign earth,We fight for wife and child and hearth:God knows our cause is right.'

How many hundreds of thousands of Germans are there to whom these lines have become as applicable in this our 'Trans-Atlantic Germany' as when sung of old under the oaks of the Teuton father-land. When this battle shall be over, let every one bear in mind the good and faithful aid they gave us. Nor shall the Irish be forgotten, who with such desperate courage have contributed so largely to swell our armies. They are in every regiment, they have been foremost in every battle, their dead lie on every field. Let those deny it who will, we should have fared badly enough had it not been for the Irish. They have shown themselves from the beginning as presenting

'First fut on the flure,First stick in the fight.'

They gave us the poet-warrior O'Brien, and the brave and generous Kearney, and the noble Corcoran—but the list is too long. Honor to them all.

There are many very good sort of people who will tell you, 'I don't like Germans,' or 'I don't like Irish!' We trust that this war will drive all such dislikes among us out of existence. Those who indulge in them are generally narrow-minded, un-cosmopolite sort of people. The principles of our day and of our war—the Republican principles—are opposed to all such illiberality. The Southerner, indeed, proposes to exclude all foreigners—it is his 'policy'—the Republican would give to the brain and muscle of every living being the fullest chance for development every where. Free Soil and Free Labor forever!

Literature and religion have of late sustained a great loss in the death of Benjamin J. Wallace, D.D., which took place in Philadelphia August first. The deceased was a descendant of the great Harris family, which may be almost said to have founded Western Pennsylvania, and which gave a name to its largest city. Originally educated at West-Point, he subsequently studied divinity at Princeton, distinguished himself as a New-School clergyman in many States, especially in the West, was at one time a professor at Delaware College, Newark, and was well known during the later years of his life as editor of and contributor to that very able magazine, the Presbyterian Quarterly Review.

We had frequent opportunities of becoming familiar with the scope of Mr. Wallace's abilities, and can testify that they were truly remarkable. Apart from his theological learning he was a thorough and extremely varied student of general literature; one familiar to a degree rare in this country with Greek genius; a most able and ready writer; and above all, a man of strong belief; one who touched no subject on which he did not write with sincerest interest.

Mr. Wallace left a large circle of friends and a family to mourn a loss which all the friends of religion and of culture share in common with them. It is seldom that the journalist is called on to record the death of any one who to natural gifts, aided by most excellent education, added such a life of conscientious and modest industry. He was a true Christian and gentleman in all things.

The writer of the letter excerpted from in the following story, will accept our sincere thanks for the 'De Bow,' which, as he will find 'other wheres,' has been turned to account by us:

New-Orleans, August 13th, 1862.

Dear Continental: Let me give you a true version of an anecdote touching the 'contraband' question: it may do for the Drawer.

A rascally slave-jockey of this habitat procured an order for the rendition of a fugitive, who was supposed to be in the Quartermaster's employ at the Custom-House, addressed to that functionary. Meanwhile the negro, who had doubtless been there, had taken refuge in the hospital, whither Jew pursued him with the same order, not doubting that the Major-General's order was as good for one place as another. But Dr. Smith, it seems, thought otherwisely, for he coolly informed the applicant that he was not Quartermaster, and declined to pay any attention to an order on that officer. Back to head-quarters travels 'Shylock,' with his dishonored order and his complaint. The paper is forthwith returned with a curt indorsement and the assurance that 'that will make it all right.' Thus fortified, he returned to the charge, and triumphantly displaying the back of the paper only to Dr. Smith, demanded his 'nigger.' Dr. Smith looked at the writing presented to him and read:

'Dr. Smith: You will turn this man out at once.'

Then to the Jockey: 'Here, I am ordered to turn you out of my house. Get out, sir, get out; get out of my house!' And as he stood petrified with astonishment at the apparent disrespect shown to the General's order, Dr. Smith called out to the guard: 'Orderly, put this man out at the door, and see that he is not admitted again.' The fellow found his tongue at length, but the Doctor, who is no admirer of slave-hunters, would not hear a word of remonstrance, and the discomfited trader was hustled down the stairs, shaking his order behind him, and spluttering out his wrath and disappointment.

'Grasp thy happiness and bear it with thee.' Is that Sanscrit or Persian? He who said that, had grasped a great truth. The Beautiful never perishes to him that wills.

ONCE

No matter when: enough that moon and starsShone as they shine to-night;That tales of desolation and of wars,Of struggle and of blight,Like the low mutterings of a troublous dream,Flitting across the still and peaceful night,Glanced o'er my heart and thine!The music of the pine—The silver, witching streamAn impress deeper, left upon our hearts.The murmuring song fell soothing on our ears;The silver stream with beauty charmed our eyes;And so we bade the tales of spears and darts,With all their train of agony and tears,Go to the winds; and leave us golden skies,And brooks, and reaching hills, and 'lovers' leaps,'With bold and rugged steeps;And all the romance of 'enchanting scenes;'For thou and I were—midway in our teens!Once! breathe it softly, softly, O my heart!And thou—my waiting one!My unforgotten! wheresoe'er thou art—My heart's unfading sun!My guiding light beneath the storms and clouds;My solace when the woods and hills are lone;And the dark pine breathes out its saddening moan;And when the night the misty mountain shrouds,Breathe it still gently, wheresoe'er thou art,Light of my fainting heart!'Once!' stop, O wheels of time! upon the word!Gather it in a knot of silken blue;Bind it all fondly—with a nuptial cord,Unto the widowed present! bear it throughAll change—all chance! Love, friendship! hold it fast:Let it no more be wedded to the past!And human hearts through all life's checkered scenes,Shall ever tarry 'midway in their teens'!

We find the following paragraph floating through our exchanges:

'The venerable John J. Crittenden was in town to-day, preparing to start for home. I am sorry to hear that he speaks, to intimate friends, very despondingly of our future prospects. This is not as it should be. Public men, occupying seats in the high councils of the nation, ought never to despair of the republic.'—N. Y. Letter.

And how else could the venerable compromiser be expected to speak? The man who dallies with death and destruction to the last moment—who is only anxious to yield to an insolent and unscrupulous foe, is just the one of all others who, when the struggle comes, wails and howls despair. Their hearts were always with Southern aristocracy, these venerable Sweetsops who would have gladly compromised Northern dignity and manliness down to its very face in the mud before the devil himself, and then have explained their course by referring to Christian example, as though Christ himself had not dared death time and again, and finally suffered it as an example that there is a limit where it is better to perish than that evil should prevail over the truth.

They are all Southrons at heart. Did not the venerable John Bell, only the other day, when he was offered a safe conduct by Federal forces out of Dixie, prefer to remain there? Of course he did. Ubi bene ibi patria. We feel and know instinctively where they belong and what they are, these men whose inordinate vanity of respectability so far outweighs their sense of truth, honor, and manhood. Very well taken off are they in a happy hit—author to us unknown—setting forth what they would have agreed on in convention had they lived at the time of the first murder:

'Resolved, That we are equally opposed to the pretended piety and evident fanaticism of Abel and the authorized violence of the high-toned and chivalrous Cain.

'Resolved, That the 'Ultras' who are clamoring for the hanging of Cain, which would only exasperate him, desire to destroy the domestic happiness and peace of the family, and have no other purpose in view.

'Resolved, That we are in favor of punishing both parties, and invite all conservative men to unite with us in frowning down this whole business.

'Resolved, That nobody has a right to provoke murder, and if Abel had exhibited less fanaticism this one never would have occurred.'

Apropos of which subject and which men, we are reminded of a rough and ready poem by William Higgins:

THE COMPROMISER

A cross between a man and slaveThis mongrel thing produces,Who deems himself ordained to saveThe Union by sham truces.In strife between the Wrong and RightTo hold the nation's border,Ashamed to run, afraid to fight,He faintly squeaks out 'Order!'The boasted friend of quiet, peace,He'd quell all agitation,By giving Satan longer leaseOf earth, to damn the nation.No matter, though the Scriptures teachThe golden rule of action,He says 'tis but a fancy speech,And proves it to a fraction!He knows no 'Higher Law,' but thinksState Rights the Catechism;Which having learned by rote, he linksHis practice to his schism.And thus is fitted to proclaim,With all his might and vigor,Nor feel a single blush of shame,'That chains become a nigger!'With him, Religion is a boon,That Slavery may diddle;God's laws to those of John Calhoun,Play only second-fiddle!The faith for which his fathers bled,And died to make him heir to,He quite ignores, and takes insteadThat leading God knows where to.O compromiser! what a gleamOf glory hangs about you!No wonder that you proudly deemThe world would spoil without you!With supple knees to slavery bent,Your conscience hangs on hinges,And gives mild treason easy vent,Despite compunction's twinges!

Rude but true. And these be times for truth, however rude.

1

Mount Washington is six thousand seven hundred feet high.

2

In the border dialect this word rhymes with 'shout,' 'about,' etc.