213 GENTLEMEN, JAALAM, 17th May, 1862. At the special request of Mr. Biglow, I intended to inclose, together with his own contribution, (into which, at my suggestion, he has thrown a little more of pastoral sentiment than usual,) some passages from my sermon on the day of the National Fast, from the text, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them," Heb. xiii. 3. But I have not leisure sufficient at present for the copying of them, even were I altogether satisfied with the production as it stands. I should prefer, I confess, to contribute the entire discourse to the pages of your respectable miscellany, if it should be found acceptable upon perusal, especially as I find the difficulty in selection of greater magnitude than I had anticipated. What passes without challenge in the fervour of oral delivery, cannot always stand the colder criticism of the closet. I am not so great an enemy of Eloquence as my friend Mr. Biglow would appear to be from some passages in his contribution for the current month. I would not, indeed, hastily suspect him of covertly glancing at myself in his somewhat caustick animadversions, albeit some of the phrases he girds_at are not entire strangers to my lips. I am a more hearty admirer of the Puritans than seems now to be the fashion, and believe, that, if they Hebraized a little too much in their speech, they showed remarkable practical sagacity as statesmen and founders. But such phenomena as Puritanism are the results rather of great religious than of 216 merely social convulsions, and do not long survive them. So soon as an earnest conviction has cooled into a phrase, its work is over, and the best that can be done with it is to bury it. Ite, missa est. I am inclined to agree with Mr. Biglow that we cannot settle the great political questions which are now presenting themselves to the nation by the opinions of Jeremiah or Ezekiel as to the wants and duties of the Jews in their time, nor do I believe that an entire community with their feelings and views would be practicable or even agreeable at the prescnt day. At the same time I could wish that their habit of subordinating the actual to the moral, the flesh to the spirit, and this world to the other, were more common. They had found out, at least, the great military secret that soul weighs more than body. But I am suddenly called to a sick-bed in the household of a valued parishioner. With esteem and respect, To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk. Jes' so with poets: wut they 've airly read Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head, So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things, O little city-gals, don't never go it Up in the country ez it doos in books; Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. I, with my trouses perched on cowhide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, An' dance your throats sore in morocker shoes: I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood. Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; But yit we du contrive to worry thru, I, country-born an' bred, know where to find Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind, An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind. 'fore long the trees begin to show belief, The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers So plump they look like yaller caterpil lars, Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old: Thet 's robin - redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. Then seems to come a hitch,- things lag behind, Till some fine mornin' Spring makes пр her mind, An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their dams Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole cleft, Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, Then all the waters bow themselves an' come, Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune An' gives one leap from Aperl into June : Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think, Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink; The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud; 2,6 The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it, An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' shade An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade; In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings; All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love owners grew To gret men, some on 'em, an' deacons, tu; 't ain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: Three-story larnin' 's pop'lar now; I guess By overloadin' children's underpinnin': We're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the minute Thet ever fits us easy while we 're in it; Long ez 't wuz futur', 't would be perfect bliss, Soon ez it's past, thet time's wuth ten o' this; An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told man; When I sot out to tramp myself in tune, Thinkin' o' nothin', I've heerd ole folks say Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: (A the'ry, p'raps, it wun't feel none the better for); I thought o' Reconstruction, wut we'd win Ef folks warn't druv, findin' their own milk fail, To work the cow thet hez an iron tail, Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet glide 'twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each side, Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix An' down towards To-morrer drift away, The imiges thet tengle on the stream Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream: Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks an' warnin's O' wut 'll be in Heaven on Sabbath-mornin's, An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite, Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone right. I'm gret on dreams, an' often when I wake, I've lived so much it makes my mem'ry ache, An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my cheer 'thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all Two hundred an' three year ago this May To git a notion you can du 'em tu: true, It's nateral you should know a thing or two." "Thet air 's an argymunt I can't endorse, 2,6 gone, In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on," You've some conjectures how the thing 's a-goin'.' "Gran'ther," sez I," a vane warn't never known Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; When I wuz younger 'n you, skurce more 'n a shaver, Actin' ez ugly. thigh!" Sez gran'ther, "and let every man-child die! Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the Lord! Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the sword!". "Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole Judee, But you forgit how long it's ben A. D.; You think thet 's ellerkence,-I call it shoddy, A thing," sez I, "wun't cover soul nor body; I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense, Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelvemonth hence. You took to follerin' where the Prophets beckoned, An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles the Second; Now wut I want 's to hev all we gain stick, An' not to start Millennium too quick; glue," Sez he, "an' so you'll find afore you're thru; Ef reshness venters sunthin', shilly-shally |