It were so sweet, amid death's gathering gloom, To see thee, Absalom! country to possess your bodily sensations as well as your mind, in tranquil control. It is only when you have forgotten streets and rumors and greetings-forgotten the And now, farewell! 'Tis hard to give thee 5 whip of punctuality, and the hours of forced pleasure-only when you have cleansed your ears of the din of trades, the shuffle of feet, the racket of wheels, and coarse voices-only when your own 10 voice, accustomed to contend against discords, falls, through the fragrant air of the country, into its natural modulations, in harmony with the low key upon which runs all the music of nature - only when 15 that part of the world which partook not of the fall of Adam, has had time to affect you with its tranquillity - only then that the dregs of life sink out of sight, and while the soul sees through its depths, like 20 the sun through untroubled water, the senses lose their fever and false energy, and play their part, and no more, in the day's expenditure of time and pulsation. Still harping on my daughter,' you will 25 say; and I will allow that I can scarce write a letter to you without shaping it to the end of attracting you to the Susquehannah. At least watch when you begin to grow old, and transplant yourself in 30 time to take root, and then we may do as the trees do defy the weather till we are separated. The oak itself, if it has grown up with its kindred thick about it, will break if left standing alone; and you and I, dear Doctor, have known the luxury of friends too well, to bear the loneliness of an unsympathizing old age. Friends are not pebbles, lying in every path, but pearls gathered with pain, and rare as they are precious. We spend our youth and manhood in the search and proof of them, and when death has taken his toll, we have too few to scatter-none to throw away. I, for one, will be a miser of mine. I feel the avarice of friendship growing on me with every year - tightening my hold and extending my grasp. Who at sixty is rich in friends? The richest are those who have drawn this wealth of angels around them and spent care and thought on the treasuring. Come, my dear Doctor! I have chosen a spot on one of the loveliest of our bright rivers. Here is all that goes to make an Arcadia, except the friendly dwellers in its shade. I will choose your hill-side, and plant your grove, that the trees at least shall lose no time by your delay. Set The box of Rhenish is no substitute for yourself, dear Doctor, but it was most welcome partly, perhaps, for the qualities it has in common with the gentleman 35 who should have come in the place of it. The one bottle that has fulfilled its destiny, was worthy to have been sunned on the Rhine and drank on the Susquehannah, and I will never believe that anything can 40 come from you that will not improve upon acquaintance. So I shall treasure the remainder for bright hours. I should have thought it superior even to the Tokay I tasted at Vienna, if other experiments had 45 not apprised me that country life sharpens the universal relish. I think that even the delicacy of the palate is affected by the confused sensations, the turmoil, the vexations of life in town. You will say you 50 have your quiet chambers, where you are as little disturbed by the people around you as I by my grazing herds. But, by your leave, dear Doctor, the fountains of thought (upon which the senses are not a 55 little dependent) will not clear and settle over night, like a well. No-nor in a day, nor in two. You must live in the 5 a limit to your ambition, achieve it, and The first of September, and a frost! The farmers from the hills are mourning 30 over their buckwheat, but the river mist saves all which lay low enough for its white wreath to cover; and mine, though sown on the hillside, is at mist-mark, and so escaped. Nature seems to intend that 35 I shall take kindly to farming, and has spared my first crop even the usual calamities. I have lost but an acre of corn, I think, and that by the crows, who are privileged marauders, welcome at least to 40 build in the Omega and take their tithe without rent-day or molestation. I like their noise, though discordant. It is the minor in the anthem of nature-making the gay song of the blackbird, and the 45 merry chirp of the robin and oriel, more gay and cheerier. Then there is a sentiment about the raven family, and for Shakspeare's lines and his dear sake I love them, 'Some say the ravens foster forlorn children The while their own birds famish in their nests.' The very name of a good deed shall protect them. Who shall say that poetry is a vain art, or that poets are irrespon sible for the moral of their verse? For Burns's sake, not ten days since, I beat off my dog from the nest of a field-mouse, and forbade the mowers to cut the grass over her. She has had a poet for her friend, and her thatched roof is sacred. I should not like to hang about the neck of my soul all the evil that, by the last day, shall have had its seed in Byron's poem of the Corsair. It is truer of poetry than of most other matters, that 'More water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of.' But I am slipping into a sermon. Speaking of music, some one said here the other day, that the mingled hum of the sounds of nature, and the distant murmur of a city, produce, invariably, the note F in music. The voices of all tune, the blacksmith's anvil and the wandering organ, the church-bells and the dustman's, the choir and the cart-wheel, the widow's cry and the bride's laugh, the prisoner's clanking chain and the schoolboy's noise at play at the height of the churchsteeple are one! It is all F, two hundred feet in air! The swallow can outsoar both our joys and miseries, and the larkwhat are they in his chamber of the sun! If you have any unhappiness at the moment of receiving this letter, dear Doctor, try this bit of philosophy. It's all F where the bird flies! You have no wings to get there, you say, but your mind has more than six of the cherubim, and in your mind lies the grief you would be rid of. As Cæsar says, 'By all the gods the Romans bow before I here discard my sickness.' I'll be above F, and let troubles hang below. What a twopenny matter it makes of all our cares and vexations. I'll find a boy to climb to the top of a tall pine I have, and tie me up a white flag, which shall be above high-sorrow-mark hence50 forth. I will neither be elated or grieved without looking at it. It floats at 'F,' where it is all one! Why, it will be a castle in the air, indeed - impregnable to unrest. Why not, dear Doctor! Why should we not set up a reminder that our sorrows are only so deep-that the lees are but at the bottom, and there is good wine at the top that there is an at 55 - mosphere but a little above us where our sorrows melt into our joys! No man need be unhappy who can see a grasshopper on a church vane. fear I should compound for a visit by the THE WHITE CHIP HAT It is surprising how mere a matter of 5 animal spirits is the generation of many of our bluest devils; and it is more surprising that we have neither the memory to recall the trifles that have put them to the flight, nor the resolution to combat their ap- 10 I pass'd her one day in a hurry, proach. A man will be ready to hang himself in the morning for an annoyance that he has the best reason to know would scarce give him a thought at night. Even a dinner is a doughty devil-queller. How 15 true is the apology of Menenius when Coriolanus had repelled his friend! I have recovered my spirits ere now by a friend's asking me what was the matter. One seems to want but the suggestion, the presence of mind, the expressed wish, to be happy any day. My white flag 35 shall serve me that good end! Tut, man!' it shall say, 'your grief is not grief where I am! Send your imagination this high to be whitewashed!' Our weather to-day is a leaf out of Oc- 40 tober's book, soft, yet invigorating. The harvest-moon seems to have forgotten her mantle last night, for there lies on the landscape a haze, that to be so delicate, should be born of moonlight. The boys 45 report plenty of deer-tracks in the woods close by us, and the neighbors tell me they browse in troops on my buckwheat by the light of the moon. Let them! I have neither trap nor gun on my premises, and 50 Shakspeare shall be their sentinel too. At least, no Robin or Diggory shall shoot them without complaint of damage; though if you were here, dear Doctor, I should most likely borrow a gun, and lie 55 down with you in the buckwheat to see you bring down the fattest. And so do our partialities modify our benevolence. I When late for the Post with a letter- So like to a duchess's doing — Surprising!-one woman can dish us Chip hat without flower or feather- For such a rare wonder you'll say, sir, I'm sage as old Voltaire at Ferney — Away flies the dream I had nourish'd— My castles like mockery fall, sir! Before 1839. TO HELEN IN A HUFF Nay, lady, one frown is enough In a life as soon over as this — WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870) The most voluminous and versatile of the writers of the South was William Gilmore Simms whom Trent in his biography.credits with eighty volumes, eighteen of them books of poetry, thirty-five of them fiction, the rest miscellany ranging from Shakespearian criticism to local history and biography, and in addition upwards of two hundred and fifty contributions to magarines and annuals He was a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and except for a few visits to the North and the South-west, spent his life on a plantation near Midway, seventy-two miles from the city of his birth. Poverty molded his early years. His mother died in his childhood and Lis father, a sad, embittered man, plunged into the western wilderness leaving his son to relaog who could give him only the most meager education. He worked at length as a druggist, and then began the reading' of law, and for a time even practiced that profession, but in some naccountable way his whole soul had early been turned to dreams of literature. He issued his rst book of poems in 1825, his second, Lyrical and Other Poems,' in 1827, and from this last date for forty years he may be said to have given himself unreservedly to literature. He edited magazines, he wrote poetry and dramas, he poured out a profusion of novels and romances, visiting the North often to superintend their production, and his name was found in all the magazines and annuals. He became the leader of that little group,- Hayne, Timrod, and the rest, who are known as the Charleston School, and who in 1857, the initial year of The Atlantic Monthly, founded Russell's Magazine, the most distinctive literary periodical the South has yet given to American Literature. The last years of Simms's life were full of suffering and even tragedy. His sons and his wife died, his home and his magnificent library were swept away by the war, he was plunged into poverty and spent his last years at times in actual want. Of his enormous literary output little to-day survives. His poetry, which he fondly hoped was to live, is completely forgotten, and his long set of novels have been reduced to two little-read volumes, The Yemassee, a Cooper-like tale of Indian life, and The Partisan, a spirited narrative of the days of the Swamp fox' and of Tarleton's cruel attempt to subjugate the South. He wrote too much. He lacked patience and the power of self-criticism; his tales are improvisations, often graphic and stirring, but lacking reserve and the deeper notes that are evolved only by genius. He deserves praise for his insistence upon native themes for his work. While many were looking across the ocean for their backgrounds and their inspiration, Simms worked wholly with American materials, with the traditions and the history and the local color of his native South. men; but they were tried soldiers, veterans in the British southern army, and familiar with their officers. The troops of Gates two thirds of them at least had 5 never once seen service; and the greater number only now for the first time knew and beheld their commander. They had heard of his renown, however, and this secured their confidence. It had an effect far more dangerous upon his officers; for, if it did not secure their confidence also, it made them scrupulous in their suggestions of counsel to one who, from the outset, seemed to have gone forth with the 10 If everything was doubtful and uncertain in the camp of Gates, the state of things was very different in that of Cornwallis. That able commander knew his ground, his own men, and the confidence and the weakness alike of his enemy. 15 determination of rivaling the rapidity, as That weakness, that unhappy confidence, were his security and strength. His own force numbered little over two thousand well as the immensity, of Cæsar's victories. To come, to see, to conquer, was the aim of Gates; forgetting, that while Cæsar |