Earth, air, sea, sky, the elemental fire, Art, history, song,--what meanings lie in each Found in his cunning hand a stringless lyre, And poured their mingling music through his speech.
Thence flowed those anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the self-same human heart.
Subdued his accents, as of one who tries To press some care, some haunting sadness down; His smile half shadow; and to stranger eyes The kingly forehead wore an iron crown.
He was not armed to wrestle with the storm, To fight for homely truth with vulgar power; Grace looked from every feature, shaped his form,-- The rose of Academe,--the perfect flower!
Such was the stately scholar whom we knew In those ill days of soul-enslaving calm, Before the blast of Northern vengeance blew Her snow-wreathed pine against the Southern palm.
Ah, God forgive us! did we hold too cheap The heart we might have known, but would not see, And look to find the nation's friend asleep Through the dread hour of her Gethsemane?
That wrong is past; we gave him up to Death With all a hero's honors round his name; As martyrs coin their blood, he coined his breath, And dimmed the scholar's in the patriot's fame.
So shall we blazon on the shaft we raise,-- Telling our grief, our pride, to unborn years,-- "He who had lived the mark of all men's praise Died with the tribute of a nation's tears."
[A] Read at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Jan. 30, 1865.
THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.
I quitted the sewing-school on a Friday evening, intending to put my things in order the following day: for Monday was my birthday,--I should then be eighteen, and was to go with my father and select a sewing-machine.
As before mentioned, he had usually employed all his spare time in winter, when there was no garden-work to be done, in making seines for the fishermen. These were very great affairs, being used in the shad-fishery on the Delaware; and as they were many hundred yards in length, they required a large gang of men to manage them. This employment naturally brought him an extensive acquaintance among the fishermen, by whom he was always invited to participate in their first hauling of the river, at the breaking up of winter. As he was quite as fond of this exciting labor as we had been of fishing along the ditches, he never failed to accept these invitations. He not only enjoyed the sport, but he was anxious to see how well the seines would operate which he had sat for weeks in making. In addition to this, there was the further gratification of being asked to accept of as many of the earliest shad as he could carry away in his hand. It was a perquisite which we looked for and prized as much as he did himself. This recreation was of course attended with much exposure, being always entered on in the gusty, chilly weather of the early spring.