University of Virginia Library

PREFACE;
OR A PRELIMINARY ESSAY ON MATTERS AND THINGS IN GENERAL.

If the language and general behaviour of
those whom a traveller meets with, in journeying
over this country now, should improve as much,
and alter as much in proportion during the next
fifty years, as they have within the last fifteen or
twenty, there will be hardly a vestige left of our
strongest and sharpest peculiarities. Our grand-children—perhaps
our children—may know as
little of their immediate progenitors in the familiar
business of life; of their speech, dress and
general deportment, as we know in this day of
research and prying curiosity, about the fire-side
feelings, the every-day habits, and the real spoken
language of our primitive fathers.

And what price would be too much to pay now,
by any hearty lover of his country, or of his
country's literature, for a dialogue of their day,
faithfully reported from their lips?—not imagined
and put together in the closet; taken down word
for word from the mouth of the talker,—not soberly
and thoughtfully prepared by a learned or
popular author from a glossary and a grammar;
a rough sketch if you will, but trustworthy and
characteristic, and all alive with individuality—

not a language that nobody on earth ever talked,
or thought of talking, although everybody of
any pretension may have written it all his life
long; nor such as may be found every day of the
year in some quiet, sleepy, good-for-nothing book,
made up to order from Dr. Blair, Allison on
Taste, or the British Classics hashed over?

Tell me not that faithful representations of
native character, which are neither intended for
example nor offered for imitation, are of no use.
They are of use. They bring strangers acquainted
with what we are most anxious to conceal—
the truth; and what is more, they bring us
acquainted with ourselves, with our own peculiarities
and our own faults.

Were I to say, that after hundreds and hundreds
of volumes have been written, purporting
to describe the New-Englander, there are but
two upon the face of the earth (one a novel and
the other a play[1] ) containing so much as one
single phrase of pure Yankee, the reader would
be astonished. And yet I should say no more
than the simple truth. Let him go into the largest
of our circulating libraries to morrow, and

tumble over a cart-load of story-books and
novels, English or Scotch, native or otherwise;
for the Yankee, like the Indian of our country,
has been tried by every whippersnapper in literature;
and by not a few distinguished writers of
England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the
United-States; one day in a story, another in a
poem; here in a play and there in a history—and
for every phrase of pure New-England speech
he meets with, I will undertake to find a lump of
pure gold in the sweepings of the first poor-house
I come to, or to fish up a pearl from the first
puddle of dirty water I find.

To judge by our novel-writers, play-makers
and poets, with here and there a partial exception,
rather by accident than otherwise, we
have cottages and sky-larks in our country; pheasants
and nightingales, first families, youth of a
`gentle blood,' and a virtuous peasantry; moss-grown
churches, curfews and ivy-mantled towers;
with a plenty of hard-hearted fathers, runaway
matches—to nobody knows whom, for nobody
knows what; unfaithful wives, cruel step-mothers,
treacherous brothers—any thing and every

thing in short which goes to the ground-work of
a third-rate English or Scotch novel, and nothing—absolutely
nothing—whereby a stranger
would be able to distinguish an American story
from any other, or to obtain a glimpse of our
peculiar institutions, or of the state of society
here, if I except a short story or two by Flint—
or myself—in our baby-house annuals—here and
there a passage of Miss Ledgwick, a portion of
Paulding's rough, honest and powerful, though
sometimes rather ill-natured portraitures, the
earlier efforts of Cooper—and I wish I might say,
of Brown and Irving, but even they are not examples:
their books are not American, though they
themselves are.

Are these things to continue? I hope not. I
believe not. Something I have attempted here;
and more I may attempt hereafter, should I have
time for pursuing the experiment, and preparing
the way for a change; but the chief work and
the glory thereof must be left to others; to the
younger and the more enthusiastic, with a longer
life before them.

Is the language here put into the mouth of the
New-Englander, that which is heard in real life?
Are the manners here ascribed to him, characteristic?
Then, however peculiar and however
absurd they may appear, they ought to be portrayed;
nay—the more absurd and the more
peculiar, so much the more do they deserve to

be portrayed; and so much the better will it be,
not only for my book, but for the New-Englander
himself. At first, he may deny the truth of the
portrait—I have known such a thing to occur—I
have known people refuse to believe their own
ears. Do you doubt this?—Try the experiment
for yourself. Do me the favor to stop the first
man you hear talking, no matter where; and
you will never persuade him that the transcript
of his speech you hold in your hand, is a faithful
copy. Ten to one, he flies in a passion with you;
but if you can persuade him to go home quietly,
and watch his next-door neighbor for a day or
two, you will be astonished at the difference in
his manner when you meet again. But who
would believe it! he will say. Everybody about
me talks one language, and writes another.

The first step toward improvement is having
our faults made visible to ourselves—and to
others.

But perhaps it may be said that I do not give
a faithful picture. To which I answer—perhaps
I do. And if I do not, how easy to expose
me.

And if the picture is faithful, I am betraying
my country. Be it so. If she is only to be
upheld by untruth; if to speak the truth, is to
betray her,—I shall do my best to betray her,
now and forever—here and hereafter—whenever
and wherever I may think it for her advantage.