University of Virginia Library

9. LETTER IX.

My Dear Doctor: As they say an oyster should
be pleased with his apotheosis in a certain sauce, I
was entertained with the cleverness of your letter
though you made minced-meat of my trout-fishing.
Under correction, however, I still cover the barb of my
“fly,” and so I must do till I can hook my trout if he
but graze the bait with his whisker. You are an
alumnus of the gentle science, in which I am but a
neophyte, and your fine rules presuppose the dexterity
of a practised angler. Now a trout (I have observed
in my small way) will jump once at your naked
fly; but if he escape, he will have no more on't, unless
there is a cross of the dace in him. As it is a fish
that follows his nose, however, the smell of the worm
will bring him to the lure again, and if your awkwardness
give him time, he will stick to it till he has
cleaned the hook. Probatum est.

You may say this is unscientific, but, if I am to
breakfast from the contents of my creel, I must be
left with my worm and my ignorance.

Besides — hang rules! No two streams are alike —
no two men (who are not fools) fish alike. Walton
and Wilson would find some new “wrinkle,” if they
were to try these wild waters; and, to generalize the
matter, I have, out of mathematics, a distrust of rules,
descriptions, manuals, etc., amounting to a 'phobia.
Experience was always new to me. I do not seem to
myself ever to have seen the Rome I once read of.
The Venice I know is not the Venice of story nor of
travellers' books. There are two Londons in my
mind — one where I saw whole shelves of my library
walking about in coats and petticoats, and another
where there was nothing visible through the fog but
fat men with tankards of porter — one memory of it all
glittering with lighted rooms, bright and kind faces,
men all manly, and women all womanly, and another
memory (got from books) where every man was surly,
and dressed in a buff waistcoat, and every woman a
giantess, in riding-hat and boots.

It is delightful to think how new everything is,
spite of description. Never believe, dear Doctor, that
there is an old world. There is no such place, on
my honor! You will find England, France, Italy,
and the East, after all you have read and heard, as
altogether new as if they were created by your eye,
and were never sung, painted, nor be-written — you
will indeed. Why — to be sure — what were the world
else? A pawnbroker's closet, where every traveller
had left his clothes for you to wear after him! No!
no! Thanks to Providence. all things are new! Pen
and ink can not take the gloss off your eyes, nor can
any man look through them as you do. I do not believe
the simplest matter — sunshine or verdure — has
exactly the same look to any two people in the world.
How much less a human face — a landscape — a broad
kingdom? Travellers are very pleasant people. They
tell you what picture was produced in their brain by
the things they saw; but if they forestalled novelty by

that, I would as soon read them as beseech a thief to
steal my dinner. How it looks to one pair of eyes!
would be a good reminder pencilled on the margin of
many a volume.

I have run my ploughshare, in this furrow, upon a
root of philosophy, which has cured heart-aches for
me ere now. I struck upon it almost accidentally,
while administering consolation, years since, to a sensitive
friend, whose muse had been consigned, alive
and kicking, to the tomb, by a blundering undertaker
of criticism. I read the review, and wrote on it with
a pencil, “So thinks one man in fifteen millions;” and,
to my surprise, up swore my dejected friend, like Master
Barnardine, that he would “consent to die that
day, for no man's persuasion.” Since that I have
made a practice of counting the enemy; and trust me,
dear Doctor, it is sometimes worth while not to run
away without this little preliminary. A friend, for instance,
with a most boding solemnity, takes you aside,
and pulls from his pocket a newspaper containing a
paragraph that is aimed at your book, your morals,
perhaps your looks and manners. You catch the
alarm from your friend's face, and fancy it is the voice
of public opinion, and your fate is fixed. Your book
is detestable, your character is gone. Your manners
and features are the object of universal disapprobation.
Stay! count the enemy! Was it decided by a convention?
No! By a caucus? No! By a vote on the
deck of a steamboat? No! By a group at the corner
of the street, by a club, by a dinner-party? No!
By whom then? One small gentleman, sitting in a
dingy corner of a printing-office, who puts his quill
through your reputation as the entomologist slides a
pin through a beetle — in the way of his vocation. No
particular malice to you. He wanted a specimen of
the genus poet, and you were the first caught. If
there is no head to the pin (as there often is none), the
best way is to do as the beetle does — pretend to be
killed till he forgets you, and then slip off without a
buzz.

The only part of calumny that I ever found troublesome
was my friends' insisting on my being unhappy
about it. I dare say you have read the story of the
German criminal, whose last request that his head
might be struck off while he stood engaged in conversation,
was humanely granted by the provost. The
executioner was an adroit headsman, and watching his
opportunity, he crept behind his victim while he was
observing the flight of a bird, and sliced off his bulb
without even decomposing his gaze. It was suggested
to the sufferer presently that he was decapitated, but
he thought not. Upon which one of his friends stepped
up, and begging he would take the pains to stir
himself a little, his head fell to the ground. If the
story be not true the moral is. In the many times I
have been put to death by criticism, I have never felt
incommoded, till some kind friend insisted upon it,
and now that I can stand on a potato-hill in a circle
of twice the diameter of a rifleshot, and warn off all
trespassers, I intend to defy sympathy, and carry my
top as long as it will stay on — behead me as often as
you like, beyond my periphery.

Still, though

it is very pleasant now and then to pounce upon a bigger
bird screaming in the same chorus. Nothing impairs
the dignity of an author's reputation like a newspaper
wrangle, yet one bold literary vulture struck
down promptly and successfully serves as good a purpose
as the hawk nailed to the barn door. But I do
not live in the country to be pestered with resentments.
I do not well know how the thoughts of them came
under the bridge. I'll have a fence that shall keep
out such stray cattle, or there are no posts and rails in
philosophy.

There is a little mental phenomenon, dear Doctor,
which has happened to me of late so frequently, that
I must ask you if you are subject to it, in the hope
that your singular talent for analysis will give me the
“pourquoy.” I mean a sudden novelty in the impression
of very familiar objects, enjoyments, etc. For
example, did it ever strike you all at once that a tree
was a very magnificent production? After looking at
lakes and rivers for thirty years (more or less), have
you ever, some fine morning, caught sight of a very
familiar stream, and found yourself impressed with its
new and singular beauty? I do not know that the miracle
extends to human faces, at least in the same degree.
I am sure that my old coat is not rejuvenescent.
But it is true that from possessing the nil
admirari becoming to a “picked man of countries”
(acquired with some pains, I may say), I now catch
myself smiling with pleasure to think the river will not
all run by, that there will be another sunset to-morrow,
that my grain will ripen and nod when it is ripe,
and such like every-day marvels. Have we scales
that drop off our eyes at a “certain age?” Do our
senses renew as well as our bodies, only more capriciously?
Have we a chrysalis state, here below,
like that parvenu gentleman, the butterfly? Still
more interesting query — does this delicious novelty
attach, later in life, or ever, to objects of affection —
compensating for the ravages in the form, the dulness
of the senses, loss of grace, temper, and all outward
loveliness? I should like to get you over a flagon of
tokay on that subject.

There is a curious fact, I have learned for the first
time in this wild country, and it may be new to you,
that as the forest is cleared, new springs rise to the
surface of the ground, as if at the touch of the sunshine.
The settler knows that water as well as herbage
will start to the light, and as his axe lets it in upon
the black bosom of the wilderness, his cattle find
both pasture and drink, where, before, there had never
been either well-head or verdure. You have yourself
been, in your day, dear Doctor, “a warped slip of
wilderness,” and will see at once that there lies in this
ordinance of nature a beautiful analogy to certain moral
changes that come in upon the heels of more cultivated
and thoughtful manhood. Of the springs that
start up in the footsteps of thought and culture, the
sources are like those of forest springs, unsuspected
till they flow. There is no divining-rod, whose
dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at
thirty. We do not think that with experience we shall
have grown simple, that things we slight and overlook
will have become marvels, that our advancement in
worth will owe more to the cutting away of overgrowth
in tastes than to their acquisition or nurture.

I should have thought this change in myself scarce
worth so much blotting of good paper, but for its bearing
on a question that has hitherto given me no little
anxiety. The rivers flow on to the sea, increasing in
strength and glory to the last, but we have our pride
and fulness in youth, and dwindle and fall away toward
the grave. How I was to grow dull to the ambitions
and excitements which constituted my whole existence
— be content to lag and fall behind and forego
emulation in all possible pursuits — in short, how I
was to grow old contentedly and gracefully, has been
to me a somewhat painful puzzle. With what should
I be pleased? How should I fill the vacant halls
from which had fled merriment and fancy, and hope,
and desire?

You can scarce understand, dear Doctor, with what
pleasure I find this new spring in my path — the content
with which I admit the conviction, that without
effort or self-denial, the mind may slake its thirst, and

the heart be satisfied with but the waste of what lies
so near us. I have all my life seen men grow old,
tranquilly and content, but I did not think it possible
that I should. I took pleasure only in that which required
young blood to follow, and I felt that to look
backward for enjoyment, would be at best but a difficult
resignation.

Now let it be no prejudice to the sincerity of my
philosophy, if, as a corollary, I beg you to take a farm
on the Susquehannah, and let us grow old in company.
I should think Fate kinder than she passes for,
if I could draw you, and one or two others whom we
know and “love with knowledge,” to cluster about
this — certainly one of the loveliest spots in nature, and,
while the river glides by unchangingly, shape ourselves
to our changes with a helping sympathy.
Think of it, dear Doctor! Meantime I employ myself
in my rides, selecting situations on the river banks
which I think would be to yours and our friends'
liking; and in the autumn, when it is time to transplant,
I intend to suggest to the owners where trees
might be wanted in case they ever sold, so that you
will not lose even a season in your shrubbery, though
you delay your decision. Why should we not renew
Arcady? God bless you.