Do something good for a whole lot of children

The Outlook for June 30, 1900 published the short story "Georgia's Ruling," written by a then-incarcerated O. Henry — whose real name was William Sydney Porter. The story focuses on a Land Survey Commissioner deciding on an important case (Henry himself had formerly work in a land surveyor's office). For generations, a tract of land belonged to a family which, over the years, became destitute and had to sell off acreage. A pair of "land-sharks" hope to acquire the land by claiming the original property was incorrectly measured.

The Commissioner, however, is a bit distracted. At the beginning of the story, O. Henry tells us the man has lost his wife and is left with a young daughter named Georgia. However, Georgia is sick. As she is dying, she tells her father:

"Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children... I mean poor children who haven't homes, and aren't loved and cared for as I am.... If I shouldn't get well, I'll leave them you — not give you, but just lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you can find time, wouldn't you do something to help them, if I ask you, papa?"

In pursuing the case, the Commissioner realizes the land in question is idyllic, but populated with many families, including "flocks" of children — all of whom would be left homeless if the ruling is in favor of the land-sharks.

In completing his research before making his judgment, the Commissioner visits the cartographer who is working on a new map of the area. The shape of the river has changed since his last map and the Commissioner wants to see it. The cartographer seems embarrassed before handing over the map: the river and the landscape form the outline of Georgia's face. The Commissioner turned the land-sharks away, saving the land for its occupants. Like the Commissioner had promised his daughter, he had done "something good for the children," and his decision was nicknamed "Georgia's Ruling."

English: a change in the things I loved

Thomas Dunn English was born in Philadelphia on June 29, 1819. He became a medical doctor, was bored by it, and became a lawyer, but was bored with that too. He eventually became an elected politician in New Jersey (where he died after the turn of the century). Through it all, he continuously wrote poetry, essays, novels, short stories, and edited various magazines and anthologies. He was most famous in his lifetime, however, for "Ben Bolt" (a fact reflected in the headline of his obituary). He wrote the poem when he was 24 years old and it was immediately set to music, making it even more popular.

Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?
     Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,
Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile
     And trembled with fear at your frown?
In the old churchyard in the valley, Ben Bolt,
     In a corner obscure and alone,
They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray,
     And Alice lies under the stone.

Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt,
     Which stood at the foot of the hill,
Together we've lain in the noonday shade,
     And listened to Appleton's mill:
The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt,
     The rafters have tumbled in,
And a quiet which crawls round the walls as you gaze,
     Has followed the olden din.

Do you mind the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,
     At the edge of the pathless wood,
And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs,
     Which nigh by the door-step stood?
The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,
     The tree you would seek in vain;
And where once the lords of the forests waved,
     Grows grass and the golden grain.

And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
     With the master so cruel and grim,
And the shadow nook in the running brook,
     Where the children went to swim?
Grass grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt,
     The spring of the brook is dry,
And of all the boys who were schoolmates then,
     There are only you and I.

There is a change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt,
     They have changed from the old to the new;
But I feel in the deeps of my spirit the truth,
     There never was change in you.
Twelvemonths twenty have past, Ben Bolt,
     Since first we were friends -- yet I hail
They presence a blessing, thy friendship a truth,
     Ben Bolt, of the salt-sea gale.

Guest post: Fanny Fern’s “The Model Husband”

Sketch of Fern by her daughter.
From collection of Smith College.

Fanny Fern's first published article was "The Model Husband," published June 28, 1851 in the Olive Branch, and it appears to be a light-hearted sketch of the typical nineteenth-century woman’s ideal spouse. Her inversion of gender roles drives the comic innuendo, with her model husband dutifully taking over baby feedings through the night and even into the dreaded wee hours of the morning "while Mrs. Smith curls her hair." Fern’s details of the irksome tasks of childcare would have rung true with most young mothers at the time. The model husband cheerfully absorbs the annoyances and inconveniences normally saddled upon women of the era, down to "the soft molasses ginger bread that is rubbed into his hair, coat, and vest during these happy conjugal seasons." The humor also derives from Fern's sense of what women really wanted from a husband: time to curl their hair and "receive the congratulations of the parish gossips."

Yet Fern craftily hides a deeper need that she would more explicitly demand in her later works, especially Ruth Hall, published four years later. In it, Fern sketches a profile of her model husband as ideal publisher. Significantly, his greatest virtue is respect of her economic autonomy by paying her a fair wage and not interfering with her writing or her relationships with her readers. What women wanted more than time to curl their hair and gossip is signaled in the first sentence of "The Model Husband": “His pocket-book is never empty when his wife calls for money.” In 1851, Fern was writing for the Olive Branch under a paltry wage and stringent editorial constraints compared to those of her later position under Robert Bonner of the New York Ledger. Thus she did not feel at liberty to dilate upon men’s economic domination of women in the public sphere until landing her position with Bonner years later. Her depiction of women’s wants in a man in this early column, therefore, tend to feed directly into the sexist stereotype of women as self-indulgent creatures with no desire to produce outside of the domestic sphere.

Although "The Model Husband" appears radical for the time, it only vaguely hints at the bold revolutionary battle Fern would wage in Ruth Hall for women’s right to become professionals in an otherwise male-dominated public market. In Ruth Hall, her concern is to revise the publisher’s business ethic to allow room for well-paid professional female authors. Such a pioneering ideological stand would have been instantly censored in the Olive Branch. Yet Fern does manage in "The Model Husband" to subvert the dominant ideology of the Cult of True Womanhood, especially according to Catharine Beecher’s Treatise on Domestic Economy (1846). Specifically, she inverts True Womanhood’s demand that women submissively self-sacrifice out of duty to their families by instead indulging middle class women’s forbidden urges—all of which are harmless and perfectly reasonable—that their conventional roles systematically deny.

In crafting "The Model Husband," Fern thus expresses her complaints about the inadequacy of typical accepted male roles in the positive light of female fantasy rather than the polemic condemnations and diatribes she would frequently vent in her later Ledger columns. In Ruth Hall, she would savage former stingy and abusive employers like so many bad ex-husbands. The dark underside of "The Model Husband" is that Fern herself endured perhaps the worst marital nightmare imaginable. During her brief torturous second marriage, her husband Samuel Farrington chronically raped her, driving her to seek shelter in a hotel. Ironically, Fern had originally gravitated to him to assuage her financial needs since he was a model husband whose "pocket-book is never empty." The seeming panacea of the wealthy husband freely sharing his cash with his wife came at a great cost to Fern personally, and she would finally tell the full story of this aborted marriage in her second novel, Rose Clark. Thus her tone in "The Model Husband" remains genial if only to mask the lion she would unleash in her later works.

*David Dowling teaches in the English Department of the University of Iowa. He is the author of several books on 19th century writers, including Chasing the White Whale: The Moby-Dick Marathon; or, What Melville Means Today (University of Iowa Press, 2010) and the forthcoming Literary Partnerships and the Marketplace: Writers and Mentors in Nineteenth-Century America (to be released Fall 2011, Louisiana State University Press).

Hearn: Intangible and volatile as perfume

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on June 27, 1850 on an island in Greece that inspired his middle name. His father was stationed throughout the British West Indies and often away from the family before moving them to Dublin, Ireland in 1852. Amid family trouble during his boyhood, Hearn suffered an accident that left him partially blind in his left eye (that eye also became permanently enlarged).

At age 19, the future writer moved to the United States to become a journalist, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio followed by New Orleans, Louisiana. There, he married a black woman named Mattie Foley (not only scandalous but also illegal at the time). Hearn described New Orleans as a snapshot of its former glory, writing of it in terms of decay and disuse:

There is much crumbling of wood-work, looseness of jointing, ulcerous exposure of the brick skeleton where plaster has rotted away in patches from piazza pillars and from the ribs of archways. Grass struggles up between the flagging; microscopic fungi patch the wall surfaces with sickly green. The semitropical forces of nature in the South are mighty to destroy the work of man. Dismally romantic... This ruin has a veritable classic dignity — a melancholy that is antique.

Ultimately, he settled in Japan, where he remarried and took the name Koizumi Yakumo. The trip inspired his book, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, in 1894. The book begins with his justification for writing it:

"Do not fail to write down your first impressions as soon as possible," said a kind English professor whom I had the pleasure of meeting soon after my arrival in Japan: "they are evanescent, you know; they will never come to you again, once they have faded out; and yet of all the strange sensations you may receive in this country you will feel none so charming as these." ...I neglected the friendly advice, in spite of all resolves to obey it: I could not, in those first weeks, resign myself to remain indoors and write, while there was yet so much to see and hear and feel in the sun-steeped ways of the wonderful Japanese city. Still, even could I revive all the lost sensations of those first experiences, I doubt if I could express and fix them in words. The first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume.

There is a glory, even in his loss

June 25, 1876 was the first day of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Montana), when combined forces of Native Americans fought against the 7th Cavalry Regiment led by George Armstrong Custer. It did not end well for Custer and his troops and the incident has been nicknamed "Custer's Last Stand." It inspired several poetic tributes, including "Custer" by poet, critic and copyright advocate Edmund Clarence Stedman:

   What! shall that sudden blade
      Leap out no more?
   No more thy hand be laid
Upon the sword-hilt smiting sore?
      O for another such
   The charger's rein to clutch, —
One equal voice to summon victory.
   Sounding thy battle-cry,
Brave darling of the soldiers' choice!
   Would there were one more voice!

      O gallant charge, too bold!
      O fierce, imperious greed
To pierce the clouds that in their darkness hold
   Slaughter of man and steed!
      Now, stark and cold.
   Among thy fallen braves thou liest,
   And even with thy blood defiest
      The wolfish foe:
   But ah, thou liest low,
And all our birthday song is hushed indeed!

   Young lion of the plain,
   Thou of the tawny mane!
Hotly the soldiers' hearts shall beat.
   Their mouths thy death repeat.
Their vengeance seek the trail again
   Where thy red doomsmen be;
But on the charge no more shall stream
Thy hair, — no more thy sabre gleam, —
   No more ring out thy battle-shout.
      Thy cry of victory!

   Not when a hero falls
   The sound a world appalls:
   For while we plant his cross
There is a glory, even in the loss:
   But when some craven heart
   From honor dares to part,
Then, then, the groan, the blanching cheek,
   And men in whispers speak.
Nor kith nor country dare reclaim
   From the black depths his name.

   Thou, wild young warrior, rest.
By all the prairie winds caressed!
   Swift was thy dying pang;
   Even as the war-cry rang
Thy deathless spirit mounted high
   And sought Columbia's sky: —
There, to the northward far,
   Shines a new star,
And from it blazes down
      The light of thy renown!

Yours truly, F. O. C. Darley

It is understandable that Felix Octavius Carr Darley shortened his signature to "F. O. C. Darley." Born on June 23, 1822 in Philadelphia, he became associated with most of the major names of early American literature as an illustrator. His work was so widely distributed and respected, in fact, that some have called him the "Father of American Illustration."

As a boy, young Felix showed aspirations in art, which his parents tried to dissuade him of by placing him in a mercantile firm. Their attempt was unsuccessful, and he continued sketching until a friend suggested he submit his art to Philadelphia's Saturday Museum. In 1843, he illustrated one of the highest-circulating new short stories of the year, "The Gold-Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe. Around the same time, Poe also hired Darley to be the exclusive illustrator for his planned journal The Stylus (which never came to be). Darley's first big break, however, came in 1848, when he was hired to illustrate the works of Washington Irving:

"Ichabod's Chase," from Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

From there, he illustrated Sylvester Judd's novel Margaret, as well as works by James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Gilmore Simms, Fanny Osgood, and American editions of Charles Dickens. In 1868, Darley published a book of his own, Sketches Abroad with Pen and Pencil, which he also illustrated (he called it an "extremely mild literary effort").

From an 1870s edition of The Scarlet Letter

Mark Twain in Hawaii: a pretty good time

Samuel L. Clemens had only been using the name "Mark Twain" for a short time when he became nationally-recognized as a writer. He still was more of a journalist than a fiction writer, however, and it was as a reporter for the Sacramento Union that he traveled to Hawaii. After touring the big island, Clemens wrote to his mother and sister from Honolulu on June 21, 1866:

I have just got back from a hard trip through the Island of Hawaii... I staid at the volcano about a week and witnessed the greatest eruption that has occurred for years. I lived well there... I had a pretty good time.

Despite his good time, Clemens also came down with a case of the mumps, though he did not let it hinder his trip. He spent another three weeks in Hawaii before making the return trip to California. He also met with some other important Americans who were in town, including the U.S. Minister to China, Anson Burlingame. Burlingame was excited to meet Clemens, and immediately sent for his son who, Clemens wrote, claimed "he could tell that frog story of mine as well as anybody. I told him I was glad to hear it for I never tried to tell it myself without making a botch of it."

Clemens's experience in the Sandwich Islands inspired a lecture he presented later that year — a lecture which was, unfortunately, not accompanied by fireworks.

Birth of Charles W. Chesnutt

Though he was born in Cleveland, Ohio on June 20, 1858, Charles W. Chesnutt was raised in his parents' home town. His parents were free blacks (both were half-white) from Fayetteville, North Carolina, where his father was a grocer. After continuing his education elsewhere in the state, Chesnutt returned to teach there (he soon became the principal). There, he married and had two children. He soon recognized, however, that he was not easily categorized, lamenting in early 1881 that he was "neither fish, flesh, nor fowl," that he was not truly white nor truly black, nor even mulatto. "Too 'stuck up' for the colored folks, and, of course, not recognized by the whites," he wrote.

Chesnutt was determined to make a name for himself: "I want fame; I want money; I want to raise my children in a different rank of life from that I sprang from." Optimistically, he determined that "literature pays the successful." He moved to New York City for a short time before raising the money to move his family back to Ohio. He began as a court reporter before publishing his first literary work in 1885, "Uncle Peter's House." Like Chesnutt himself, the narrator of the short story is determined to rise in the world.

Ever since abolition left Southern blacks "free" but "destitute," Peter has believed his success will be measured by owning "a two-story white house, with green blinds," much like the master's house on the North Carolina plantation where he was born. After emancipation, Chesnutt writes, "the freed people learned to assume the burdens as well as enjoy the sweets of liberty." After difficulty with procuring land, incurring debt, being taken advantage of by whites, and legal troubles, Peter's dream almost comes true — until a gang of racists burns down the unfinished house, claiming blacks don't deserve two-story homes. In rebuilding, the now-elderly Peter falls off the roof and lies dying. The family calls for a black priest:

"Elder," said Peter faintly to the preacher, "I did n' finish dat house."

"My brudder," said the preacher, "you shall have a better house on de udder sho'."

"Yas, bless de Lo'd," murmured the old man, "a house not made with hands, but etarnal in de hebbens." Then, after a pause, to his younger son, "Primus, it's de las' thing I kin ax yer to do; take care o' yer po' ole mammy, and finish dat house, dat de good Lo'd didn' 'low me to finish."

Guest post: Marriage of the Piatts

On June 18, 1861, Sarah Morgan Bryan married John James Piatt. In the early months of the Civil War, the marriage of the daughter of Kentucky slaveholders to a young man from Indiana seems the ultimate example of opposites attracting. But the two twenty-five year olds shared poetic talent and ambition (both had recently begun their published careers: John with his debut collection, Poems of Two Friends, co-authored with William Dean Howells; and Sarah with poems such as “Waiting at the Party,” in the Louisville Journal) and three years later released a co-authored collection, The Nests at Washington and Other Poems (1864).

For Sarah, co-authoring her first collection with her husband could be said to foreshadow much of her career: she would come to be known largely for poems about and for children, such as those collected in Poems in Company with Children (1877), A Book About Baby (1880), and Child’s-World Ballads (1887). Even when she focused on more mature themes, as in her first solo collection A Woman’s Poems (1871), she often did so through the dual and interconnected lenses of courtship and motherhood: the book’s first and third poems, “The Fancy Ball” and “Her Metaphors,” describe young women’s social aspirations; its second and fourth, “After Wings” and “The Little Stockings,” address a mother’s perspective on her children’s lives; and the balance continues throughout.

Yet simply describing these poems’ topics does a great injustice to Piatt and her significance to American poetic and literary history. Her dense, layered, multivocal style differentiates her from any contemporary poets, and makes even the most seemingly straightforward topics rich and resonant: “After Her First Party” views a teenage girl’s first social experience through the voices, perspectives, and identities of both the girl and her mother, lending humor and wisdom to both sides of this multi-generational dialogue; “A Pique at Parting” begins with that most clichéd of courtship subjects, one woman’s jealousy of another’s relationship with her suitor, and over five stream-of-consciousness stanzas extends its speaker’s sharp and evolving perspective to a striking range of themes. Her best poem, “The Palace Burner,” uses an ordinary domestic moment—a mother and her son looking at some newspaper images—to create one of American literature’s most deep and compelling examinations of class and gender, submission and rebellion, the layers of any individual’s identity and how we do and do not communicate them to our families, our communities, and even ourselves.

*Ben Railton is Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of American Studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. He serves as President of the New England American Studies Association and maintains the AmericanStudies blog. His most recent book, Redefining American Identity, was published by Macmillan in March 2011.

Harte: Tossed them on the flowing sea

The June 17, 1860 issue of the Golden Era included the poem "Question" by Bret Harte:

When I meet her little figure,
Simple, guileless little figure,
With its graceful crest that tosses
          Up and down the flowing sea,
Does she dream that all above her —
All around her—still must love her,
Just as I do? Does she ever
          Look at me?

When the sunset's flush is on her,
Do her fancies ever wander,
Do her girlish fancies ever
          Mingle with the flowing sea?
In her tender meditation,
In her mystic speculation,
Is there any lonely figure
          Just like me?

When she took the flowers I sent her —
Sent in secret—sent in longing;
And all, all, except the daisy,
          Tossed them on the flowing sea;
When she placed that happy flower
On her bosom's trembling dower,
Now I wonder did she ever
          Think of me?

Hush, my heart. She's coming, coming;
Loud above the city's humming,
I can hear her footfall's beating,
          With the ever flowing sea.
Rosy red—a flush is on her,
As she passes—have I won her?
Eros! help me — I am sinking
          In the ever flowing sea.

"Francis Brett Hart" (as he was legally named) contributed eleven poems and 74 prose works in the Golden Era within about twelve months. Many of these contributions were of little merit, including his several love poems like the one above. During this time, however, he experimented with various pseudonyms and nom de plumes, including "The Bohemian," before settling on the byline "Bret Harte."

Booth: Our thoughts pursue his track

In 1880, about 13 years before his death, Edwin Booth traveled to Europe. The well-known and respected actor was honored by his friends with a farewell breakfast in New York on June 15, 1880. Among his friends was William Winter, Booth's future biographer, who offered a poetic tribute:

His barque will fade, in mist and night,
   Across the dim sea-line,
And coldly on our aching sight
   The solemn stars will shine —
All, all in mournful silence, save
   For ocean's distant roar —
Heard where the slow, regretful wave
   Sobs on the lonely shore.

But, oh, while, winged with love and prayer,
   Our thoughts pursue his track,
What glorious sights the midnight air
   Will proudly waft us back!
What golden words will nutter down
   From many a peak of fame,
What glittering shapes of old renown
   That cluster round his name!

...But — best of all! will softly rise
   His form of manly grace —
The noble brow, the honest eyes,
   The sweetly patient face,
The loving heart, the stately mind
   That, conquering every ill,
Through seas of trouble cast behind,
   Was grandly steadfast still!

Though skies might gloom and tempest rave,
   Though friends and hopes might fall,
His constant spirit, simply brave;
   Would meet and suffer all —
Would calmly smile at fortune's frown,
   Supreme o'er gain or loss;
And he the worthiest wears the crown
   That gently bore the cross!

...Farewell ! nor mist, nor flying cloud,
   Nor night can ever dim
The wreath of honours, pure and proud,
   Our hearts have twined for him!
But bells of memory still shall chime,
   And violets star the sod,
Till our last broken wave of time
   Dies on the shores of God.

Bicentennial of Harriet Beecher Stowe

200 years ago, on June 14, 1811, Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. Later Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, she would earn fame as the author of the highest-selling novel of the century, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

On her 70th birthday, a celebration was held in her honor in the form of a garden party. She gave a short speech and concluded: "Let us never doubt. Everything that ought to happen is going to happen."

In her centennial year, 1911, her son and grandson published what they termed a memoir; they would not use the term "biography." As they wrote in their preface: " It is rather the story of a real character; telling, not so much what she did as what she was, and how she became what she was." They also claimed the town of her birth inspired her lifelong love of nature. As Stowe wrote:

My earliest recollections of Litchfield are those of its beautiful scenery, which impressed and formed my mind long before I had words to give names to my emotions, or could analyze my mental processes. To the west of us rose a smoothbosomed hill, called Prospect Hill; and many a pensive, wondering hour have I sat at our playroom window, watching the glory of the wonderful sunsets that used to burn themselves out amid voluminous wreathings or castellated turrets of clouds proper to a mountainous region.

On the east of us lay another upland, called Chestnut Hills, whose sides were wooded with a rich growth of forest trees, whose change of tint and verdure, from the first misty tints of spring green through the deepening hues of summer into the rainbow glories of autumn, was a subject of constant remark and of pensive contemplation to us children. We heard them spoken of by older people and pointed out to visitors, and came to take pride in them as a sort of birthright.

She died close to home in Hartford, Connecticut about two weeks after her 85th birthday.

Such heart-breaking loveliness

After the famous actor Edwin Booth's death, he was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the rest of his family, including his infamous brother, were buried in Baltimore). Poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich served as a pallbearer for the funeral, and wrote of the experience to fellow writer William Winter on June 12, 1893.

Just as Edwin was laid in the grave, among the fragrant pine-boughs which lined it, and softened its cruelty, the sun went down. I never saw anything of such heart-breaking loveliness as this scene. There in the tender afterglow two or three hundred men and women stood silent with bowed heads. A single bird, in a nest hidden somewhere near by twittered from time to time. The soft June air, blowing across the upland, brought with it the scent of syringa blossoms from the slope below. Overhead and among the trees the twilight was gathering. "Good night, sweet Prince!" I said, under my breath.

Aldrich admitted in his account of the experience that he would have fell to the grass-covered ground and cried — "if there had not been a crowd of people."

Two years earlier, a new portrait of Booth was put on display. Aldrich was moved enough by the image to write a poem about it:

That face which no man ever saw
And from his memory banished quite,
With eyes in which are Hamlet's awe
And Cardinal Richelieu's subtle light
Looks from this frame. A master's hand
Has set the master-player here,
In the fair temple that he planned
Not for himself. To us most dear
This image of him!" It was thus
He looked; such pallor touched his cheek;
With that same grace he greeted us —
Nay, 't is the man, could it but speak!"
Sad words that shall be said some day —
Far fall the day! O cruel Time,
Whose breath sweeps mortal things away,
Spare long this image of his prime,
That others standing in the place
Where, save as ghosts, we come no more,
May know what sweet majestic face
The gentle Prince of Players wore!

Freneau: So just, so virtuous is your cause

On June 11, 1775, George Washington wrote to British General Thomas Gage condemning the treatment of colonial officers taken prisoner in the early part of the American Revolution. "The officers engaged in the cause of liberty and their country, who by fortune of war had fallen into your hands," Washington wrote, "have been thrown indiscriminately into a common gaol appropriate for felons." In response, he threatened to treat his own prisoners in the same manner. The next day, Gage announced that the colonies were no longer under the protection of the King of England due to "incendiaries and traitors" who had perpetrated "crimes" against the authority of the monarchy.

Philip Freneau, one of the earliest American poets, responded by writing "To the Americans." The poem urged his countrymen to accept their new label as "rebels" and criminals:

  Rebels you are—the British champion cries—
Truth, stand thou forth!—and tell the wretch, He lies:—
Rebels!—and see this mock imperial lord
Already threats these rebels with the cord.
  The hour draws nigh, the glass is almost run,
When truth will shine, and ruffians be undone;
When this base miscreant will forbear to sneer,
And curse his taunts and bitter insults here.
  If to controul the cunning of a knave,
Freedom respect, and scorn the name of slave;
If to protest against a tyrant's laws,
And arm for vengeance in a righteous cause,
Be deemed Rebellion—'tis a harmless thing:
This bug-bear name, like death, has lost its sting.
Americans! at freedom's fane adore!
But trust to Britain, and her flag, no more;
The generous genius of their isle has fled,
And left a mere impostor in his stead.
  If conquered, rebels (their Scotch records show),
Receive no mercy from the parent foe;
Nay, even the grave, that friendly haunt of peace,
(Where Nature gives the woes of man to cease,)
Vengeance will search—and buried corpses there
Be raised, to feast the vultures of the air—
Be hanged on gibbets, such a war they wage—
Such are the devils that swell our souls with rage!
  If Britain conquers, help us, heaven, to fly:
Lend us your wings, ye ravens of the sky;—
If Britain conquers—we exist no more;
These lands will redden with their children's gore,
Who, turned to slaves, their fruitless toils will moan,
Toils in these fields that once they called their own!
  To arms! to arms! and let the murdering sword
Decide who best deserves the hangman's cord:
Nor think the hills of Canada too bleak
When desperate Freedom is the prize you seek;
For that, the call of honour bids you go
O'er frozen lakes and mountains wrapt in snow:
No toils should daunt the nervous and the bold,
They scorn all heat or wave-congealing cold.
  Haste!—to your tents in iron fetters bring
These slaves, that serve a tyrant and a king;
So just, so virtuous is your cause, I say,
Hell must prevail if Britain gains the day.

Dunbar: a martyr's lifeless clay

The Dayton Herald in Ohio published "Our Martyred Soldiers" on June 8, 1888, a poem written by a 16-year old named Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was Dunbar's first widely-circulated poem. His previous works were confined to a school newspaper — the beginning of a short but celebrated career. "Our Martyred Soldiers" was about Union soldiers during the Civil War but really was an homage to "colored" soldiers during that conflict — including the poet's father. Joshua Dunbar had escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. After making his way to Canada, he returned specifically to fight with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, later the 5th Cavalry.

In homes all green, but cold in death,
Robbed of the blessed boon of breath—
Resting in peace from field and fray,
Our martyred soldiers sleeping lay.

Beneath the dew, the rain, the snow,
They heed no more the bloody foe,
Their sleep is calm, to them alone
'Tis giv'n to lie without a moan.

The sun may shine in all his might—
They know no day, they know no night,
But wait a still more lasting ray,
The coming of eternal day.

No longer marches break their rest,
Or passioned hate thrills through the breast,
They lie all clothed in calm repose,
All safe from shots of lurking foes.

The grave's a sacred place where none
Of earth may touch the sleeping one;
Where silence reigns, enthroned, sedate,
An angel guarding heaven's gate.

The wind may blow, the hail may fall,
But at the tomb is silence all;
Man finds no nobler place to pray,
Then o'er a martyr's lifeless clay.

Sleep on, ye soldiers, men of God,
A nation's tears bedew the sod;
'Tis but a short, short time till ye
Shall through the shining portals flee.

And when this memory lost shall be,
We turn, oh Father, God, to thee!
Oh find in heaven some nobler thing
Then martyrs of which men can sing.

*A great resource for this entry was Hope & Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (2009), edited by Martin H. Blatt, Thomas J. Brown, and Donald Yacovone.

Hoffman: let no more thy music flow!

Though he was promoted as one of the greatest of American writers in the 1840s, Charles Fenno Hoffman died in obscurity on June 7, 1884. Left with only one leg after a childhood accident, the New Yorker left a career as a lawyer to become a poet, novelist, travel writer, and magazine editor. His mental stability, however, was questioned.

After a short hospitalization, he accepted a government job in Washington, D.C. Within months, he was permanently institutionalized, beginning in 1849. The last 35 years of his life were spent in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the state asylum (his doctors apparently forced him to give up literary interests). It was in that hospital that he died at the age of 78.

His poem "No More—No More":

No more—no more of song to-night;
Oh, let no more thy music flow!
Those notes that once could wake delight,
Come o'er me like a spirit-blight,
A breathing of the faded past,
Whose freshest hopes to earth were cast
    Long, long ago.

A livelier strain! nay, play, instead,
That movement wild and low,
That chanting for the early dead
Which best beseems spring's blossoms fled,
A requiem for each tender ray
That from life's morning stole away-
    Long, long ago.

Birth of Annie Adams Fields

Annie Adams was born on June 6, 1834, the sixth of seven children. Years later, in 1854, she married publisher James T. Fields and the couple became the center of Boston's literary circle. She famously served as hostess at soirees that included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Celia Thaxter, and others. She was also a literary figure in her own right as a poet and an early biographer of nearly every author she befriended.

Mrs. Fields outlived her famous husband by over 30 years and, in that time, became the housemate of Sarah Orne Jewett. The two split their time between Boston and Maine. One of her many books, published shortly before her husband's death, was a collection of poetry, Under the Olive, which included the poem "Not by will, and not in striving":

Not by will and not in striving
Came the voices to the singer, —
Came the strange lamp of the dawning,—
Nor the tears that fell at sundown;
Not in framing tuneful measures,
Nor because of light or darkness,
Nor of silence nor of noises,
Leaped the music that subdued him.
Lost in some forgotten dream-land,
Moving over fields unplanted,
Waving golden sheaves of glory,
Such as spring beside the fountains
Of the lands beyond Kambala, —
Thus his song would come unto him,
Find the singer, who, obedient,
Labored on the dusty highway,
Waiting till the voice should call him
To the lofty steeps of song-land,
Where death is not nor to-morrow.

No stranger in the crowd could doubt

The June 3, 1888 issue of The San Francisco Examiner (owned by William Randolph Hearst) included a poem about baseball signed by "Phin." It was Phin's last contribution to the publication. The author was, in fact, Harvard Lampoon alum Ernest Lawrence Thayer (though the truth wasn't known for many years) and the poem, "Casey at the Bat," remains the most famous poem about baseball. Here it is in its original form:

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that—
We'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Johnnie [sic] safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped—
"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

*I found an impressive source for this post in the form of Martin Gardner's The Annotated Casey at the Bat: A Collection of Ballads About the Mighty Casey (1995).

Brown: felicity unspeakable!

On June 2, 1798, the Weekly Magazine printed the last of Charles Brockden Brown's so-called "Henrietta Letters" (others remained unpublished in Brown's lifetime). The magazine's editor printed the letters as a true correspondence between its author and "Henrietta G." Though critics soon deemed the letters were fiction, their veracity remains unclear. If real, evidence suggests Brown's correspondent was Henrietta Chew, the daughter of prominent Philadelphia lawyer/judge Benjamin Chew. Yet, even if based on a true relationship, the interchanges almost certainly never truly occurred.

Featuring a persona Brown will refer to as "Rhapsodist," the letters are romantically-charged. He tells Henrietta that he speaks from the heart and imagines himself joining her, otherwise alone, in her bedroom: "Would my presence profane the chamber? I yet feel the warmth of her embraces. They have made me miserable. To what a precipice have they conducted me? ...Encircled by those arms and leaning on that bosom — felicity unspeakable!" He then pleads, "Be my guide, my genius, my spouse." In one of Henrietta's responses, she writes, "Thou saucy and impetuous creature! Dost thou think thou has a property in my lips or that I will suffer such perplexing and incessant interruption from thy kisses? In good sooth I will act with more discretion for the future." If that isn't sexually suggestive enough, in another letter, "C.B.B." (as his character is signed) imagines himself hiding in her closet and he sees her take off her night dress. As he observes her naked body:

How suitably adapted to the purpose of love! to shroud without obscuring your resplendent beauties, to shade without concealing that angelic bosom. Could my eyes be otherwise than intoxicated by the sight[?] ...What effect... must all these circumstances have unavoidably produced on a rambling and unsanctified imagination like mine? Was it possible for my glance to have been less passionate and eager[?]

Brown would have been 16 years old when he met the slightly older Henrietta Chew; the letters were published when he was 28. By the end of the year, his writing style had matured and he published his novel Wieland, or the Transformation, one of the earliest Gothic novels in the United States.

*For information in this post, I turned to Peter Kafer's Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic (2004).