Being myself a member of the fraternity of writers, I suppose I ought toyield a joyful assent to such remarks. It is flattering to the self-loveof those who drive along Bellevue Avenue in a shabby hired vehicle to betold that they are personages of much more consequence than the heavycapitalist who swings by in a resplendent curricle, drawn by two matchedand matchless steeds, in a six-hundred dollar harness. Perhaps they are.But I advise young men who aspire to serve their generation effectivelynot to undervalue the importance of the gentleman in the curricle.
He worked but too steadily. He used to say that he loved to work as wellas he did to eat, and that sometimes he would not go outside of his gatefrom one Sunday to the next. He soon began to[Pg 87] make inventions andimprovements. His business rapidly increased, though occasionally he hadheavy losses and misfortunes.
Palestine In Love And In Warez
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The morning after he left Pittsburg, a lovely[Pg 121] April day, he called allthe negroes together on the deck of the boats, which were lashedtogether, and explained what he was going to do with them. He told themthey were no longer slaves, but free people, free as he was, free to goon down the river with him, and free to go ashore, just as they pleased.He afterwards described the scene. "The effect on them," he wrote, "waselectrical. They stared at me and at each other, as if doubting theaccuracy or reality of what they heard. In breathless silence they stoodbefore me, unable to utter a word, but with countenances beaming withexpression which no words could convey, and which no language can nowdescribe. As they began to see the truth of what they had heard, and torealize their situation, there came on a kind of hysterical, gigglinglaugh. After a pause of intense and unutterable emotion, bathed intears, and with tremulous voices, they gave vent to their gratitude, andimplored the blessings of God on me. When they had in some degreerecovered the command of themselves, Ralph said he had long known I wasopposed to holding black people as slaves, and thought it probable Iwould some time or other give my people their freedom, but that he didnot expect me to do it so soon; and moreover, he thought I ought not todo it till they had repaid me the expense I had been at in removing themfrom Virginia, and had improved my farm and 'gotten me well fixed inthat new country.' To[Pg 122] this all simultaneously expressed theirconcurrence, and their desire to remain with me, as my servants, untilthey had comfortably fixed me at my new home.
Promotion is sure to come to a lad of that spirit, and accordingly wesoon find him a clerk in a country store earning two hundred dollars ayear and his board, besides being head over ears in love with abeautiful girl. At first he did not know that he was in love; but, oneday, when he had been taking dinner with her family, and had talked withthe young lady herself after dinner a good while,[Pg 130] he came out of thehouse, and was amazed to discover that the sun was gone from the sky.
For many years we were in the habit of hearing, now and then, of acertain Gerrit Smith, a strange gentleman who lived near Lake Ontario,where he possessed whole townships of land, gave away vast quantities ofmoney, and was pretty sure to be found on the unpopular side of allquestions, beloved alike by those who agreed with him and those whodiffered from him. Every one that knew him spoke of the majestic beautyof his form and face, of his joyous demeanor, of the profuse hospitalityof his village abode, where he lived like a jovial old German baron, butwithout a baron's battle-axe and hunting spear.
He was indeed an interesting character. Without his enormous wealth hewould have been, perhaps, a benevolent, enterprising farmer, who wouldhave lived beloved and died lamented by all who knew him. But his wealthmade him remarkable; for the possession of wealth usually renders a mansteady-going and conservative. It is like ballast to a ship. The slowand difficult process by which honest wealth is usually acquired ispretty sure to[Pg 134] "take the nonsense out of a man," and give to all hisenterprises a practicable character. But here was a man whose wealth wasmore like the gas to a balloon than ballast to a ship; and he flung itaround with an ignorance of human nature most astonishing in a person soable and intelligent. There was room in the world for one Gerrit Smith,but not for two. If we had many such, benevolence itself would bebrought into odium, and we should reserve all our admiration for theclose-fisted.
His ancestors were Dutchmen, long settled in Rockland County, New York.Gerrit's father owned the farm upon which Major André was executed, andmight even have witnessed the tragedy, since he was twelve years old atthe time. Peter Smith was his name, and he had a touch of genius in hiscomposition, just enough to disturb and injure his life. At sixteen thisPeter Smith was a merchant's clerk in New York, with such a love of thestage that he performed minor parts at the old Park theatre, and it issaid could have made a good actor. He was a sensitive youth, easilymoved to tears, and exceedingly susceptible to religious impressions.While he was still a young man he went into the fur business with JohnJacob Astor, and tramped all over western and northern New York, buyingfurs from the Indians, and becoming intimately acquainted with thatmagnificent domain. The country bordering upon Lake Ontario abounded infur-bearing animals at that period, and both the[Pg 135] partners foretoldRochester, Oswego, and the other lake ports, before any white man hadbuilt a log hut on their site.
It was interesting to hear the old man relate how this taste for thetreasures of history was formed in his mind. His father, who served,during the revolution, in a New Jersey regiment, retired after the warto the city of New York, and at his house the Jersey veterans liked tomeet and talk over the incidents of the campaigns they had madetogether. Peter, as a boy, loved to hear them tell their stories, and,as he listened, the thought occurred to him one evening, Why should allthis be forgotten? Boy as he was, he began to write them down, under thetitle of "The Unwritten History of the War in New Jersey." He madeconsiderable progress in it, but unfortunately the manuscript was lost.The taste then formed grew with his growth and strengthened with hisstrength. At ten he left school forever, and went into a printingoffice, which has proved an excellent school to more than one valuableAmerican mind. He became an accomplished printer, and at twenty-two waselected president of the New York Typographical Society, an organizationwhich still exists.
He left the papers; but neither Marcy nor his successors ever found timeto examine that tenth volume, though on the first day of every officialyear the compiler called their attention to it. For seven years he was asuitor on behalf of his beloved tenth volume, and then the war occurredand all such matters were necessarily put aside. He was now seventy-oneyears of age, and his great desire was to dispose of his library in sucha way that its treasures would not be scattered abroad, and perhaps lostforever to the country. At length, Congress having sanctioned theenlargement of their own library, their librarian, Mr. Spofford, inducedthem to purchase the whole mass, just as it stood, for one hundredthousand dollars, and the collection now forms part of the Congressionallibrary.
In retirement he lived a quiet life in Boston, unmarried, fond of books,and practicing unusual frugality for a person in liberal circumstances.He had a singular abhorrence of luxury, waste, and ostentation. He oftensaid that the cause of more than half the bankruptcies was spending toomuch money. Nothing could induce him to accept personal service. He wasone of those men who wait upon themselves, light their own fire, reducetheir wants to the necessaries of civilized life, and all with a view toa more perfect independence. He[Pg 152] would take trouble to oblige others,but could not bear to put any one else to trouble. This love ofindependence was carried to excess by him, and was a cause of sorrow tohis relations and friends.
This excellent man, after a tranquil and happy life, died in 1849, agedseventy, and left considerable sums to benevolent societies. His estateproved to be of about two hundred thousand dollars value, which was thenconsidered very large, and he bestowed something more than half of itupon institutions for mitigating human woe. Ten thousand of it he gavefor the promotion of pleasure, and the evidences of his forethought andbenevolence are waving and rustling above my head as these lines arewritten. His memory is green in Newburyport. All the birds and all thelovers, all who walk and all who ride, the gay equestrian and the dustywayfarer, the old and the invalid who can only look out of the window,all owe his name a blessing.
Another of his lady customers used to say that he sold early peas andpotatoes in the morning with as much grace as he lectured before theLyceum in the evening. Nor was it the ladies alone who admired him. Theprincipal newspaper of the city, in recording his death in 1841, spokeof him as "an eminent citizen, an accomplished scholar, and[Pg 164] noble man,who carried with him to the grave the love of all who knew him."
The inventor was startled. He had never thought of an expedient sosimple and so obvious. A lover could not but be pleased at suchingenuity in his affianced bride; but it spoiled his invention! Hisperforated stamp did not allow of the insertion of more than one date.He succeeded in obviating this difficulty, but deemed it only fair tocommunicate the new idea to the chief of the stamp office. The resultwas that the government simply adopted the plan of putting a date uponall the stamps afterwards issued, and discarded Bessemer's fine schemeof perforation, which would have involved an expensive and troublesomechange of machinery and methods. But the worst of it was that theinventor lost his office, since his services were not needed. Nor did heever receive compensation for the service rendered.[Pg 210] 2ff7e9595c