 CHAPTER XII. A Civility Too Long Neglected The foregoing reminds me of something. As the individualities, I would mainly portray have certainly been slighted by folks who make pictures, volumes, poems, out of them, as a faint testimonial of my own gratitude for many hours of peace and comfort in half-sickness, and not by any means, sure, but they will somehow get wind of the compliment. I hear by dedicate the last half of these specimen days to the bees, blackbirds, dragonflies, pond turtles, mule-lanes, tansy peppermint, moths, great and little, some splendid fellows, mosquitoes, butterflies, wasps and hornets, cat birds, and all other birds, glowworms, swarming millions of them indescribably strange and beautiful at night over the pond and creek, watersnakes, crows, millers, cedars, tulips trees, and all other trees, and to the spots and memories of those days and the creek, Delaware River Days and Nights, April 5th, 1879. With the return of spring to the skies, airs, waters of the Delaware return the seagulls. I never tire of watching their broad and easy flight in spirals, or as they oscillate with slow, unflapping wings, or look down with curved beak, or dipping to the water after food. The crowds, plenty enough all through the winter, have vanished with the ice, not one of them now to be seen. The steamboats have again come forth, bustling up, handsome, freshly painted, for summer work. The Columbia, the Edwin Forest, the Republic not yet out, the Raybold, Nelly White, the Twilight, the Ariel, the Warner, the Perry, the Taggart, the Jersey Blue, even the hokey old Trenton, not forgetting those saucy little bullpups of the current, the steam tugs. But let me bunch and catalogue the affair, the river itself, all the way from the sea, Cape Island on one side and handlope in light on the other, up to the broad bay north, and so to Philadelphia, and on further to Trenton. The sights I am most familiar with, as I live a good part of the time in Camden, I view matters from that outlook. The great, arrogant, black, full-frated streamers, inward or outward bound, the ample width, here between the two cities, intersected by Windmill Island, an occasional man of war, sometimes a foreigner, at anchor, with her guns and portholes, and the boats, and the brown-faced sailors, and the regular oar strokes, and the gay crowd of visiting day, the frequent large and handsome three-masted schooners, a favorite style of marine-built, hear-bout of late years. Some of them new and very jaunty, with their white-gray sails and yellow pine spars, the sloops dashing along in a fair I see one now coming up on the broad canvas, her gaff top-sail shining in the sun, high and picturesque, with a thing of beauty amid the sky and waters, the crowded wharf slips along the city, the flags of different nationalities, the sturdy English crusts on its ground of blood, the French tricolor, the banner of the great north German empire, and the Italian and the Spanish colors. Sometimes, of an afternoon, the whole scene enlivened by a fleet of yachts, in a half-come, lazily returning from a race down at Gloucester, the neat, ray-kish, revenue-steamer Hamilton in midstream, with her perpendicular stripes flaunting aft, and turning the eyes north, the long ribbons of fleecy-white steam, or dingy black smoke, stretching far, fan-shaped, slanting diagonally across from the Kensington or Richmond shores, in the west-by-south west wind, scenes on ferry and river, last winter's nights. Then, the Camden ferry, what acceleration change people, business, by day, what soothing, silent, wondrous hours at night, crossing on the boat, most all to myself, pacing the deck, alone, forward, or aft, what communion with the waters, the air, the exquisite chausqueau, the sky and stars, that speak no word, nothing to the intellect, yet so eloquent, so communicative to the soul, and the ferrymen, little they know how much they have been to me, day and night, how many spells of listlessness, ennui, debility, day and their hardy ways have dispelled, and the pilots, captain's hand, Walton and Giberson, by day, and captain Olive at night, Eugene Crosby, with his strong young arm so often supporting, circling, convoying me over the gaps of the bridge, through impediments, safely aboard. Indeed, all my ferry-friends, captain Frazee, the superintendent, Lindell, Heskey, Fred Roche, Price, Watson, and the Dawson Moore, the ferry itself, with its queer scenes, sometimes, children suddenly born, in the waiting houses, a natural fact, and more than once, sometimes, a masquerade party, going over at night, with a band of music, dancing and whirling like mad on the broad deck, in their fantastic dresses, sometimes, the astronomer, Mr. Whittle, who posts me up in point about the stars by a living lesson, day and then, and answering every question, sometimes, a prolific family group, eight, nine, ten, even twelve, yesterday, as I crossed, a mother, father, and eight children, waiting in the ferry-house, bound westward, somewhere. I have mentioned the crowds. I always watch them from the boats. They play quite a part in the winter scenes on the river, by day. Their black splashes are seen in relief against the snow and ice everywhere, at that season, sometimes flying and flapping, sometimes, on little or larger cakes, selling up or down the stream. One day, the river was mostly clear, only a single long ridge of broken ice making a narrow stripe by itself, running along down the current for over a mile, quite rapidly. On this white stripe, the crowds were congregated, hundreds of them, a funny procession, half-murning was the comment of someone. Then, the reception room, four passengers waiting. Life illustrated thoroughly. Take a March picture I jotted there two or three weeks since. Afternoon, about three-and-a-half o'clock, it begins to snow. There has been a matinee performance at the theatre. From four-and-a-half to five comes a stream of homeward bound ladies. I never knew the spacious room to present a gayer, more lively scene. Handsome, well-dressed Jersey women and girls, scores of them, streaming in for nearly an hour, the bright eyes and glowing faces, coming in from the air, a sprinkling of snow on bonnets or dresses as they enter. The five or ten minutes waiting, the chatting and laughing, women can have capital times among themselves with plenty of wit, lunches, jovial abandon. Lizzie, the pleasant mannered waiting-room women, for sound, the bell taps and streamed signals of departing boats with the rhythmic break and undertone, the domestic pictures, mothers with beavers of daughters, a charming sight, children, countrymen, the railroad men in their blue clothes and caps, all the various characters of city and country represented or suggested. Then outside, some belated passenger frantically running, jumping after the boat. Toward six o'clock, the human stream gradually thickening, now a pressure of vehicles, drays, piled railroad crates, now a drove of cattle, making quite an excitement, the drovers with heavy sticks belaboring the streaming sights of the frightened brutes. Inside the reception room, business bargains, flirting, left making, it clears the small, proposals, pleasant, sober-faced fill coming in with his burden of afternoon papers, or Joe, or Charlie, who jumped in the dock a last week and saved a stout lady from drowning to replenish the stove and clearing it with long crowbar poker. Besides all this comedy-human, the river affords nutriment to a higher order. Here have some of my memoranda of the past winter, just as penciled down on the spot. A January night, fine trips across the wide Delaware to-night, tight, pretty high, and a strong ebb. River, a little after eight, full of ice, mostly broken, but some large cakes making our strong-timbered steamboat humming quiver as she strikes them. In the clear moonlight they spread, strange, unearthly, silvery, faintly glistening, as far as I can see, bumping, crumbling, sometimes hessing like a thousand snakes, the tide procession, as we went with or through it, affording a grand undertone in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendor indescribable, yet something haughty, almost supercilious in the night. Never did I realize more latent sentiment, almost passion in those silent, interminable stars up there. One can understand, such a night, why, from the days of the furrows or job, the dome of heaven sprinkled with planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism of human pride, glory, ambition. Another winter night. I don't know anything more filling than to be on the wide firm deck of a powerful boat, a clear, cool, extra moonlight night, crushing proudly and resistlessly through this thick, marbly, glistening ice. The whole river is now spread with it, some immense cakes. There is such weirdness about the scene, partly the quality of the light, with its tinge of blue, the lunar twilight, only the large stars holding their own in the radiance of the moon. Temperature sharp, comfortable for motion, dry, full of oxygen, but the sense of power, the steady, scornful, imperious urge of our strong new engine as she plows her way through the big and little cakes. Another, for two hours, I crossed and recrossed merely for pleasure, for still excitement. Both sky and river went through several changes. The first, for a while, held two vast fan-shaped echelons of light clouds, through which the moon waited, now radiating, carrying with her an aureole of tawny, transparent brown, and now flooding the whole vast with clear vapory light green, through which, as though an illuminated veil, she moved with measured womanly motion. Then, another trip, the heavens would be absolutely clear, and Luna, in all her effulgence, the big dipper in the north, with the double star in the handle much planer than common. Then, the sheeny track of light in the water, dancing and rippling, such transformations, such pictures and poems, inimitable. Another, I am studying the stars under advantages as I cross tonight. It is late in February, and again extra clear. High toward the west, the play aides, tremulous with delicate sparkle in the soft heavens, Aldebaran leading the V-shaped hyaids and overhead Capella and her kids. Most majestic of all, in full display in the high south, Orion, vast spread, roomy, chief historian of the stage, with this shiny yellow rosette on his shoulder, and his three kings, and the little to the east, Sirius, calmly arrogant, most wondrous single star. Going late ashore, I couldn't give up the beauty and soothingness of the night. As I stayed around, or slowly wandered, I heard the echoing calls of the railroad man in the west Jersey depot yard, shifting and switching trains, engines, etc. Amid the general silence, other ways, and something in the acoustic quality of the air, musical, emotional effects, never thought of before. I lingered long and long, listening to them, night of March 18, 79. One of the calm, pleasantly cold, exquisitely clear and cloudless, early spring nights, the atmosphere again that where vitreous blue-black, welcomed by astronomers. Just at eight evening, the scene overhead of certainly soulless beauty never surpassed. Venus nearingly down in the west, of a size and looster as if trying to out-show herself before departing. Teaming, maternal orb, I take you again to myself. I am reminded of that spring, preceding Abraham Lincoln's murder, when I, restlessly hounding the Potomac banks around Washington City, watched you, of there, aloof, moody, as myself. As we walked up and down, in the dark blue so mystic, as we walked in silence, the transparent shadowy night, as I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night, as you droop from the sky low down, as if to my side, while the other stars all looked on. As we wandered together, the solemn night, with departing Venus, large to the last, and shining even to the edge of the horizon, the vast dome presents at this moment such a spectacle. Mercury was visible just after sunset, a rare sight. Arcturus is now rising just north of east. In calm glory, all the stars of Orion hold the place of honor, in meridian to the south, with the dark star a little to the left. And now, just rising, spica, late, low, and slightly veiled. Castor, regalus, and the rest, all shining unusually clear, no Mars or Jupiter or moon to a morning. On the edge of the river, many lamps twinkling, with two or three huge chimneys, a couple of miles up, belching forth molten, steady flames, volcano-like, illuminating all around, and sometimes, an electric or calcium, its dunty infernal gleams, in far shafts, terrible, ghastly powerful. Of later May nights, crossing, I like to watch the fisherman's little boy lights, so pretty, so dreamy, like corpse candles, undulating delicate and lonesome, on the surface of the shadowy waters, floating with the current, the first spring day on Chestnut Street. Winter relaxing its hold, has already allowed us a foretaste of spring. As I write, yesterday afternoon's softness and brightness, after the morning fog, which gave it a better setting by contrast, showed Chestnut Street, say between broad and forth, to more advantage in its various asides, and all its shores, and gay-dressed crowds generally, than for three months past. I took a walk there between one and two, doubtless, there were plenty of hard-up forks along the pavement. But nine-tenths of the myriad-moving human panorama, to all appearance, seemed flush, well-fed, and fully provided. At all events, it was good to be on Chestnut Street yesterday. The peddlers on the sidewalk, sleeve-puttons, three for five cents. The handsome little fellows with canary-bird whistles. The cane-men, toy-men, toots-pick-men. The old women squatted in a heap on the cold-stone flags, with her basket of matches, pins, and tape. The young negro mother sitting, begging, with her two little coffee-coloured twins on her lap. The beauty of the crowned conservatory of rare flowers, flaunting reds, yellows, snowy lilies, incredible orchids, at the Baldwin mansion near Twelfth Street. The show of fine poultry, beef, fish at the restaurant. The china stores with glass and statuettes, the luscious tropical fruits, the streetcars plodding along with the tint nabulating bells. The fat, cab-looking, rapidly driven one-horse vehicles of the post office, squeezed full of coming or going letter carriers, so healthy and handsome and manly looking in their grey uniforms. The costly books, pictures, curiosities in the windows. The gigantic policemen at most of the corners, with all be readily remembered and recognised as features of this principal avenue of Philadelphia. Chestnut Street, I have discovered, is not without individuality and its own points, even when compared with the great prominent streets of other cities. I have never been in Europe, but acquired years' familiar experience with New York's, perhaps the world's great sub-affair, Broadway, and possessed to some extent a personal and saunterous knowledge of St. Charles Street in New Orleans, Tremont Street in Boston, and the broad trotroise of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Of course, it is a pity that chestnut were not two or three times wider, but the street, any fine day, shows vividness, motion, variety, not easily to be surpassed. Sparkling eyes, human faces, magnetism, wild dressed women, ambulating to and fro, with lots of fine things in the windows, are did not about the same the civilised world over. How fast the fleeting figures come, the mild, the fierce, the stony face, some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some where secretiers have left their trace. A few days ago, one of the six-story clothing stores, along here, had the space inside its plate-class show window partitioned into a little coral, and littered deeply with rich clover and hay. I could smell the odor outside, on which reposed two magnificent fat sheep, full-sized but young, the handsomest creatures of the kind I ever saw. I stopped long and long, with the crowd to view them, one lying down chewing the cud, and one standing up, looking out with dense-springed, patient eyes, their wool of a clear, tony colour, with streaks of glistening black, altogether a queer sight amidst that crowded prominent of dandy's dollars. And dry goods, up the Hudson, to Ulster County, April 23rd. Off to New York on a little tour and visit, leaving the hospitable, home-like quarters of my valued friends, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Johnston, took the 4 p.m. boat, bound up the Hudson, a hundred miles or so, sunset and evening fine, especially enjoyed the hour after we passed Cozen's landing, the night lit by the crescent moon and Venus, now swimming in tender glory, and now hid by the high rocks and hills of the western shore, which we hugged close, whereas spent the next ten days is in Ulster County and its neighbourhood, with frequent morning and evening drives, observations of the river, and short rambles. April 24th, noon. A little more, and the sun would be oppressive. The bees are out gathering their bread from willows and other trees. I watched them returning, darting through the air, or lighting on the hives, their thighs covered with a yellow forage. A solitary robin sings near. I sit in my shirt sleeves and gaze from an open bay window on the indolent scene. The thin haze, the fish kill hills in the distance. Off on the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little shadboats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains, sometimes weighted by cinder tanks of petroleum. Thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but the sound softened by distance. Days at JB's turf fires spring songs. April 26th, at sunrise, the pure clear sound of the meadow lark. An hour later, some notes, few and simple, yet delicious and perfect, from the bush sparrow towards noon, the reedy trill of the robin. Today is the fairest, sweetest yet. Penetrating worms, a lovely veil in the air, partly heat vapor, and partly from the turf fires everywhere in patches on the farms. A group of soft maples nearby silently burst out in crimson tips, buzzing all day with busy bees. The white sails of sloops and shunners glide up and down the river, and long trains of cars with ponderous roll or faint bell notes, almost constantly on the opposite shore. The earliest wildflowers in the woods and fields, spicy arbutus, blue liverwort, frail anemone, all the pretty white blossoms of the blood root, I lounge out in slow rambles discovering them. As I go along the roads, I like to see the farmer's fires in patches, burning the dry brush, turf, debris, how the smoke crawls along, flat to the ground, slanting, slowly rising, reaching away, and at last, dissipating. I like its accurate smell, whiffs just reaching me, welcomer than French perfume. The birds are plenty, of any sort, or two or three sorts, curiously not a sign, till suddenly some warm gushing sunny April or even March day. Low, there they are, from twig to twig, or fence to fence, flirting, singing, some mating, preparing to build, but most of them, en passant, a fortnight, a month in these parts, and then away. As in all phases, nature keeps up her vital, copious, eternal procession. Still, plenty of the birds hang around all, or most of the season. Now there are love-time, an era of nest building. I find flying over the river, crows, gulls, and hawks. I hear the afternoon shriek of the latter, darting about, preparing to nest. The oriole will soon be heard here, and the twang-ging mellow of the cat-bird, and also the king-bird, cuckoo, and the warblers. All along, there are three peculiarly characteristic spring songs, the meadow-larks so sweet, so alert, and remonstrating. As if he said, don't you see? Or can't you understand? The cheery, mellow, human tones of the robin. I have been trying for years to get a brief term, or phrase, that would identify and describe that robin call, and the amorous whistle of the high-hole. Insects are out plentifully at midday. April 29. As we drove, lingering along the road. We heard, just after sundown, the song of the wood-thrash. We stopped without a word, and listened long. The delicious notes, a sweet, artless, voluntary, simple anthem, as from the flute-stops of some organ, wafted through the twilight, echoing well to us from the perpendicular high rock, where, in some thick young trees' recesses at the base, sat the bird, filled our senses, our souls, meeting a hermit. I found in one of my rambles, up the hills, a real hermit, living in a lonesome spot. Hard to get at. Rocky, the view fine, with a little patch of land, too wrought square. A man of youngish middle age, city-born and raised, had been to school, had travelled in Europe and California. I first met him once or twice on the road, and passed the time of day, with some small talk. Then, the third time, he asked me to go along a bit and rest in his hut, an almost unprecedented compliment, as I heard from others afterwards. He was of Quaker stock, I think, talked with ease and moderate freedom, but did not unbuzz him his life, or story, or tragedy, or whatever it was. End of CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII OF SPECIMENT DAYS This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. SPECIMENT DAYS by Walt Whitman CHAPTER XIII Recorded by Alan Davis Drake. An Ulster County Waterfall I jot this mem in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come to visit a waterfall. I never saw a finer or a more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy, what I call weather-beaten and let alone. A rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early summer wildflowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle from the horse in petuous copious fall, the greenish, tawny, dark, transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the rocks, with patches of milk-white foam. A stream of hurrying amber, thirty feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with volume every hundred rods of fall and sometimes three or four in that distance. A primitive forest, druidical, solitary and savage, not ten visitors a year, broken rocks everywhere, shade overhead, thick underfoot with leaves, a just palpable wild and delicate aroma. Walter Dumont and his metal. As I saunchered along the high road today, I stopped to watch a man nearby, plowing a rough stony field with a yoke of oxen. Usually there is much geeing and hawing, excitement, and continual noise and expletives about a job of this kind, but I noticed how different, how easy and wordless, yet firm and sufficient the work of this young plowman. His name was Walter Dumont, a farmer, and son of a farmer, working for their living. Three years ago, when the steamer's sunny side was wrecked of a bitter icy night on the west bank here, Walter went out in his boat, was the first man on hand with assistance, made a way through the ice to shore, connected a line, performed work of first-class readiness, daring, danger, and saved numerous lives. Some weeks after, one evening when he was up at Esopus, among the usual loafing crowd at the country's store and post office, there arrived the gift of an unexpected official gold medal for the quiet hero. The impromptu presentation was made to him on the spot. But he blushed, hesitated as he took it, and had nothing to say. Hudson River Sights It was a happy thought to build the Hudson River Railroad right along the shore. The grade is already made by nature. You are sure of ventilation one side, and you are in nobody's way. I see here the locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smoking constantly, away off there, night and day, less than a mile distant, and in full view by day. I like both sight and sound, express trains thunder and lighten along. Of freight trains, most of them are very long. They cannot be less than a hundred a day. At night, far down as you see the headlight approaching, coming steadily on like a meteor, the river at night has its special character beauties. The shad fishermen go forth in their boats and pay out their nets, one sitting forward, rowing, and one standing up aft, dropping it properly, marking the line with little floats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide along the water, an indescribable sentiment and double the brightness. I like to watch the toes at night too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the husky panting of the steamers, or catch the sloops and schooners' shadowy forms, like phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then the Hudson of a clear moonlight night. But there is one sight, the very grandest. Sometimes, in the fiercest driving storm of wind, rain, hail, or snow, a great eagle will appear over the river, now storming with steady, and now overbended wings, always confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times, literally sitting upon it. It is like reading some first-class natural tragedy, or epic, or hearing marshal trumpets. The splendid bird enjoys the hubbub, is adjusted and equal to it, finishes it so artistically, his pinions just oscillating, the position of his head and neck, his restless, occasionally varied flight, now a swirl, and now an upward movement, the black clouds driving, the angry wash below, the hiss of the rain, the winds piping, perhaps the ice colliding, grunting, he tacking or jibbing, now, as it were for a change, abandoning himself to the gale, moving with it with such velocity, and now, resuming control, he comes up against it, lord of the situation and the storm, lord, amid it, of power and savage joy. Sometimes, as at present writing, middle of sunny afternoon, the old Vanderbilt steamer stalking ahead, I plainly hear her rhythmic slushing paddles, drawing by long hausers an immense and varied following string, an old sow and pigs, the river folks call it. First comes a big barge, with a house built on it, and spars towering over the roof, then canal boats, a lengthened, clustering train, fastened and linked together, the one in the middle with high staff, flaunting a broad and gaudy flag, others with the almost invariable lines of new washed clothes drying. Two sloops and schooners aside the toe, little wind and that adverse, with three long, dark, empty barges bringing up the rear. People are on the boats, men lounging, women and son bonnets, children, stovepipes with streaming smoke, two city areas, certain hours. New York, May 24th, 1879. Perhaps no quarters of this city, I have returned again for a while, make more brilliant, animated, crowded, spectacular human presentations, these fine May afternoons, then the two I am now going to describe from personal observation. First, that area comprising 14th Street, especially the short range between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, with Union Square, its adjacencies, and so retro-stretching down Broadway for half a mile. All the walks here are wide, and the spaces ample and free, now flooded with the liquid gold from the last two hours of powerful sunshine. The whole area at five o'clock, these days of my observations, must have contained from thirty to forty thousand finely dressed people, all in motion, plenty of them good-looking, many beautiful women, often youths and children, the latter in groups with their nurses. The trotters everywhere, close spread, thick tangled, yet no collision, no trouble, with masses of bright color, action, and tasty toilets. Surely the women dress better than ever before, and the men do too, as if New York would show these afternoons what it can do for its humanity, its choices physique and physiognomy, and its countless prodigiality of locomotion, dry goods, glitter, magnetism, and happiness. Second, also from five to seven p.m., the stretch of Fifth Avenue, all the way from the Central Park exits of 59th Street down to 14th, especially along the high grade by 14th Street and down the hill. A Mississippi of horses and rich vehicles, not by dozens and scores, but by hundreds and thousands. The Broad Avenue filled and crammed with them. A moving, sparkling, hurrying crush, for more than two miles. I wonder they don't get blocked, but I believe they never do. Altogether it is to me the marvel sight of New York. I like to get in one of the Fifth Avenue stages and ride up, stemming the swift moving procession. I doubt if London or Paris or any city in the world can show such a carriage carnival as I have seen here five or six times these beautiful May afternoons. Central Park walks and talks May 16 to 22. I visit Central Park now almost every day, sitting or slowly rambling or riding around. The whole place presents its very best appearance this current month. The full flush of the trees, the plentiful white and pink of the flowering shrubs, the emerald green of the grass spreading everywhere, yellow-dotted still with dandelions, the specialty of the plentiful gray rocks, peculiar to these grounds, cropping out. Miles and miles, and over all the beauty and purity three days out of four of our summer skies. As I sit, placidly, early afternoon, off against 90th Street, the policeman, C. C., a well-formed, sandy complexion young fellow, comes over and stands near me. We grow quite friendly and chatty forthwith. He is a New Yorker born and raised, and in answer to my question tells me about the life of a New York park policeman. While he talks, keeping his eyes and ears vigilantly open, occasionally pausing and moving where he can get full views of the vistas of the road, up and down, and the spaces around. The pay is two dollars forty cents a day, seven days a week. The men come on and work eight hours straight ahead, which is all that is required of them out of the twenty-four. The position has more risks than one might suppose. For instance, if a team or horse runs away, which happens daily, each man is expected not only to be prompt, but to waive safety and stop wildest nag or nags. Do it, and don't be thinking of your bones or face. Give the alarm, whistle too, so that other guards may repeat, and the vehicles up and down the tracks be warned. Injuries to the men are continually happening. There is much alertness and quiet strength. Few apprentice. I have often thought the Ulyssian capacity, daring due, quick readiness in emergencies, practicality, unwitting devotion and heroism among our American young men and working people, the firemen, the railroad employees, the steamer and ferrymen, the police, the conductors and drivers, the whole splendid average of native stock, city and country. It is good work, though, and among the whole, the park force members like it. They see life, and the excitement keeps them up. There is not so much difficulty as might be supposed from tramps, ruffs, or in keeping people off the grass. The worst trouble of the regular park employee is from malarial fever, chills and the like. A fine afternoon, four to six. Ten thousand vehicles careering through the park this perfect afternoon. Such a show. I have seen all, watched it narrowly and at my leisure. Private barruques, cabs and coupes, some fine horse flesh, lap dogs, footmen, fashions, foreigners, cockades on hats, crests on panels, the full oceanic tide of New York's wealth and gentility. It was an impressive, rich, interminable circus on a grand scale, full of action and color in the beauty of the day, under the clear sun and moderate breeze. Family groups, couples, single drivers. Of course dresses generally elegant, much style, yet perhaps little or nothing, even in that direction, that fully justified itself. Through the windows of two or three of the richest carriages, I saw faces almost corpse-like, so ashy and listless. Indeed, the whole affair exhibited less of a sterling America, either in spirit or countenance, than I had counted on from such a select mass spectacle. I suppose, as a proof of limitless wealth, leisure and the aforesaid gentility, it was tremendous. Yet what I saw those hours, I took two other occasions to other afternoons to watch the same scene, confirms a thought that haunts me every additional glimpse I get of our top loftical general or rather exceptional phases of wealth and fashion in this country. Namely, that they are ill at ease, much too conscious, cased in too many seriments, and far from happy, that there is nothing in them which we, who are poor and plain, need at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barbershop, something that turns stale and musty in a few hours anyway. Perhaps the show on the horseback road was prettiest. Many groups, three a favorite number, some couples, some singly, many ladies, frequently horses or parties dashing along at a full run, fine riding the rule, a few really first-class animals. As the afternoon waned, the wheeled carriages grew less, but the saddle riders seemed to increase. They lingered long, and I saw some charming forms and faces. Departing of the big steamers, May 25th. A three-hours bay trip from twelve to three this afternoon, accompanied by the city of Brussels, down as far as the narrows, in behoof of some Europe-bound friends, to give them a good send-off. Our spirited little tug, the Seth Low, kept close to the great black Brussels, sometimes one side, sometimes the other, always up to her, or even pressing ahead, like the blooded pony accompanying the royal elephant. The whole affair from the first was an animated, quick-passing, characteristic New York scene. The large, good-looking, well-dressed crowd on the wharf end, men and women come to see their friends depart, and bid them Godspeed. The ships sides, swarming with passengers, groups of bronze-faced sailors, with uniformed officers at their posts. The quiet erections, as she quickly unfastens, and moves out. Prompt to a minute. The emotional faces, adoes, and fluttering handkerchiefs, and many smiles and some tears on the wharf. The answering faces, smiles, tears, and fluttering handkerchiefs from the ship. What can be subtler and finer than these play of faces on such occasions in these responding crowds? What go more to one's heart? The proud, steady, noiseless cleaving of the grand oceaner down the bay, we speeding by her side a few miles, and then turning, wheeling, amid a babble of wild hurrahs, shouted partings, ear-splitting steam whistles, kissing of hands, and waving of handkerchiefs. This departing of the big steamers, noons or afternoons, there is no better medicine when one is listless or vapory. I am fond of going down Wednesdays and Saturdays, there more special days, to watch them and the crowds on the warbs. The arriving passengers, the general bustle and activity, the eager look from the faces, the clear-toned voices. A traveled foreigner, a musician, told me the other day that she thinks an American crowd has the finest voices in the world. The whole look of the great shapely black ships themselves, and their groups and line sides, in the setting of our bay, with the blue sky overhead. Two days after the above, I saw the Britannic, the Danau, the Helvetia, and the Shindam steam out, all off to Europe, a magnificent sight. Two hours on the Minnesota. From seven to nine, aboard the United States schoolship Minnesota, lying on the North River, Captain Luce sent his gig for us about sundown, to the foot of 23rd Street, and received us aboard with officer-like hospitality and sailor-hardiness. There were several hundred youths on the Minnesota to be trained for efficiency manning the government navy. I like the idea much, and so far as I have seen tonight, I like the way it is carried out on this huge vessel. Below, on the gun-deck, were gathered nearly a hundred of the boys to give us some of their singing exercises, with a melodian accompaniment, played by one of their number. They sang with a will. The best part, however, was the sight of the young fellows themselves. I went over among them before the singing began, and talked for a few minutes informally. They are from all of the States. I asked for the Southerners, but could only find one, a lad from Baltimore. At age, apparently, they range from about fourteen years to nineteen or twenty. They are all of American birth, and have to pass a rigid medical examination. Well-grown youths, good flesh, bright eyes, looking straight at you, healthy, intelligent, not a slouch among them, nor a menial, in every one the promise of a man. I have been to many public aggregations of young and old, and of schools and colleges in my day, but I confess I have never been so nearly satisfied, so comforted, both from the fact of the school itself and the splendid proof of our country, our composite race, and the sample promises of its good average capacities, its future, as in the collection from all parts of the United States on this Navy training ship. Are there going to be any men there? Was the dry and pregnant reply of Emerson to one who had been crowding him with the rich material statistics and possibilities of some Western or Pacific region. May 26. Abort the Minnesota again. Lieutenant Murphy kindly came for me in his boat, enjoyed especially those brief trips to and fro, the sailors, tanned, strong, so bright and able-looking, pulling their oars in long side swing, man of war style, as they rode me across. I saw the boys in companies drilling with small arms, had a talk with Chaplain Rosson. At eleven o'clock all of us gathered to breakfast round the long table in the Great Wardroom, I among the rest, a genial, plentiful, hospitable affair every way, plenty to eat and of the best, became acquainted with several new officers. This second visit, with its observations, talks, two or three at random with the boys, confirmed my first impressions. Mature summer days and nights. August 4. Fornoon. As I sit under the willow shade, have retreated down in the country again, a little bird is leisurely dousing and flirting himself amid the brook, almost within reach of me. He evidently fears me not, takes me for some concomitant of the neighborhood earthy banks, free bushery and wild weeds. 6 p.m. The last three days have been perfect ones for the season. Four nights ago copious rains, with vehement thunder and lightning. I write this sitting by the creek, watching my two kingfishers at their sundown sport. The strong, beautiful, joyous creatures, their wings glisten in the slanted sunbeams as they circle and circle around, occasionally dipping and dashing the water, and making long stretches up and down the creek. Wherever I go, over fields, through lanes, in by-places, blooms the white-flowering wild carrot, its delicate pat of snowflakes crowning its slender stem, gracefully oscillating in the breeze. Exposition building, New City Hall, River Trip. Philadelphia, August 26. Last night and tonight, of unsurpassed clearness, after two days' rain. Moon Splendor and Star Splendor. Being out towards the Great Exposition Building, West Philadelphia. I saw it lit up, and thought I would go in. There was a ball, democratic but nice. Plenty of young couples waltzing and quadrilling, music by a good string band, to the sight and hearing of these, to moderate strolls up and down the roomy spaces, to getting off aside, resting in an armchair and looking up a long while at the grand high roof, with its graceful and multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light and shade, receding into dim outlines, to absorbing in the intervals of the string band, some capital voluntaries, and organ caprices from the big organ at the other end of the building, to sighting a shattered figure or group or couple of lovers every now and then, passing some near or father aisle. I abandoned myself for over an hour. Returning home, riding down Market Street in an open summer car, something detained us between fifteenth and broad, and I got out to view better the new three-fifths-built marble edifice, the city hall, of magnificent proportions. A majestic and lovely show there in the moonlight, flooding all over, facades, myriad silver-white lines and carved heads and moldings, with the soft dazzle, silent, weird, beautiful. Well, I know that never when finished will the magnificent pile impress one as it impressed me those fifteen minutes. Tonight, since I have been long on the river, I watched the sea-shaped northern crown, with the star al-shaka that blazed out so suddenly, alarmingly, one night a few years ago. The moon in her third quarter, and up nearly all night. And there, as I look eastward, my long absent, pliades, welcome again to sight. For an hour I enjoy the soothing and vital scene to the low splash of waves, new stars steadily, noiselessly, rising in the east. As I cross the Delaware, one of the deck-hands, F. R., tells me how a woman jumped overboard and was drowned a couple of hours since. It happened in mid-channel. She leaped from the forward part of the boat, which went over her. He saw her rise on the other side in the swift running water, throw her arms and closed hands high up, white hands and bare forearms in the moonlight, like a flash. And then she sank. I found out afterwards that this young fellow had promptly jumped in, swam after the poor creature, and made, though unsuccessfully, the bravest efforts to rescue her. But he didn't mention that part at all in telling me the story. Cloudy and wet, and wind do east, air without palpable fog, but very heavy with moisture, welcome for a change. For noon, crossing the Delaware, I noticed unusual numbers of swallows in flight, circling, darting, graceful beyond description, close to the water, thick around the boughs of the ferry-boat as she lay tied in her slip. They flew. And as we went out, I watched beyond the pier-heads and across the broad stream, this swift-winding loop, ribbons of motion, down close to it, cutting and intersecting. Though I had seen swallows all my life, seemed as though I never before realized their peculiar beauty and character in the landscape. Some time ago, for an hour, in a huge old country barn, watching these birds flying, recalled the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, where Ulysses slays the suitors, brings things to Echleicissimus, and Minerva, swallow-bodied, darts up through the spaces of the hall, sits high on the beam, looks complacently on the show of slaughter, and feels, in her element, exalting joyous.