 Section 29 of Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 9. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Chris Pyle. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 9. Section 29, Henry Clay, 1777-1852 by John R. Proctor. Henry Clay must not be judged as an order by his reported speeches, which are but skeletons of the masterly originals, but by the lasting effect of these speeches on those who heard them and by his ability as an originator of important measures and his success in carrying these measures to a conclusion by convincing and powerful oratory. Judged by his achievements and by his widespread influence, he must take rank as a statesman and orator of preeminent ability. The son of a poor Baptist clergyman with but-scan advantages for acquiring an education, leaving home at an early age and going among strangers to community where family ties and social connections were a controlling element. This poor boy, with no family influence, assumed at once by sheer force of character and ability, a leadership which he held undisputed until his death. And the years after he had passed away, it was the followers of Henry Clay, who kept Kentucky from joining the states of the South in their unsuccessful efforts to withdraw from the Union. Of his oratory, Robert C. Winthrop wrote after a lapse of years, I can only bear witness to an impressiveness of speech never exceeded, if ever equaled, within an experience of half a century, during which I have listened to many of the greatest orators on both sides of the Atlantic. As a parliamentary leader, Rhodes calls him the greatest in our history. His leadership, says Mr. Scherz, was not of that mean order which merely contrives to organize a personal following. It was the leadership of a statesman zealously striving to promote great public interests. As a presiding officer, he was the most commanding speaker the National House of Representatives has ever had. Winthrop, who served long with him in Congress, said of him, No abler or more commanding presiding officer ever sat on the speaker's chair on either side of the Atlantic. Prompt, dignified, resolute, fearless, he had a combination of intellectual and physical qualities, which made him a natural ruler over men. He was six times elected speaker, sometimes almost by acclamation, and during the many years which he presided over the House, not one of his decisions was ever reversed. As a secretary of state, during his term of four years, the treaties with foreign countries negotiated by him exceeded in numbers all that had been negotiated by other secretaries during the previous 35 years of our constitutional history. As a diplomat, he shared himself at Ghent more than a match for the trained diplomatists of the old world. And with all these, he was, at his ideal country home, Ashland, surrounded by wooded lawns and fertile acres of beautiful bluegrass land, a most successful farmer and breeder of thoroughbred stock, from the Scotch collie to the thoroughbred racehorse. I have been told by one who knew him as a farmer that no one could guess nearer to the weight of a short horn bullock than he. He was as much at home with horses and horsemen as with senators and diplomats. I have known many men who were friends and followers of Mr. Clay, and from the love and veneration these men had for his memory, I can well understand why the historian Rhodes says, no man has been loved as the people of the United States loved Henry Clay. Clay seemed to have had honors and leadership thrust upon him. Arriving in Kentucky in 1797, he had once advocated the gradual emancipation of slaves, regardless of the strong prejudices to the contrary of the rich slaveholding community in which he had cast his lot. Yet, unsolicited on his part, this community elected him to the state legislature by a large majority in 1803, and before three years of service he was chosen by his fellow members to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. And until his death in 1852, his constituents in Kentucky vied with each other in their desires to keep him as their representative in either the National Senate or House of Representatives. He entered the latter in 1811 and was selected a speaker of that body almost by acclamation on the first day of his taking his seat. After a long life spent in his country's service, he was elected unanimously to the Senate in 1848 despite party strife and the fact that the two parties were almost evenly divided in Kentucky. No attempt can here be made to even recapitulate the events of importance connected with his long public services. I will call attention only to some of the most important measures which he carried by his magnificent leadership. War of 1812. Clay assumed the leadership of those who urged resistance to the unjust and overbearing encroachments of Great Britain, and he more than anyone else was instrumental in overcoming opposition and forcing a declaration of war. This war, a second war for independence, which changed this country from a disjointed Confederacy liable to fall asunder to a compact, powerful and self-respecting union, will ever be regarded as one of the crowning glories of his long and brilliant career. He proved more than a match in debate for Randolph, Quincy, and other able advocates for peace. When asked what we were to gain by war, he answered, What are we not to lose by peace, commerce, character, a nation's best treasure, honor? In answer to the arguments that certificates of protection authorized by Congress were fraudulently used, his magnificent answer, The colors that float from the mast head should be the credentials of our semen. Electrified the patriots of the country. There is but a meager report of this great speech, but the effect produced was overwhelming and bore down all opposition. It is said that men of both parties, forgetting all antipathies under the spell of his eloquence, wept together. Mr. Clay's first speech on entering Congress was in favor of the encouragement of domestic manufacturers, mainly as a defensive measure and anticipation of a war with Great Britain, arguing that whatever doubts might be entertained, as to the general policy of encouraging domestic manufacturers by import duties, none could exist regarding the propriety of adopting measures for producing such articles as are requisite in times of war. If his measure for the increase of the standing army had been adopted in time, the humiliating reverses on land during the early part of the war would have been averted. He carried through a bill for the increase of the Navy and the brilliant naval victories of the war of 1812 followed. In the debate on the bill to provide for a standing army, it was argued that 25,000 could not be had in the United States. Clay aroused the people of Kentucky to such enthusiasm that 15,000 men volunteered in that state alone and members of Congress shouldered their muskets and joined the ranks. Treaty of Ghent. Henry Clay's faith in the destiny of his country and his heroic determination that a continuation of the war was preferable to the terms proposed prevented humiliating concessions. The American commissioners were Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, James A. Bayard and Jonathan Russell. And the British commissioners Dora Gambier, Henry Gulburn and William Adams. The news received by Clay on his arrival in Europe was not calculated to inspire him with hope. Mr. Bayard, he received a letter dated April 20th, 1814 with news of the triumph of the allies over Napoleon and stating, there is reason to think that it has materially changed the views of the British ministry. The rate of progress presents an additional temptation to prosecute the war. By the same mail, Mr. Gallatin writes from London, April 22nd, 1814. You are sufficiently aware of the total change in our affairs produced by the late revolution and by the restoration of universal peace in the European world from which we are alone excluded. A well-organized and large army is at once liberated from any European employment and ready together with a super abundant naval force to act independently against us. How ill-prepared we are to meet it in a proper manner, no one knows better than yourself, and above all our own divisions and the hostile attitude the eastern states give room to apprehend that a continuation of the war might prove vitally fatal to the United States. Mr. Russell writes from Stockholm, July 2nd, 1814. My distress at the delay which our joint errand has encountered has almost been intolerable and the kind of work that I have received from Mr. Adams has afforded very low relief. His apprehensions are rather of a gloomy cast with regard to the result of our labors. Mr. Crawford, our minister to France, who with clay favored a vigorous prosecution of the war, writes to him, July 4th, 1814. I am thoroughly convinced that the United States can never be called upon to treat under circumstances less auspicious than those which have been called upon to the United States, unless our internal bickering shall continue to weaken the effects of the government. With discouraging news from home, the seat of the government taken, and the capital burned, the eastern states opposing the war and threatening to withdraw from the Union, and his fellow commissioners in the despondent mood evidenced by the above quoted letters, it is amazing that clay, whom some historians have called a compromiser by nature, opposed any and all of the treaty of 1783, it was agreed that citizens of the United States should not fish in the waters or cure fish on the land of any of the maritime provinces north of the United States after they were settled, without a previous agreement with the inhabitants or possessors of the ground. By the 8th article of the same treaty, it was agreed that the navigation of the Mississippi River should ever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the United States. It was then supposed that the citizens included the headwaters of this river. By the J Treaty of 1794, this was confirmed, and that all ports and places on its eastern side, whichever of the parties belonging, might be freely resorted to and used by both parties. At this time, Spain possessed the sovereignty of the west side of the river, and both sides from its mouth, the 31 degrees north latitude. The United States acquired by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 all the sovereignty of Spain, acquired by France. Gallatin proposed to insert a provision for the renewal to the United States of the rights in the fisheries and as an equivalent to give to Great Britain the right to the navigation of the Mississippi River. This was favored by Gallatin, Adams, and Bayard and opposed by Clay and Russell. Mr. Clay, seeing that he was in a minority, stated that he would affix his name to no treaty which contained such a provision. After his firm stand, Mr. Bayard left the majority, Clay's obscenity and opposing concessions is well shown to Mr. Adams' journal. To this article, the right of the British to navigate the Mississippi River, Mr. Clay makes strong objections. He is willing to leave the matter of the fisheries as a nest egg for another war. He considers that a privilege much too important to be conceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon a desert. But the Mississippi was destined to form a most important part of the interests of the Americans, had alone been urgent to present an article stipulating the abolition of impressment. Mr. Clay lost his temper as he generally does whenever the right of the British to navigate the Mississippi is discussed. December 11th. He, Clay, was for war three years longer. He had no doubt, but three years more of war would make us a war like people. And that then we would come out of the war with honor. December 2nd. Mr. Clay had no doubt that the American commissioners were concerned that the treaty was signed on December 24th, 1814. During all these months, Clay had resisted any and all concessions and none were made. The Marquis of Wellesley declared in the House of Lords that the American commissioners had shown a most astonishing superiority over the British and the American commissioners. After five months of a most astonishing superiority over the British during the whole of the correspondence. During Mr. Clay's absence at Ghent, his admiring constituents returned him to Congress by an almost unanimous vote. A year later in Congress, Clay referred to his part in the bringing on the war as follows. I gave a vote for a declaration of war. I exerted all the little influence and talent I could command to make the war. The war was made, it is terminated, and I declare with strict sincerity, if it had been permitted to me to lift the veil of futurity and to foresee the precise series of events which had occurred my vote would have been unchanged. We had been insulted and outraged and spiliated upon by almost all Europe, by Great Britain, by France, Spain, Denmark, Naples, and to cap the climax by the little contemptible power of our jeers. We had submitted too long and too much. We had become the scorn of foreign powers and the derision of our own citizens. What have we gained by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of this country before the war, the scorn of the universe, the content of ourselves and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our situation now? Respectability and character abroad, security and confidence at home. Claymore than any other man forced the war. He was the successful military hero of this war, the victor of New Orleans who defeated him and after years for the presidency. Missouri Compromise The heated struggle in Congress over the admission of Missouri into the union first brought prominently forward the agitation of the slavery question. This struggle, which lasted from 1818 to 1821, threatened the very existence of the union. Jefferson wrote from Monticello The Missouri question is the most portentious one that has ever threatened the union. In the gloomiest moments of the Revolutionary War I never had any apprehension equal to that I feel from this source. Mr. Scherz, writing of the feeling at the time says While thus the thought of dissolving the union occurred readily to the southern mind the thought of maintaining the government and preserving the union by means of force hardly occurred to anybody. It seemed to be taken for granted on all sides that if the southern states insisted on cutting loose from the union nothing could be done but to let them go. The two sections were at this time so evenly balanced that the maintenance of the union by force could not have been successfully attempted. The compromise which admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and recognized the right of settlers to carry slaves into the territory south of 36 degree 30 minutes was carried through by the splendid leadership of Clay who thus earned the title of the great pacificator. Peter historians will accord to him the title of the superior of the union. Upon the adoption of the compromise measures Mr. Clay resigned his seat in Congress to give his attention to his private affairs being financially embarrassed by endorsing for a friend. During his stay at home there was a fierce controversy over the issue of paper money and relief measures to favor debtors who had become involved in the recklessness following such inflation. Against what seemed to be an overwhelming popular feeling, Clay arrayed himself on the side of sound money and sound in 1823 he was again returned to the house of representatives without opposition and was chosen speaker by a vote of 139 to 42 internal improvements. Soon after his entrance into Congress Clay took advanced ground in favor of building roads, improving waterways and constructing canals by the general government in order to connect the seaboard states with the boundless empire of the growing west. He became the leader, the foremost champion of a system which was bitterly opposed by some of the able estatesmen of the time as unauthorized by the Constitution. Clay triumphed and during his long public service was the recognized leader of a system which though opposed at first has been accepted as a national policy by both of the great political parties. That he was actuated by a grand conception of the future destiny of the country and the needs of such improvements to ensure a more perfect union, his able speeches on these questions will show. In one, he said every man who looks at the Constitution in the spirit to entitle him to the character of statesmen must elevate his views to the height to which this nation is destined to reach in the rank of nations. We are not legislating for this moment only or for the present generation or for the present populated limits of the United States. But our acts must embrace a wider scope reaching northward to the Pacific and southwardly to the river Del Norte. Imagine this extent of territory with 60 or 70 or 100 millions of people. The powers which exist now will exist then and those which will exist then exist now. What was the object of the convention in framing the Constitution? The leading object was union union then peace peace external and internal and commerce. But more particularly union and peace the great objects of the framers of the Constitution should be kept steadily in view in the interpretation of any clause of it. And when it is susceptible of various interpretation that construction should be preferred which tends to promote the objects of the framers of the Constitution to the consolidation of the union. No man deprecates more than I do the idea of consolidation. Yet between separation and consolidation painful as would be the alternative I would greatly prefer the latter. Congress now appropriates yearly for internal improvements of some far greater than the entire revenue of the government at the time Clay made this speech. Spanish American independence. It was but natural that Clay's art and nature and his love of liberty would incline him to aid the people of Central and South America in their efforts to free themselves from Spanish oppression and misrule. Effective here as in all things undertaken by him his name must always be linked with the cause of American independence. Richard Rush writing from London to Clay in 1825 says The South Americans owe to you more than to any other man of either hemisphere their independence. His speeches translated into Spanish were read to the Revolutionary armies and his name was a household name among the Patriots. Bolivar writing to him from Bogota in 1827 says All America, Columbia and myself owe your excellency our purest gratitude for the incomparable services which you have rendered to us by sustaining our cause with sublime enthusiasm. In one of his speeches on this subject Clay foreshadows a great American Zolphurine. The failure of the Spanish American Republics to attain the high ideals hoped for by Clay caused him deep regret in after years. The American system. The tariff law of 1824 was another triumph of Clay's successful leadership since the first time he has been called the father of what has been termed the American system. It must be remembered that Clay was first led to propose protective duties in order to prepare this country for a war which he felt could not be avoided without loss of national honor. When in 1824 he advocated increased tariff duties in order to foster home industries, protection was universal. Even our agricultural products were excluded from British markets by the corn laws. The man who would now advocate in Congress duties as low as those levied by the tariff law of 1824 would be called by protectionists of the present day a free trader. When in 1833 nullification of the tariff laws was threatened Clay, while demanding that the laws should be enforced and that if necessary nullification should be put down by the strong arm of the government feared that the growing discontent of the south in the obstinacy of a military president threatened the Union introduced and carried to a conclusion a compromise tariff measure that brought peace to the country Secretary of State It was unfortunate that Clay temporarily relinquished his leadership in Congress to accept the premiership in the cabinet of President Adams. Although the exacting official duties were not congenial and proved injurious to his health his administration of this high office was brilliant and able as is well attested by the number and treaties concluded his instructions to the United States delegates to the Panama Congress of American Republics will grow in importance in the years to come because of the broad principles they're enunciated that private property should be exempt from seizure on the high seas and times of war his chivalrous loyalty to President Adams was fully appreciated and his friendship reciprocated after the close of his administration Mr. Adams in a speech said as my motives for tendering him the way I did let the man who questions them come forward let him look around among the statesmen and legislators of the nation and of that day let him select and name the man whom by his preeminent talents by his splendid services by his ardent patriotism by his all-empressing public spirit by his fervent eloquence in behalf of the rights and liberties of mankind by his long experience in the affairs of the Union, foreign and domestic a president of the United States intent on the welfare of his country ought to have preferred to Henry Clay yes before the close of his administration President Adams offered him a position on the bench of the Supreme Court which he declined his position on African slavery Clay was a slave holder a kind master but through his entire public life an open advocate of emancipation he probably received his early pre-elections against slavery from his association with Chancellor White before removing from Virginia as indeed the best part of his education probably came from personal contact with that able man the intellectual forces of the border slave states were raid in favor of emancipation until as Clay writes with some feeling in 1849 they were driven to an opposite course by the violent and indiscreet course of ultra abolitionists in the north but Clay remained to his death hopeful that by peaceable means his country might be rid of this great evil and the letter above quoted writing of his failure to establish a system of gradual emancipation in Kentucky he says it is a consoling reflection that all the way system of gradual emancipation cannot be established slavery is destined inevitably to extinction by the operation of peaceful and natural causes and it is also gratifying to believe that there will not be probably much difference in the period of its existence whether it terminates legally or naturally the chief difference in the two modes is that according to the first we should take hold of the institution intelligently and dispose of it cautiously and safely while according to the other it will someday or other take hold of us and constrain us in some manner or other to get rid of it as early as 1798 he made his first political speeches in Kentucky advocating an amendment to the state constitution providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves referring to the failure to adopt this amendment he said in a speech delivered in the capital of Kentucky in 1829 I shall never cease to regret a decision the effects of which have been to place us in the rear of our neighbors who are exempt from slavery in the state of agriculture the progress of manufacturers the advance of improvements and the general progress of society and these days when public men who should be leaders been to what they believe to be the popular wishes the example of clay in his boldest regard to the prejudices and property of his constituents is inspiring George W. Prentice was sent from New England to Kentucky to write a life of clay and writing in 1830 he says whenever a slave brought an action at law for his liberty Mr. Clay volunteered as his advocate and it is said that in the whole course of his practice he never failed to obtain a verdict in the slaves favor he has been the slaves friend through life in all stations he has pleaded the cause of African freedom without fear to him more than to any other individual is to be ascribed the great revolution which has taken place upon this subject a revolution whose wheels must continue to move onward till they reach the goal of universal freedom three years before this was written clay in a speech before the colonization society said if I could be instrumental in eradicating this deepest stain upon the character of my country and removing all cause of reproach on account of it by foreign nations if I could only be instrumental in ridding of this foul blot that revered state which gave me birth or that not less beloved state which kindly adopted me as her son I would not exchange the proud satisfaction which I should enjoy for the honor of all the triumphs ever decreed to the most successful conqueror he longed to add the imperial domain of Texas to this country but feared that it would so strengthen the slave power as to endanger the union and when finally he yielded to the inevitable the free soilers through their votes to Bernie and thus defeat the clay for the presidency he deprecated the war with Mexico yet gave his favorite son as a soldier who fell at Buena Vista he stood for the reception of anti-slavery petitions by Congress against the violent opposition of the leading men of his own section he continued steadfast to the end writing in 1849 that if slavery were as claimed a blessing the principle on which it is maintained would require that one portion of the white race should be reduced to bondage to serve another portion of the same race when black subjects of slavery could not be obtained he proposed reasonable schemes for gradual emancipation and deportation which would if adopted have averted the war and settled peaceably the serious problem he warned the Southerners in 1849 that their demands were unreasonable and would lead to the formation of a sectional northern party which would sooner or later take permanent and exclusive possession of the government seeming inconsistencies and Mr. Clay's record on this subject will disappear with a full understanding of the difficulties of his position living in a state midway between the north and south where slavery existed in its mildest and least objectionable form yet fully alive to its evils recognizing that the grave problem requiring solution was not alone slavery but the presence among a free people of a numerous fecund servile alien race realizing that one section of slavery then relatively too powerful to be ignored was ready to withdraw from the union rather than to submit the laws that would endanger slavery loving the union with an ardor not excelled by that of any public man in our history wishing and striving for the emancipation of the slaves yet too loyal to the union to follow the more zealous advocates of freedom in their higher law than the constitution crusade Mr. Clay in his whole course on this question was consistent and patriotic in the highest degree the compromise of 1850 the crowning triumph of a long life of great achievements was his great compromise measures of 1850 these with their predecessors of 1821 and 1833 have caused some writers to speak of clay as a man of compromising nature the reverse is true bold aggressive uncompromising and often dictatorial by nature he favored compromise when convinced that only by such means could civil war or a disruption of the union be averted and he was right but what did a conflict or separation of the union when the relative strength of the south was such as to have rendered impossible the preservation of the union by force the constitution was a compromise without which there would have been no union of states that the compromise did not long survive him was no fault of clays but chargeable to the agitators of both sections who cared less for the union than for their pet theories or selfish interests two years after his death the compromise measures were repealed and the most destructive civil war of modern times and a long list of results and evils are the result those who knew Henry Clay and had felt his wonderful power as a leader are firm in the belief that had he been alive and in the possession of his faculties in 1861 the civil war would have been averted his name and the memory of his love for the union restrained his adopted state from joining the south the struggle over the passage of the compromise measures lasting for seven months was one of the most memorable parliamentary struggles on record the old hero Henry Clay broken in health with the stamp of death upon him for six weary months led the fight with much of his old time fire and ability sustained by indomitable will and supreme love of country I am here he said expecting soon to go hints and owing no responsibility but to my own conscience and to God in his opening speech which lasted for two days he said I owe it to myself to say that no earthly power can induce me to vote for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had not before existed either south or north of that line sir while you reproach and justly too our British ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent of America I am for one unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach great Britain for doing to us he upgraded on the one hand the ultra abolitionist as reckless agitators and hurl defiance at disunionists of the south while at the same time appealing to the loftier nature and patriotic impulses of his hearers I believe from the bottom my soul this measure is the reunion of the union and now let us discard all resentments all passions all petty jealousies all personal desires all love of peace all hungering after gilded crumbs which fall from the table of power let us forget popular fears from whatever quarter they may spring let us go to the fountain of unadulterated patriotism and performing a solemn lustration return divested of all selfish sinister and sordid impurities and think alone of our God our country our conscience and our glorious union as described by Bancroft clay was in stature over six feet spare and long he stood erect as if full of vigor and vitality and ever ready to command his countenance expressed perpetual wakefulness and activity his voice was music itself and yet penetrating and far reaching enchanting the listeners his words followed rapidly without sing song or mannerism in a clear and steady stream neither in public nor in private did he know how to be dull bold fearless commanding the lordliest leader of his day he was yet gentle and as an old friend wrote was the most emotional man I ever knew I have seen his eyes fill instantly on shaking the hand of an old friend our obscure who had stood by him in his early struggles the manliest of men yet his voice would tremble with emotion on reading aloud from a letter the love messages from a little grandchild the following told me by a gentleman who knew Mr. Clay illustrates the true gentleman he was when I was a small boy my father took me with him visit Mr. Clay at his home Ashland we found some gentlemen there who had been invited to dinner just before they went into dinner my father told me privately to come and play on the lawn while they were dining as the gentleman came out Mr. Clay saw me and calling me to him said my young friend I owe you an apology turning the gentleman he said go into the library gentlemen and light your cigars I will join you presently taking me by the hand he returned with me to the table ordered the servants to attend to my once and adverse most delightful with me until I finished my dinner he had the faculty of making friends and holding them through life by ties which could sever when Clay passed away there was no one whose unionism embraced all sections who could stand between the overzealous advocates of abolition of slavery on the one side and the fiery defenders of the divine institution on the other sectionalism ran right and the civil war was the result during the many years when the north and south were divided on the question of slavery and sectional feeling ran high Henry Clay was the only man in public life whose broad nationalism and intense love for the union embraced all sections with no trace of sectional bias he could well be called the great American John R. Proctor end of section 29 recording by Chris Pyle section 30 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 9 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information order volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Chris Pyle library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 9 section 30 excerpts of selected speeches by Henry Clay public spirit in politics from a speech at Buffalo July 17th 1839 are we not then called upon by the highest duties to our country to its free institutions to posterity and to the world to rise above all local prejudices and personal partialities to discard all collateral questions to disregard every subordinate point and in a genuine spirit of compromise and concession uniting heart and hand to preserve for ourselves the blessings of a free government wisely, honestly and faithfully administered and as we received them from our fathers to transmit them to our children should we not justly subject ourselves to eternal reproach if we permitted our differences about mere men to bring defeat and disaster upon our cause our principles are imperishable the men have but a fleeting existence and are themselves liable to change and corruption during its brief continuance on the greek struggle for independence from a speech in 1824 are we so mean, so base, so despicable that we may not attempt to express our horror utter our indignation at the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained earth or shocked high heaven at the ferocious deeds of a savage and infuriated soldiery, stimulated and urged on by the clergy of a fanatical and inimical religion and rioting in all the excesses of blood and butchery at the mere details of which the heart sickens and recoils if the great body of Christendom can look on calmly and coolly while all this is perpetuated by Christian people in its own immediate vicinity in its very presence let us at least events that one of its remote extremities is susceptible of sensibility to Christian wrongs and capable of sympathy for Christian sufferings that in this remote quarter of the world there are hearts not yet closed against compassion for human woes that can pour out their indignant feelings at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every ancient recollection of every modern tie Sir, attempts have been made to alarm the committee by the dangers to our commerce in the Mediterranean and a wretched invoice of figs and opium has been spread before us to repress our sensibilities and to eradicate our humanity ah sir, what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall it avail a nation to save the whole of a miserable trade and lose its liberties South American independence as related to the United States from a speech before the House of Representatives in 1818 it is the doctrine of thrones that man is too ignorant to govern himself their partisans assert his incapacity and reference to all nations if they cannot command universal assent to the proposition it is then demanded as to particular nations and our pride and our presumption to often make converts of us I contend that it is to arraign the dispositions of Providence himself to suppose that he has created beings incapable of governing themselves and to be trampled on by kings self-government is the natural government of man and for proof I refer to the aborigines of our own land where I speculate an hypothesis unfavorable to human liberty my speculation should be founded rather upon devices, refinements or density of population crowded together in compact masses even if they were philosophers the contagion of the passions is communicated and caught and the effect too often I admit is the overthrow of liberty dispersed over such an immense space is that on which the people of Spanish America are spread their physical and I believe also their moral condition both favor their liberty with regard to their superstition they worship the same God with us their prayers are offered up in their temples to the same redeemer whose intercession we expect to save us nor is there anything in the Catholic religion unfavorable to freedom our religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty all separated from government are compatible with liberty if the people of Spanish America have not already gone so far in religious toleration as we have the difference in their condition from ours should not be forgotten everything is progressive and in time I hope to see them imitating in this respect our example but grant that the people of Spanish America are ignorant and incompetent for free government to whom is that ignorance to be ascribed is it not the excreable system of Spain which she seeks again to establish and to perpetuate so far from chilling our hearts it ought to increase our solicitude for our unfortunate brethren it ought to animate us to desire the redemption of unborn millions from the brutifying effects of a system whose tendency is to stifle the faculties of the soul and to degrade them to the level of beasts I would invoke the spirits of our departed fathers was it for yourselves only that you nobly fought no, no it was the chains that were forging for your posterity that made you fly to arms and scattering the elements of these chains to the winds you transmitted to us the rich inheritance of liberty from the valedictory to the senate delivered 1842 from 1806 the period of my inference upon this noble theater with short intervals to the present time I have been engaged in the public councils at home or abroad of the services rendered during that long and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak history if she deigned to notice me and posterity if the recollection of my humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity are the best the truest and the most impartial judges when death has closed the scene their sentence will be pronounced and to that I commit myself my public conduct is a fair subject for the criticism and judgment of my fellow men but the motives by which I have been prompted are known only to the great searcher of the human heart and to myself and I trust I may be pardoned for repeating a declaration made some 13 years ago that whatever errors and doubtless there have been many may be discovered in a review of the public service I can with unshaken confidence appeal to that divine arbiter for the truth the decoration that I have been influenced by no impure purpose no personal motive have sought no personal aggrandizement but that in all my public acts I have had a single eye directed and a warm and devoted heart dedicated to what in my best judgment I believe the true interests the honor the union and the happiness of my country required during that long period however I have not escaped the fate of other public men nor failed to incur censure and detraction of the bitterest most unrelenting and most malignant character and though not always insensible to the pain it was meant to inflict I have borne it in general with composure and without disturbance waiting as I have done in perfect and undoubted confidence for the ultimate triumph of justice and of truth and in the entire persuasion that time should settle all things that they should be and that whatever wrong or injustice I experience at the hands of man he to whom all hearts are open and fully known would by the inscrutable dispensations of his providence rectify all error redress all wrong and cause ample justice to be done but I have not meanwhile been unsustained everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had cordial warm hearted faithful and devoted friends who have known me loved me and appreciated my motives to them if language were capable of fully expressing my acknowledgments I would now offer all the return I have the power to make for their genuine disinterested and persevering fidelity and devoted attachment the feelings and sentiments of a heart overflowing with never ceasing gratitude if however I fail insensible language to express my gratitude them for all the kindness they have shown me what shall I say what can I say at all commensurate with those feelings of gratitude with which I have been inspired by the state whose humble representative and servant I have been in this chamber I emigrated from Virginia to the state of Kentucky now nearly 45 years ago I went as an orphan boy who had not yet attained the age of majority who had never recognized a father's smile nor felt his warm caresses poor penniless without the favor of the great with an imperfect and neglected education hardly sufficient for the ordinary business in common pursuits of life I set foot upon her generous soil when I was embraced with parental fondness, her rest as though I had been a favorite child and patronized with liberal and unbounded munificence from that period the highest honors of the state have been freely bestowed upon me and when in the darkest hour of calamity and attraction I seemed to be assailed by all the rest of the world she interposed her broad and impenetrable shield, repelled the poison shafts from my destruction and vindicated my good name from every malignant and unfounded dispersion I returned with indescribable pleasure to linger a while longer and mingle with the warm hearted and wholesale people of that state and when the last scene she'll forever close upon me I hope that my earthly remains will be laid under her green sod with those of her gallant and patriotic sons that my nature is warm my temper ardent my disposition especially in relation to the public service enthusiastic I am ready to own and those who suppose that I have been assuming the dictatorship have only mistaken for arrogance or assumption that ardor and devotion which are natural to my constitution in which I may have displayed with too little regard to cold calculating and cautious prudence and sustaining and zealously supporting important national measures of policy which I have presented and espoused I go from this place under the hope that we shall mutually consign of perpetual oblivion whatever personal collisions may at any time unfortunately have occurred between us and that our recollection shall dwell in future only on those conflicts of mind with mind those intellectual struggles those noble exhibitions of the powers of logic, argument and eloquence honorable to the senate and to the nation in which each has sought and contended for what he deemed the best mode of accomplishing the interest and the most happiness of our beloved country to these thrilling and delightful scenes it will be my pleasure and my pride to look back in my retirement with unmeasured satisfaction may the most precious blessings of heaven rest upon the whole senate and each member of it and may the labors of everyone redown to the benefit of the nation and to the advancement of his own fame and renown and when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents may you receive the most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards their cordial greeting of well done good and faithful servant from the Lexington speech on retirement to private life it would neither be fitting nor is it my purpose to pass judgment on all the acts of my public life but I hope I shall be excused for one or two observations which the occasion appears to me to authorize I never but once changed my opinion on any great measure of national policy or on any great principle of construction of the national constitution in early life on deliberate consideration I adopted the principles of interpreting the federal constitution which have been so ably developed and enforced by Mr. Madison in his memorable report to the Virginia legislature and to them as I understood them I have constantly adhered upon the question of coming up in the senate of the United States to recharter the first bank of the United States 30 years ago I opposed the recharter upon convictions which I honestly entertained the experience of the war which shortly followed the condition into which the currency of the country was thrown without a bank and I may now add later in more disastrous experience convinced me I was wrong I publicly stated to my constituents in a speech in Lexington that which I made in the House of Representatives of the United States not having been reported my reasons for that change and they are preserved in the archives of the country I appeal to that record and I am willing to be judged now and hereafter by their validity I do not advert to the fact of this solitary insistence of change of opinion as implying any personal merit but because it is a fact I will however say that I think it very perilous to the utility of any public man to make frequent changes of opinion or any change but upon grounds so sufficient and palpable that the public can clearly see and approve them if we could look through a window into the human breast and there discover the causes which led to changes of opinion they might be made without hazard but as it is impossible to penetrate the human heart and distinguish between the sinister and honest motives which prompt it any public man that changes his opinion once deliberately formed and promulgated under other circumstances than those which I have stated draws around him distrust impairs the public confidence and lessens his capacity to serve his country I will take this occasion now to say that I am and have been long satisfied that it would have been wiser and more politic in me to have declined accepting the office of Secretary of State in 1825 not that my motives were not as pure and as patriotic as ever carried any man into public office not that the calamity which was applied to the fact was not as gross and as unfounded as any that was ever propagated not that valued friends and highly esteemed opponents did not unite in urging my acceptance of the office not that the administration of Mr. Adams will not I sincerely believe advantageously compare with any of his predecessors in economy, purity, prudence and wisdom not that Mr. Adams himself was wanting in any of those high qualifications and upright and patriotic intentions which were suited to the office but my iron accepting the office arose out of my underrating the power of detraction and the force of ignorance and abiding with too sure a confidence in the conscious integrity and uprightness of my own motives of that ignorance I had a remarkable and laughable example on an occasion which I shall relate I was traveling in 1828 through I believe it was Spotsylvania County in Virginia on my return to Washington in company with some young friends we halted at night at a tavern kept by an aged gentleman who I quickly perceived from the disorder and confusion which reigned the happiness to have a wife after a hurried and bad supper the old gentleman sat down by me and without hearing my name but understand that I was from Kentucky remarked that he had four sons in that state that he was very sorry they were divided in politics two being for Adams and two for Jackson he wished they were all for Jackson why I asked him because he said that fellow Clay and Adams had cheated Jackson out of the presidency have you ever seen any evidence my old friend said I of that no he replied none and he wanted to see none but I observed looking him directly and steadily in the face suppose Mr. Clay were to come here and assure you upon his honor that it was all a vile calamity and not a word of truth in it would you believe him no replied the old gentleman promptly and emphatically I said to him in conclusion will you be good enough to show me to bed and bade him good night the next morning having in the interval learned my name he came to me full of apologies but I once put him at his ease by assuring him that I did not feel in the slightest degree hurt or offended with him if to have served my country during a long series of years with fervent zeal and unshaken fidelity in seasons of peace and war at home and abroad in the legislative halls and in an executive department if to have labored most sedulously to avert the embarrassment and distress which now overspread this union and when they came to have exerted myself anxiously at the extra session and to this to devise healing remedies if to have desired to introduce economy and reform in the general administration curtail enormous executive power and amply provide at the same time for the once of the government and the once of the people by a tariff which would give it revenue and then protection if to have earnestly sought to establish the bright but too rare example of a party and power faithful to its promises and pledges made without a power if these services exertions and endeavors justify the accusation of ambition I must plead guilty to the charge I wish the good opinion of the world but I defy the most malignant of my enemies to show that I have attempted to gain it by any low or groveling arts by any mean or unworthy sacrifices by the violation of any of the obligations of honor or by a breach of any of the duties which I owed to my country how is this right of the people to abolish an existing government and set up a new one to be practically exercised our revolutionary ancestor did not tell us by words but they proclaimed it by gallant and noble deeds who are the people that are to tear up the whole fabric of human society whenever and as often as caprice or passion may prompt them when all the arrangements and ordinances of existing organized society are prostrated and subverted as must be supposed in such a lawless and irregular movement as that in Rhode Island the established privileges and distinctions between the sexes between the colors, between the ages between natives and foreigners between the sane and insane and between the innocent and guilty convict all the offspring of positive institutions are cast down and abolished and society is thrown into one heterogenous and unregulated mass and is it contended that the major part of this babel congregation is invested with the right to build up at its pleasure a new government that is often in whenever society can be drummed up and thrown into such a shapeless mass the major part of it may establish another and another new government in endless succession why this would overturn all social organization make revolutions the extreme and last resort of an oppressed people the commonest occurrences of human life and the standing over of the day how such principle would operate in a certain section of this union with a peculiar population you will readily conceive no community could endure such an intolerable state of things anywhere and all would sooner or later take refuge from such ceaseless agitation in the calm repose of absolute despotism fellow citizens of all parties the present situation of our country is one of unexampled distress and difficulty but there is no occasion for any despondency a kind and bountiful providence has never deserted us punished us he perhaps has for our neglect of his blessings and our misdeeds we have a varied infertile soil a genial climate and free institutions our whole land is covered in perfusion with the means of subsistence and the comforts of life our gallant ship it is unfortunately true lies helpless tossed on a tempestuous sea amid the conflicting billows of contending parties without a rudder and without a faithful pilot but that ship is our country embodying all our past glory all our future hopes it's true as our whole people by whatever political nomination they are known if she goes down we all go down together let us remember the dying words the gallant and lamented Lawrence don't give up the ship the glorious banner of our country with its unstained stars and stripes still proudly floats at its mast head with stout hearts and strong arms we can surmount all our difficulties let us all, all, rally around that banner and finally resolve to perpetuate our liberties and regain our lost prosperity wigs arouse from that ignoble supineness which encompasses you awake from the lethargy in which you lie bound cast from you that unworthy apathy which seems to make you indifferent to the fate of your country arouse, awake, shake off the dewdrops that glitter on your garments and once more march to battle into victory you have been disappointed deceived, betrayed, shamefully deceived and betrayed will you therefore also prove false and faithless to your country or obey the impulses of a just and patriotic indignation as for Captain Tyler here's a mere snap, a flash in the pan pick your wig flints and try your rifles again from the speeches of Henry Clay edited by Calvin Cotton copyright 1857 by A. S. Barnes & Company end of section 30 recording by Chris Pyle section 31 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern, volume 9 this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Josh Kibbe library of the world's best literature ancient and modern, volume 9 section 31 hymn to Zeus by Cleanthes Cleanthes 331-232 BC Cleanthes, the immediate successor of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was born a Dassos in the Troad in BC 331 of his early life we know nothing except that he was for a time a rise fighter about the age of 30 he came to Athens with less than a dollar in his pocket and entered the school of Zeno where he remained for some 19 years at one time the court of Aereopagus not seeing how he could make an honest livelihood summoned him to appear before it and to give an account of himself he did so bringing with him his employers who proved that he spent much of the night in carrying water for gardens or a needing dough the court filled with admiration which he refused by the advice of his master who thought the practice of self dependence and strong endurance an essential part of education Cleanthes' mind was slow of comprehension but extremely retentive like a hard tablet Zeno said which retains clearest and longest what is written on it he was not an original thinker but the strength and loftiness of his character and his strong religious sense gave him an authority which no other member of the school could claim he reached the ripe age of 99 when, falling sick, he refused to take food and died of voluntary starvation in B.C. 232 long afterwards the Romans in it caused the statue to be erected to his memory in his native town almost the only writing of his that has come down to us is his noble hymn to the supreme being hymn de Zeus most glorious of all the undying, many named girt round with awe jove, author of nature applying to all things the rudder of law hail hail, for it justly rejoices the races whose life is a span to lift into thee their voices the author and framer of man for we are thy sons thou didst give us the symbols of speech at our birth alone of the things that live and mortal move upon earth wherefore thou shalt find me extolling and ever singing thy praise since thee the great universe rolling on its path round the world obeys obeys thee, wherever thou guidest and gladly is bound in thy bands so great is the power thou convidest with strong and invincible hands to thy mighty ministering servant the bolt of the thunder that flies too edged like a sword and defervent that is living and never dies all nature in fear and dismay doth quake in the path of its stroke what time thou prepares the way for the one word thy lips have spoke which blends with light smaller and greater which pervaded and thrilleth all things so great is thy power and thy nature in the universe highest of kings on earth of all deeds that are done oh God there is none without thee in the holy ether not one nor one on the face of the sea save the deeds that evil men driven by their own blind folly have planned but things that have grown uneven are made even again by thy hand and things unseemly grow seemly the unfriendly are friendly to thee for so good and evil supremely thou hast blended in one by decree for all thy decree is one ever a word that endureth for I which mortals rebellious endeavor to flee from and shun to obey ill-fated that worn with proneness for the lordship of things neither here nor behold in its oneness the law that divinity brings which men with reason obeying might detain unto glorious life no longer aimlessly straining in the paths of ignoble strife there are men with a zeal unblessed that are wearied with following of fame and men with a baser quest that are turned to lucre and shame there are men too that pamper and pleasure the flesh with delicate all these desire beyond measure to be other than all these things great jove all giver dark clouded great lord of the thunderbolts breath deliver the men that are shrouded in ignorance dismal as death oh father dispel from their souls the darkness and grant them the light of reason thy stay when the whole wide world thou rulest with might that we being honored may honor thy name with the music of hymns extoling the deeds of the donor unceasing as rightly besiems mankind for no were there a trust as awarded to god or to man than forever to glory with justice in the law that endures and is won end of section 31 section 32 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 9 this is a libervox recording a libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org recording by Dion Giants Salt Lake City, Utah library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 9 section 32 Samuel Langhorne Clemens Mark Twain by Charles Dudley Warner Samuel Langhorne Clemens Mark Twain 1835 Samuel Langhorne Clemens has made the name he assumed in his earliest sketches for newspapers so completely to usurp his own in public and private that until recently the world knew him by no other his world of admirers rarely use any other in referring to the great author and even to his intimate friends the borrowed name seems the more real the pseudonym so lightly picked up has nearly universal recognition and it is safe to say that the name Mark Twain is known to more people of all conditions the world over than any other in this century except that of some reigning sovereign or great war captain the term is one used by the Mississippi river pilots to indicate the depth of water to fathoms when throwing the lead it was first employed by a river correspondent in reporting the state of the river to a New Orleans newspaper this reporter died just about the time Mr. Clemens began to write and he jumped the name Mr. Clemens was born in Hannibal, Missouri a small town on the west bank of the Mississippi in 1835 he got the rudiments of an education at a village school learned boy life and human nature in a frontier community entering a printing office and became an expert compositor traveled and worked as a journeyman printer and at length reached the summit of a river boys with ambition in a Mississippi steamboat in learning the business of a pilot it is to this experience that the world is indebted for some of the most amusing, the most real and valuable and the most imaginative writing of this century which gives the character and interest and individuality to this great western river that history has given to Hannibal if he had no other title to fame he could rest securely on his reputation as the prose poet of the Mississippi upon the breaking out of the war the river business was suspended Mr. Clemens tried the occupation of war for a few weeks on the confederate side in a volunteer squad with anything but scant rations and imaginary alarms and then he went to Nevada with his brother who had been appointed secretary of that territory here he became connected with the territorial enterprise a Virginia city newspaper as a reporter and sketch writer and immediately opened a battery of good natured and exaggerated description that was vastly amusing to those who were not its targets afterwards he drifted to the coast tried mining and then joined that group of young writers who illustrated the early history of California a short voyage in the Sandwich Islands gave him new material for his pen and he made a successful debut in San Francisco as a humorous lecturer the first writing to attract general attention was the jumping frog of Calaveras which was republished with several other sketches in book form in New York shortly after this he joined the excursion of the Quaker city steamship to the Orient wrote letters about it to American newspapers and advertised it quite beyond the expectations of the projectors these letters collected and revised became the innocence abroad which instantly gave him a worldwide reputation this was followed by roughing it most amusing episodes of frontier life his pen became immediately in greater demand and innumerable sketches flowed from it many of them recklessly exaggerated for the effect he finished to produce always laughter provoking and nearly always having a wholesome element of satire of some sham or pretence or folly for some time he had charge of a humorous department in the galaxy magazine these sketches and others that followed were from time to time collected into volumes which had a great sale at the time he married and permanently settled in Hartford where he began the collection of a library set himself to biographical and historical study made incursions into German and French and prepared himself for the more serious work that was before him a second sojourn in Europe produced a tramp abroad full of stories and adventures much in the spirit of his original effort but with more reading reflection and search into his own experiences came old times on the Mississippi Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in which the author wrote out of his own heart to interest in social problems must be attributed the beautiful idol of the prince and the pauper and the Yankee at the court which later the English thought lacked reverence for the traditions of chivalry during all this period Mr. Clemens was in great demand as a lecturer and an after-dinner speaker his remarks about New England weather at a New England dinner in New York are a favorite example of his humor and his power of poetic description as a lecturer a teller of stories and delineator of character he had scarcely arrival in his ability to draw and entertain vast audiences he made a large income from his lectures in America and in England and from his books which always had a phenomenally large sale very remunerative also was the play of Colonel Sellers constructed out of a novel called The Gilded Age since 1890 Mr. Clemens and his family have lived most of the time in Europe for some time before he had written little but since that his pen has again become active he has produced many magazine papers a story called Puddinhead Wilson and the most serious and imaginative work of his life in the personal recollections of Joan of Arc feigned to be translated from a contemporary memoir left by her private secretary in it the writer strikes the universal cords of sympathy and pathos and heroic elevation in 1895 to 6 he made a lecturing tour of the globe speaking in Australia New Zealand Africa and India and everywhere received an ovation due to his commanding reputation he is understood to be making this journey the subject of another book Mr. Clemens is universally recognized as the first of living humorists but if the fashion of humor changes as change it may he will remain for other qualities certain immortal qualities such as are exhibited in his work on the Mississippi a force to be reckoned with in the literature of this century Mr. Clemens's humor has the stamp of universality which is the one indispensable thing in all enduring literary productions and his books have been translated and very widely diffused and read in French and other languages this is a prophecy of his lasting place in the world of letters and of section 32 section 33 of library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 9 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Matthew Bennett library of the world's best literature ancient and modern volume 9 section 33 excerpts from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain The Child of Calamity from Life on the Mississippi copyright 1883 by James R. Osgood and Company by way of illustrating talk and manners and that now departed and hardly remembered raft life I will throw in, in this place a chapter from a book which I have been working at by fits and starts during the past five or six years and may possibly finish in the course of five or six more the book is a story which details some passages in the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn son of the town drunkard of my time out west there he has run away from his persecuting father and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice truth telling respectable boy of him and with him a slave of the widows has also escaped they've found a fragment of a lumber raft it is high water and dead summertime and are floating down the river by night and hiding in the willows by day bound for Cairo whence the Negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free states but in a fog they pass Cairo without knowing it by and by they begin to suspect the truth and Huck Finn has persuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming down to a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead of them creeping aboard under cover of the darkness and gathering the needed information by eavesdropping but you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to find a thing out we talked it over and by and by Jim said it was such a black night to come down to the big raft and crawl aboard and listen they would talk about Cairo because they would be calculating it to go ashore there for a spree maybe or anyway they would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or something Jim had a wonderful level ahead for a nigger he could most always start a good plan when you wanted one I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river and struck out for the raft's light when I got down nearly to her I eased up and went slow and cautious but everything was all right nobody at the sweeps so I swum down along the raft till I was most abreast the campfire in the middle then I crawled aboard and inched along and got in amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the fire there was thirteen men there they was the watch on deck of course and a mighty rough looking lot too they had a jug and tin cups and they kept the jug moving one man was singing, roaring you might say, and it wasn't a nice song for a parlor anyway he roared through his nose and strung out the last word of every line very long when he was done they all fetched a kind of engine war whoop and then another was sung it begun there was a woman in our touten in our touten did dweddle dwell twist as weddle singing too, re-loo, re-loo re-loo, re-loo, re-lay she loved her husband dearly but another man twist as weddle and so on, fourteen verses it was kind of poor and when he was going to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow died on and another one said I'll give us a rest and another one told him to take a walk and one of him till he got mad and jumped up and began to cuss the crowd and said he could lamb any thief in the lot they was all about to make a break for him but the biggest man there jumped up and says sit where you are gentlemen leave him to me, he's my meat then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together every time he flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with fringes and says you lay there till his sufferings is over then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and shouted out whoop I'm the old original iron jawed brass mounted copper bellied course maker from the wilds of Arkansas look at me I'm the man they call sudden death and general desolation sired by a hurricane damned by an earthquake half brother to the cholera nearly related to the smallpox on the mother's side look at me I take nineteen alligators and a barrel of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing I split the everlasting rocks with my glance and I squinched the thunder when I speak whoop stand back and give me the room blood's my natural drink and the wails of the dying is music to my ear cast your eye on me gentlemen and lay low and hold your breath for I'm about to turn myself loose all the time he was getting this off he was shaking his head and looking fierce and kind of swelling around in a little circle tucking up his wristbands and now and then straightening up and beating his breast with his fists saying look at me gentlemen when he got through he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times and let off a roaring whoop I'm the bloodiest son of a wild cat that lives then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down over his right eye then he bent stooping forward with his back sagged and his south end sticking out far and his fists are shoving out and drawing in in front of him and so went around in a little circle three times swelling himself up and breathing hard then he straightened and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit again that made them cheer and he begun to shout like this whoop bow your neck and spread for the kingdom of sorrows are coming hold me down to earth for I feel my powers are working whoop I'm a child of sin don't let me get a start smoked glass here for all don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye gentlemen when I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and the parallels of latitude for a scene and drag the Atlantic ocean for whales I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder when I'm cold I bow the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it when I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm when I'm thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge when I range the earth hungry famine follows in my tracks whoop bow your neck and spread I put my hand on the sun's face and make it night in the earth I bought a piece out of the moon and hurried the seasons I shake myself and crumble the mountains contemplate me through leather don't use the naked eye I'm the man with the petrified heart and leather iron bowels the massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life the boundless vastness of the great American desert is my enclosed property and I bury my dead on my own premises he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit they cheered him again when he came down he shouted out whoop bow your neck and spread for the pet child of calamities are coming then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again the first one the one they called Bob next the child of calamity chipped in again bigger than ever then they both got at it at the same time swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into each other's faces swelling like engines then Bob called the child names and the child called him names back again next Bob called him a heap rougher names and the child come back at him with the very worst kind of language next Bob knocked the child's hat off and the child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbon he had about six foot Bob went and got it and said never mind this weren't going to be the last of this thing and so the child better look out for there was a time coming just as sure as he was a living man that he would have to answer to him with the best blood in his body the child said no man was willinger than he was for that time to come and he would give Bob fair warning now never to cross his path again for he could never rest till he had waited in his blood for such was his nature though he was sparing him now on the next family if he had one both of them was edging away in different directions growling and shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do but a little black whiskered chap skipped up and says come back here you couple the chicken livered cowards and I'll thrash the two of you and he done it too he snatched them he jerked them this way and that he booted them around he knocked them sprawling faster he could get up why it weren't two minutes till they begged like dogs and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way through and shout Salem corpus maker hi Adam again child of calamity bully for you little Davey well it was a perfect pow wow for a while Bob and the child had red noses and black eyes when they got through little Davey made them own up that they was sneaks and cowards and not fit to dog or drink with a nigger then Bob and the child shook hands with each other very solemn and said they had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones so then they washed their faces in the river and just then there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there and the rest went off to handle the after sweeps a steamboat landing at a small town from life on the Mississippi right 1883 by James R. Osgood and Company once a day a cheap gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis and another downward from Kyocook before these events the day was glorious with expectancy after them the day was a dead and empty thing not only the boys but the whole village felt this after all these years I can picture that old time to myself now just as it was then the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning the streets empty or pretty nearly so one or two clerks sitting in front of the water street stores with their splint bottom chairs tilted back against the wall chins on breasts hats slouched over their faces asleep with shingle shavings enough around to show what broke them down a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk doing a good business and watermelon rinds two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about on the levee a pile of skids on the slope of the stone paved wharf and the fragrant town drunker to sleep in the shadow of them two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf but nobody to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them the great Mississippi the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi rolling its mile wide tide along shining in the sun distressed away on the other side the point above the town and the point below bounding the river glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea and with all a very still and brilliant and lonely one presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote points instantly a negro drayman famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice lifts up the cry steamboat coming and the scene changes the stirs, the clerks wake up and a furious clatter of drays follows every house and store pours out a human contribution and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving drays, carts, men, boys all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center the wharf assembled there the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time and the boat is rather a handsome sight too she is long and sharp and trim and pretty she has too tall fancy top chimneys with a gilded device of some kind swung between them a fanciful pilot house all glass and gingerbread perched on top of the texas deck behind them the paddle boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name the boiler deck, the hurricane deck and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack staff the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely the upper decks are black with passengers the captain stands by the big bell calm and posing the envy of all great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys a husband at grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town the crew are grouped on the four castle the broad stage is run far out over the port bow and an envied deck hand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand the pent steam is screaming through the gauge cock the captain lifts his hand a bell rings the wheels stop, then they turn back turning the water to a foam and the steamer is at rest then such a scramble as there is to get aboard and to get ashore and to take in freight and to discharge freight the captain in the same time and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitated all with ten minutes later the steamer is underway again with no flag on the jack staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys after ten more minutes the town is dead again and the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more the high river and a phantom pilot from life on the Mississippi in 1983 by James R. Osgood and Company during this big rise these small fry craft were an intolerable nuisance we were running chute after chute a new world to me and if there was a particularly cramped place in a chute we would be pretty sure to meet a broad horn there and if he failed to be there we would find him in a still worse locality namely the head of a chute on the shoal water and the faint cordialities exchanged sometimes in the big river when we would be feeling our way cautiously along through a fog a deep hush would suddenly be broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans and all in an instant a log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil close upon us and then we did not wait to swap knives but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all the steam we had to scramble out of the way one doesn't hit a rock or a solid log raft with a steamboat when he can get excused you will hardly believe it but many steamboat clerks always carried a large assortment of religious tracts with them in those old departed steamboating days indeed they did twenty times a day we would be cramping up around a bar while a string of these small fry rascals were drifting down into the head of the bend away above and beyond us a couple of miles now a skiff would dart away from one of them and come fighting its laborious way across the desert of water it would ease all in the shadow of our forecastle and the panting oarsmen would shout give me a paper as the skiff drifted swiftly a stern the clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals if these were picked up without comment you might notice that now a dozen other skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything you understand they had been waiting to see how number one was going to fare number one making no comment all the rest would bend their oars and come on now and as fast as they came the clerk would heave over neat bundles of religious tracts tied to shingles the amount of hard swearing which 12 packages of religious literature will command when impartially divided up among twelve rastaman crews who have pulled a heavy skiff on a hot day to get them is simply incredible as I have said the big rise brought a new world under my vision by the time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths and were hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before we were shaving stumpy shores like that at the foot of madrid bend which I had always seen avoided before we were clattering through shoots like that of 82 the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till our nose was almost at the very spot some of these shoots were utter solitudes the dense untouched forest overhung both banks of the crooked little crack and one could believe that human creatures had never intruded there before the swinging grapevines the grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by the flowering creepers waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks and all the spendthrift richness of the forest foliage were wasted and thrown away there the shoots were lovely places to steer in they were deep except at the head the current was gentle under the points the water was absolutely dead and the invisible banks so bluffed that where the tender willow thickets projected you could bury your boats broadside in them as you tore along and then you seemed fairly to fly behind other islands we found wretched little farms and wretched little log cabins there were crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two above the water with one or two jeans clad chills racked yellow faced male miserables roosting on the top rail elbows on knees jaws in hands grinding tobacco and discharging the result at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth while the rest of the family a few farm animals were huddled together and an empty wood flat riding at her moorings close at hand in this flat boat the family would have to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days or possibly weeks until the river should fall two or three feet and let them get back to their log cabin and their chills again chills being a merciful provision of an all wise providence to enable them to take exercise without exertion and this sort of watery camping out was a thing which these people were rather liable to be treated to a couple of times a year by the December rise out of the Ohio and the June rise out of the Mississippi and yet these were kindly dispensations for they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and then and look upon life when a steamboat went by they appreciated the blessing too for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and made the most of these occasions now what could these banished creatures find to do to keep from dying of the blues during the low water season once in one of these lovely island shoots we found our course completely bridged by a great fallen tree this will serve to show how narrow some of the shoots were the passengers had an hours recreation in a virgin wilderness while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away for there was no such thing as turning back and not prehent from Cairo to Baton Rouge when the river is over its banks you have no particular trouble in the night for the thousand mile wall of dense forest that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farm or woodyard opening at intervals and so you can't get out of the river much easier than you could get out of a fenced lane but from Baton Rouge to New Orleans it is a different matter the river is more than a mile wide it is 200 feet in places both banks for a good deal over a hundred miles are shorn of their timber and bordered by continuous sugar plantations with only here and there a scattering sapling or row of ornamental china trees the timber is shorn off clear to the rear of the plantations from two to four miles when the first frost threatens to come the planters snatch off their crops in a hurry when they have finished grinding the cane they have used a lot of impetus of the stocks which they call bagasse and set fire to them though in other sugar countries the bagasse is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills now the piles of damp bagasse burn slowly and smoke like satin's own kitchen an embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of the Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river and this embankment is set back ten feet according to circumstances say thirty or forty feet is a general thing fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles when the river is over the banks and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how she will feel and see how you will feel too you find yourself away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless that fades out and causes itself in the murky distances for you cannot discern the thin rib of embankment and you are always imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't the plantations themselves are transformed by the smoke and look like a part of the sea all through your watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery of uncertainty you hope you are keeping in the river but you do not know all that you are sure about the exact speed of the bank and destruction when you think you are a good half mile from shore and you are sure also that if you chance suddenly to fetch up against the embankment and topple your chimney's overboard you will have the small comfort of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do one of the great vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantation one night at such a time and had to stay there a week but there was no novelty about it it had often been done before I thought I had finished this chapter but I wish to add a curious thing while it is in my mind it is only relevant in that it is connected with piloting there used to be an excellent pilot on the river a Mr. X who was a somnambulist it was said that if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of river he was pretty sure to get up and walk in his sleep and do strange things he was once fellow pilot for a trip or two with George Ealer on a great New Orleans passenger packet during a considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy but got over it by and by as X seemed content to stay in his bed when asleep late one night the boat was approaching Helena, AR the water was low and the crossing above the town in a very blind and tangled condition X had seen the crossing since Ealer had and as the night was particularly drizzly Ealer was considering whether he had not better have X called to assist in running the place when the door opened and X walked in now on very dark nights light is a deadly enemy to piloting you are aware that if you stand in a lighted room on such a night you cannot see things in the street to any purpose but if you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can make out objects in the street pretty well so on very dark nights pilots do not smoke they allow no fire in the pilot house stove if there is a crack which can allow the least ray to escape they order the furnaces to be curtained with huge tarpaulins and the skylights to be closely blinded then no light whatsoever issues from the boat the undefinable shape that now entered the pilot house had Mr. X's voice this said let me take her George I've seen this place since you have and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easier than I could tell you how to do it it is kind of you and I swear I am willing I haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me I've been spinning around and around the wheel like a squirrel it is so dark I can't tell which way she is swinging till she is coming around like a whirligig so Ealer took a seat on the bench panting and breathless the black phantom assumed the wheel anything steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two and then stood at ease coaxing her a little to this side and then to that as gently and sweetly as if the time had been noonday when Ealer observed this marvel of steering he wished he had not confessed he stared and wondered and finally said well I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat but that was another mistake of mine X said nothing but went serenely on with his work as the leds he rang to slow down the steam he worked the boat carefully and neatly into invisible marks then stood at the center of the wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness fore and aft to verify his position as the leds shoaled more and more he stopped the engines entirely and the dead silence and suspense of drifting followed when the shoalest water was struck he cracked on the steam carried her handsomely over into the next system of shoal marks the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines followed the boat slipped through without touching bottom and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing imperceptibly she moved through the gloom crept by inches into her marks drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried and then under a tremendous head of steam when swinging over the reef and away into deep water and safety ealer let his long pent breath pour out in a great relieving sigh and said, that's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on the Mississippi River I wouldn't have believed it could be done if I hadn't seen it there was no reply and he added just hold her five minutes longer partner and let me run down and get a cup of coffee a minute later ealer was biting into a pie down in the texas and comforting himself with coffee just then the night watchman happened in and was about to happen out again when he noticed ealer and exclaimed who's at the wheel sir X, dart for the pilot house quicker than lightning the next moment both men were flying up the pilot house companion way three steps at a jump nobody there the great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at our own sweet will the watchman shot out of the place again ealer seized the wheel set the engine back with power and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a towhead which he was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico by and by the watchman came back and said didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep when he first came up here no well he was I found him walking along on top of the railings just as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement and I put him to bed and at there he was again away a stern going through that sort of tightrope devil tree the same as before well I think I'll stay by next time he has one of those fits but I hope he'll have him often you just ought to have seen him take this boat through hell and a crossing I never saw anything so gaudy before and if he can do such gold leaf kid glove diamond breast pin piloting when he is sound asleep what couldn't he do if he was dead an enchanting river scene from Life on the Mississippi copyright 1883 by James R. Osgood and Company the face of the water in time became a wonderful book a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger but which told its mind to me without reserve delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice and it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside for it had a new story to tell every day throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest never one that you could leave unread without loss never one that you would want to skip thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing there never was so wonderful a book written by a man never one whose interest was so absorbing so unflagging so sparklingly renewed with every re-perusal the passenger who could not read it was charmed a particular sort of faint dimple on its surface on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether but to the pilot that was an italicized passage indeed it was more than that it was a legend of the largest capitals with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated it is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes and the most hideous to a pilot's eye in truth the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds whereas to the train die these were not pictures at all but the grimmest and most dead earnest of reading matter now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet I had made a valuable acquisition but I had lost something too I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived all the grace the beauty the poetry had gone out of the majestic river I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me a broad expanse of the river was turned to blood in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold through which a solitary log came floating black and conspicuous in one place a long slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water in another the surface was broken by boiling tumbling rings that were as many tinted as an opal where the ruddy flush was faintest was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines ever so delicately traced the shore on our left was densely wooded and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long ruffled trail that shone like silver and high above the forest wall a clean stem dead tree waved a single leafy bow that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun there were graceful curves reflected images woody heights soft distances and over the whole scene far and near the dissolving lights drifted steadily enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of coloring I stood like one bewitched I drank it in in a speechless rapture the world was new to me and I had never seen anything like this at home but as I have said a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face another day came when I ceased altogether to note them then that sunset scene had been repeated I should have looked upon it without rapture and should have commented upon it inwardly after this fashion this sun means that we are going to have wind tomorrow that floating log means that the river is rising small thanks to it that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights if it keeps on stretching out like that those tumbling boils show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the break from a new snag and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats that tall dead tree with a single living branch is not going to last long and then how was a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark no the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river all the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat since those days I have pitted doctors from my heart what does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a break that ripples above some deadly disease are not all her visible charms sick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay does he ever see her beauty at all or doesn't he simply view her professionally and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself and doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade the lightning pilot from life on the Mississippi copyright 1883 by James R. Osgood and company next morning I felt pretty rusty and low spirited we went booming along taking a good many chances for we were anxious to get out of the river as getting out to Cairo was called before night should overtake us but Mr. Bixby's partner the other pilot presently grounded the boat and we lost so much time getting her off that it was plain the darkness would overtake us a good long way above the mouth this was a great misfortune to certain of our visiting pilots whose boats would have to wait for their return no matter how long that might be it sobered the pilot house talk a good deal coming upstream pilots did not mind low water or any kind of darkness nothing stopped them but fog but downstream work was different a boat was too nearly helpless with a stiff current pushing behind her so it was not customary to run downstream at night in low water there seemed to be one small hope however if we could get through the intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night we could venture the rest for we would have planar sailing and better water but it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night so there was a deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day and a constant ciphering upon the speed we were making Hat Island was the eternal subject sometimes hope was high sometimes we were delayed in a bad crossing and down it went again for hours all hands lay under the burden of this suppressed excitement it was even communicated to me and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island and under such an awful pressure of responsibility that I wished I might have five minutes on shore to draw a good full relieving breath and start over again we were standing no regular watches each of our pilots ran such portions of the river as he had run when coming upstream because of his greater familiarity with it but both remained in the pilot house constantly an hour before sunset Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W. stepped aside for the next 30 minutes every man held his watch in his hand and was restless, silent and uneasy at last somebody said with a doomful sigh well Yonder's Hat Island we can't make it all the watches closed with a snap everybody sighed and muttered something about its being too bad, too bad off we could only have gotten here a half an hour sooner and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment some started to go out but loitered hearing no bell tap to land the sun dipped behind the horizon the boat went on inquiring looks passed from one guest and one who had his hand on the door knob and had turned it, waited then presently took away his hand and let the knob turn back again we bore steadily down the bend more looks were exchanged and nods of surprised admiration but no words insensibly the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby as the sky darkened and one or two dim stars came out the dead silence and sense of waiting became oppressive Mr. Bixby pulled the cord and two deep mellow notes from the big bell floated off on the night then a pause and one more note was struck the watchman's voice followed from the hurricane deck labored led there starboard led cries of the ledsmen began to rise out of the distance and were gruffly repeated by the word passers on the hurricane deck mark three quarter less three half twain quarter twain mark twain quarter less Mr. Bixby pulled two bell ropes and was answered by faint jinglings far below in the engine room and our speed slackened the steam began to whistle through the gauge cocks the cries of the ledsmen went on and it is a weird sound always in the night every pilot in the lot was watching now with fixed eyes and breath nobody was calm and easy but Mr. Bixby he would put his wheel down and stand on a spoke and as the steamer swung into her to me, literally invisible marks for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea he would meet and fasten her there out of the murmur of half audible talk one caught a coherent sentence now in them such as there she's over the first reef all right after a pause another subdued voice her stern's coming down just exactly right by George now she's in the marks over she goes somebody else muttered oh it was done beautiful beautiful now the engines were stopped altogether and we drifted with the current not that I could see the boat drift for I could not the stars being all gone by this time this drifting was the dismalest work it held one's heart still presently I discovered a blacker gloom than that which surrounded us it was the head of the island we were closing right down upon it we entered its deeper shadow and so imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate and I had the strongest impulse to do something anything to save the vessel but still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel silent intent as a cat and all the pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back she'll not make it somebody whispered the water grew shoulder and shoulder by the Ledzman's cries till it was down to eight and a half eight feet eight feet seven and Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer stand by now hi hi sir seven and a half seven feet six and we touched bottom instantly Mr. Bixby said a lot of bells ringing shouted through the tube now let her have it every ounce you've got then do his partner put her hard down snatcher snatcher the boat rasped and ground her way through the sand hung upon the apex of disaster a single tremendous instant and then over she went and such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof of a pilot house before there was no more trouble after that Mr. Bixby was a hero that night and it was some little time too before his exploit ceased to be talked about by Rivermen End of section 33