September 25, 1909
After luncheon I scampered over to Riverside Park to see the commemorative naval parade. The ideal weather, the magnetic crowds, the great beauty of the natural setting -I sat upon the park slope, tree-shaded, and lookt athwart the noble river to the stately Jersey hills -the warships in gala array, saluting with their guns, amid clustering craft, graceful "Half Moon", that moved like a swan upon the water, and the interesting "Clermont", as they approached the water-gate, with music and huzzas, for the reception ceremonies, - all made an animated and memorable pageant.
The "Half Moon" and "Clermont" were approximately facsimiles of the originals or so intended. The "Clermont" however, resembled more the old "North River", the first "Clermont" of the trial trips and voyage up the Hudson in August, 1807, being a third smaller. It was later extended and rechristened "North River". This remodeling has caused some confusion. It is true that Fulton somewhere mentions that "my first steamboat on the Hudson's River was 150 feet long, 13 feet wide, drawing 2 feet of water, bow and stern 60 degrees". Yet he probably had in mind his first registered steamboat and not the trial boat. In Chancellor Livingston's agreement with Fulton it is expressly stipulated that the vessel shall not exceed 120 feet in length. Col. Beckwith, who was familiar with the facts, gives the length as about 100 feet. M. Michaux, a French botanist and careful observer, who was a passenger on the initial return voyage from Albany, says in his account, made at the time, that it was about 25 metres or 82 feet long. The festival boat that is masquerading as a copy of the "Clermont", is it would seem, a copy of the "North River". The spectacle would have been still more interesting, the contrast with the huge ocean steamers and warships of today still more pronounced, if the dimensions of the original, smaller boat had been followed. This perhaps is of minor importance, but significant. The "Clermont" and "Half Moon", so-called, were undoubtedly the compelling features of the celebrations.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Western trip 1909, steamboats, writing, and more...
August 6, 1909
Got home last evening from my Western trip. I had traversed a glorious country, diversified, of scenic magic and compelling extent. I had covered en route about ten thousand miles. Some parts of the Far West were of stupendous grandeur, the canyons and geysers being particularly striking and set apart from the rest of the natural scene in wonderful coloring, sharpness of acclivity, the dizzy plunge of waterfalls, strange wall structures, satanic and mysterious action. Yet withal I felt the want of depth and complexity in the human and historic backgrounds. There was a paucity of legend and tradition. Even Lo, the Poor Indian, failed to make a satisfactory appeal. Science and the Mormons gave me some imaginative looks into a bewildering past, and the Indian and Spaniard had their relative value, their caress and humanizing effect. The soldier and cowboy served in a measure to subdue and render friendly the plain, the valley and more rarely the lovely mountain fastness. How the spirit expands almost to solution and contracts to an aching loneliness and despair amid the austerities and eternities of the Rocky and Sierra ranges! And there were superabundant energy and achievement in the short-lived cities. I brought back many pleasant memories, incidents well graven, sensations, fine impressions, studious returns. I get much from my travels after they are done and digested. The direct vision, the stimulus of view and experience have left their residuum in the soul. There succeed the assimilated results, the breadth of comparison, the maturity of tested knowledge and unbounded scope. The fancy plays with delight over place and people; it finds coming even from the dimness incidental spots of refuge and recreation that brighten in fairy-fashion. With much travel one is enfranchised, into a kind of world-citizenship and universal brotherhood.
August 10, 1909
Eastern people should more frequently travel or go out West and Western people similarly come East. This would bring about a complementary understanding, a mutual benefit and wider view. Whilst I should not like to lessen the interest and charm of diversity, homogeneity makes for the national development and defence, subdues the province to the country and develops a great national spirit, an indigenous yet continental art and literature.
August 12, 1909
If you have a feeling for all styles and a mastery of them, you can best express your prevailing mood and thought, your temperament, in any style. And wonderful are the ways, the lights and shadows of words! Sometimes the concise, direct, concentrated style makes a close appeal and is fit, when the phrase is trimmed of all superfluities and the word stands pat upon the thought; at other times the soul is leisurely and expanded and welcomes a rich, copious, if not more gracious manner, when the spirit likes to play in and out and around about the scene or idea, when even circumlocution, the amplifying and qualifying adjective seem none too much and all the charming optatives and little prepositions must be put in. If you know and have the art in this or any other kind, then the quidnuncs and fault finders go to the wall, and you simply write well.
August 19, 1909
It is not so much conventional goodness as essential goodness that should count. Is that patent? Look around and see.
Oh, the smallness and meanness of the small!
O, the greatness and magnanimity of the great!
September 2, 1909
This appeared in today's Evening Journal (EM):
1.THE CLERMONT IN JERSEY CITY
Edtor of the Evening Journal:
Apropos of the Hudson-Fulton celebration, the following account of the Cermont is not only especially pertinent, but gives a fillip in our civic pride and interest in the approaching festivities. It is taken from a book called ?The Sloops of the Hudson.? By Verplanck and Collyer. Mr. Collyer found it among the manuscript papers of Colonel Nathan Beckwith of Red Hook, Dutchess county, New York, who died in 1865 at the age of 86:
?The first trip of the steamer Clermont started from the East River and went to Jersey City. She was constructed under the personal supervision of Robert Fulton in 1807. She was 100 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 7 feet deep. This steamboat made two or three trips to Albany, and was hauled out at Red Hook, near where Herman Hoffman's store stood, which was destroyed by the British in the Revolutionary war. The property is now owned by Mr. DeKoven. In the winter of 1807 said boat was lengthened to 150 feet and widened to 18 feet: the name was then changed to North River. The hull was built by David Brown of New York and the engine by Watt & Bolton of England. The following advertisement appeared in the Albany Gazette Sept. 1, 1807: ?The steamboat North River will leave Paulus Hook, Jersey City, on Friday, Sept. 4, at 9 o'clock a. m., and arrive at Albany on Saturday at 9 o'clock p. m. Good berths and accommodations are provided. The charge to each passenger is as follows: To Newburgh, $3; time, fourteen hours; to Poughkeepsie, $4; time, seventeen hours; to Esopus, $5; time, twenty hours; to Hudson, $5.50; time, thirty hours; to Albany, $7; time, thirty-six hours.' A notice in the same paper of Oct. 5, 1807, announces that Mr. Fulton's new steamboat left New York at 10 o'clock a. m. against a strong tide and very high water, also a violent gale from the north; it made headway beyond the most sanguine expectations and without being wrecked by the water, heavy sea and gale.?
My impression, or understanding, drawn from competent sources, is that the Clermont, though built on the East River, was brought over to Jersey City, and completed in a ship yard on Greene Street, which then bordered on the river. Certain it is that she made her first trips to and from Jersey City and, it would appear, piled for some time as a packet between this city and Albany. All of the facts and incidents connected with this epoch-making boat are extremely interesting, and the foregoing should receive wider recognition.
Edwin Manners.
(Comment, EM):
As the Clermont was enlarged and renamed in the winter of 1807-1808, the Albany Gazette's announcements were probably of the latter year. But other inferences may be made, and I deem it best to publish documents of this kind as they are found.
If the facts were fully known, it could justly be said that the old Greene street shipyard in Jersey City was the real cradle of steam navigation on the Hudson River and practically of the world. Indeed enough is known to say this substantially. I deduce this from records and traditionary details, however imperfect. The shipyard antedated the Fulton foundry at Greene and Morgan streets. Here the enlarged Clermont or North River was finally dismantled.
September 6, 1909
It is a bright day with a tempered autumn air, suitable for the holiday of labor. Today all who labor and are heavy-laden have the opportunity by statute to rest from their labors and quietly enjoy. But somehow they generally succeed beyond expectation in making of it a true labor day indeed. They become more weary and heavy-laden at their tasks of enjoyment than they would have become of their usual occupations.
After a morning of reading I went over to Manhattan and browsed or moused about the streets. Constantly I find there enough in spectacle and people to feed upon, catch, bog, amuse, ripen, season knowledge and finally to instruct in the harmonies of wisdom and truth. What a captivating theatre of light, movement, incident and life is a great city!
I noticed on the bulletin-boards that Commander Peary had discovered the North Pole on April 6th last. This is startling news and an amazing coincidence, coming so soon on the delayed reports that Dr. Cook had attained the same goal April 21, 1908 -the baffling, mysterious goal that had defied the centuries. There is no doubt that this puts a particularly bright star in the annals of American discovery.
September 9, 1909
Edward H. Harriman died this afternoon at Arden, his country seat. I knew him and his brothers when they were boys in this city. They called at the house. The Harriman pew in Grace Church was just to the left of ours, and I fear I sometimes allowed my eyes to stray from my prayer-book to their sister, an attractive girl and much devoted to the church. Mr. H. was a financier of large wealth and accounted one of the great, if not the foremost of railroad operations. He has done much undoubtedly over a wide territory to develop the resources of the Country, and to unify and improve transportation facilities. The railroad and steamship lines he controlled comprised the most extensive system of transit in the world, exceeding the Hill properties.
As I knew him, he was called Henry and a likely young man, but as he trained in an older set, I do not bring back much about him except his calling upon my sisters. His father was an Episcopal clergyman and preached occasionally at Grace Church, this City.
Got home last evening from my Western trip. I had traversed a glorious country, diversified, of scenic magic and compelling extent. I had covered en route about ten thousand miles. Some parts of the Far West were of stupendous grandeur, the canyons and geysers being particularly striking and set apart from the rest of the natural scene in wonderful coloring, sharpness of acclivity, the dizzy plunge of waterfalls, strange wall structures, satanic and mysterious action. Yet withal I felt the want of depth and complexity in the human and historic backgrounds. There was a paucity of legend and tradition. Even Lo, the Poor Indian, failed to make a satisfactory appeal. Science and the Mormons gave me some imaginative looks into a bewildering past, and the Indian and Spaniard had their relative value, their caress and humanizing effect. The soldier and cowboy served in a measure to subdue and render friendly the plain, the valley and more rarely the lovely mountain fastness. How the spirit expands almost to solution and contracts to an aching loneliness and despair amid the austerities and eternities of the Rocky and Sierra ranges! And there were superabundant energy and achievement in the short-lived cities. I brought back many pleasant memories, incidents well graven, sensations, fine impressions, studious returns. I get much from my travels after they are done and digested. The direct vision, the stimulus of view and experience have left their residuum in the soul. There succeed the assimilated results, the breadth of comparison, the maturity of tested knowledge and unbounded scope. The fancy plays with delight over place and people; it finds coming even from the dimness incidental spots of refuge and recreation that brighten in fairy-fashion. With much travel one is enfranchised, into a kind of world-citizenship and universal brotherhood.
August 10, 1909
Eastern people should more frequently travel or go out West and Western people similarly come East. This would bring about a complementary understanding, a mutual benefit and wider view. Whilst I should not like to lessen the interest and charm of diversity, homogeneity makes for the national development and defence, subdues the province to the country and develops a great national spirit, an indigenous yet continental art and literature.
August 12, 1909
If you have a feeling for all styles and a mastery of them, you can best express your prevailing mood and thought, your temperament, in any style. And wonderful are the ways, the lights and shadows of words! Sometimes the concise, direct, concentrated style makes a close appeal and is fit, when the phrase is trimmed of all superfluities and the word stands pat upon the thought; at other times the soul is leisurely and expanded and welcomes a rich, copious, if not more gracious manner, when the spirit likes to play in and out and around about the scene or idea, when even circumlocution, the amplifying and qualifying adjective seem none too much and all the charming optatives and little prepositions must be put in. If you know and have the art in this or any other kind, then the quidnuncs and fault finders go to the wall, and you simply write well.
August 19, 1909
It is not so much conventional goodness as essential goodness that should count. Is that patent? Look around and see.
Oh, the smallness and meanness of the small!
O, the greatness and magnanimity of the great!
September 2, 1909
This appeared in today's Evening Journal (EM):
1.THE CLERMONT IN JERSEY CITY
Edtor of the Evening Journal:
Apropos of the Hudson-Fulton celebration, the following account of the Cermont is not only especially pertinent, but gives a fillip in our civic pride and interest in the approaching festivities. It is taken from a book called ?The Sloops of the Hudson.? By Verplanck and Collyer. Mr. Collyer found it among the manuscript papers of Colonel Nathan Beckwith of Red Hook, Dutchess county, New York, who died in 1865 at the age of 86:
?The first trip of the steamer Clermont started from the East River and went to Jersey City. She was constructed under the personal supervision of Robert Fulton in 1807. She was 100 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 7 feet deep. This steamboat made two or three trips to Albany, and was hauled out at Red Hook, near where Herman Hoffman's store stood, which was destroyed by the British in the Revolutionary war. The property is now owned by Mr. DeKoven. In the winter of 1807 said boat was lengthened to 150 feet and widened to 18 feet: the name was then changed to North River. The hull was built by David Brown of New York and the engine by Watt & Bolton of England. The following advertisement appeared in the Albany Gazette Sept. 1, 1807: ?The steamboat North River will leave Paulus Hook, Jersey City, on Friday, Sept. 4, at 9 o'clock a. m., and arrive at Albany on Saturday at 9 o'clock p. m. Good berths and accommodations are provided. The charge to each passenger is as follows: To Newburgh, $3; time, fourteen hours; to Poughkeepsie, $4; time, seventeen hours; to Esopus, $5; time, twenty hours; to Hudson, $5.50; time, thirty hours; to Albany, $7; time, thirty-six hours.' A notice in the same paper of Oct. 5, 1807, announces that Mr. Fulton's new steamboat left New York at 10 o'clock a. m. against a strong tide and very high water, also a violent gale from the north; it made headway beyond the most sanguine expectations and without being wrecked by the water, heavy sea and gale.?
My impression, or understanding, drawn from competent sources, is that the Clermont, though built on the East River, was brought over to Jersey City, and completed in a ship yard on Greene Street, which then bordered on the river. Certain it is that she made her first trips to and from Jersey City and, it would appear, piled for some time as a packet between this city and Albany. All of the facts and incidents connected with this epoch-making boat are extremely interesting, and the foregoing should receive wider recognition.
Edwin Manners.
(Comment, EM):
As the Clermont was enlarged and renamed in the winter of 1807-1808, the Albany Gazette's announcements were probably of the latter year. But other inferences may be made, and I deem it best to publish documents of this kind as they are found.
If the facts were fully known, it could justly be said that the old Greene street shipyard in Jersey City was the real cradle of steam navigation on the Hudson River and practically of the world. Indeed enough is known to say this substantially. I deduce this from records and traditionary details, however imperfect. The shipyard antedated the Fulton foundry at Greene and Morgan streets. Here the enlarged Clermont or North River was finally dismantled.
September 6, 1909
It is a bright day with a tempered autumn air, suitable for the holiday of labor. Today all who labor and are heavy-laden have the opportunity by statute to rest from their labors and quietly enjoy. But somehow they generally succeed beyond expectation in making of it a true labor day indeed. They become more weary and heavy-laden at their tasks of enjoyment than they would have become of their usual occupations.
After a morning of reading I went over to Manhattan and browsed or moused about the streets. Constantly I find there enough in spectacle and people to feed upon, catch, bog, amuse, ripen, season knowledge and finally to instruct in the harmonies of wisdom and truth. What a captivating theatre of light, movement, incident and life is a great city!
I noticed on the bulletin-boards that Commander Peary had discovered the North Pole on April 6th last. This is startling news and an amazing coincidence, coming so soon on the delayed reports that Dr. Cook had attained the same goal April 21, 1908 -the baffling, mysterious goal that had defied the centuries. There is no doubt that this puts a particularly bright star in the annals of American discovery.
September 9, 1909
Edward H. Harriman died this afternoon at Arden, his country seat. I knew him and his brothers when they were boys in this city. They called at the house. The Harriman pew in Grace Church was just to the left of ours, and I fear I sometimes allowed my eyes to stray from my prayer-book to their sister, an attractive girl and much devoted to the church. Mr. H. was a financier of large wealth and accounted one of the great, if not the foremost of railroad operations. He has done much undoubtedly over a wide territory to develop the resources of the Country, and to unify and improve transportation facilities. The railroad and steamship lines he controlled comprised the most extensive system of transit in the world, exceeding the Hill properties.
As I knew him, he was called Henry and a likely young man, but as he trained in an older set, I do not bring back much about him except his calling upon my sisters. His father was an Episcopal clergyman and preached occasionally at Grace Church, this City.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Day and Night
Day blue Man, his heart is burning,
Clothed in white mountain robes shining brightly;
His trees stretch up, grow, and release in leafy spires;
With eyes wide open to lush visions,
We caress his thick forest and vale;
His strong, armored chest breathes out,
Showering the land and sea with dark wet gifts,
Before rainbows of promise;
The circumambient air is ablaze of winged praise;
He is the power over the whole Earth;
Wisdom and freedom he always gives,
and the living call him 'Father'....
Night black Womyn, her heart keeps changing,
Ever revealing and hiding in intimate cycles;
The vast ocean waters dance, in and out, to her song;
With eyes closed, we may enter her sacred castle,
The rounded hills and gardens, bathed in star light;
Waxing or waning, new or full,
Her beautiful breast, barely covered by a thin dark dress,
Points of light peak through, wink, blink, and twinkle;
Little children of the night, she holds near her heart,
Guardian Spirits of the past, present and future;
Love and mystery she always gives,
and the living call her 'Mother'....
adapted from a Pueblo poem by Hartley Alexander 1927
Clothed in white mountain robes shining brightly;
His trees stretch up, grow, and release in leafy spires;
With eyes wide open to lush visions,
We caress his thick forest and vale;
His strong, armored chest breathes out,
Showering the land and sea with dark wet gifts,
Before rainbows of promise;
The circumambient air is ablaze of winged praise;
He is the power over the whole Earth;
Wisdom and freedom he always gives,
and the living call him 'Father'....
Night black Womyn, her heart keeps changing,
Ever revealing and hiding in intimate cycles;
The vast ocean waters dance, in and out, to her song;
With eyes closed, we may enter her sacred castle,
The rounded hills and gardens, bathed in star light;
Waxing or waning, new or full,
Her beautiful breast, barely covered by a thin dark dress,
Points of light peak through, wink, blink, and twinkle;
Little children of the night, she holds near her heart,
Guardian Spirits of the past, present and future;
Love and mystery she always gives,
and the living call her 'Mother'....
adapted from a Pueblo poem by Hartley Alexander 1927
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Hamlet, Julia Marlowe, Golden West
June 8, 1909
The Rev. F. E. Mortimer called last evening. He sails on the Lusitania Wednesday and will be away during the summer.
My nephew Harold Beekman was in town this afternoon and looked in for a while.
I have decided to take a trip to the Golden West and am shaping things to that End. I leave next Saturday at noon by way of the Newyork Central Railroad.
June 9, 1909
Blanche and I braved a heavy, misting night to see Hamlet at the old Academy of Music. E. H. Sothern was the Prince and Julia Marlowe, his somewhat large feminine foil, played Ophelia. It is not needful to make differing degrees and kinds in comparison, in order to say that it was a refined, excellent presentation and highly appreciated. How Shakespeare's free, firm and felicitous handling of incident and character carries through the severest test and strain! It is fortunate to have so great a tradition and standard as a bulwark for the stage.
The Rev. F. E. Mortimer called last evening. He sails on the Lusitania Wednesday and will be away during the summer.
My nephew Harold Beekman was in town this afternoon and looked in for a while.
I have decided to take a trip to the Golden West and am shaping things to that End. I leave next Saturday at noon by way of the Newyork Central Railroad.
June 9, 1909
Blanche and I braved a heavy, misting night to see Hamlet at the old Academy of Music. E. H. Sothern was the Prince and Julia Marlowe, his somewhat large feminine foil, played Ophelia. It is not needful to make differing degrees and kinds in comparison, in order to say that it was a refined, excellent presentation and highly appreciated. How Shakespeare's free, firm and felicitous handling of incident and character carries through the severest test and strain! It is fortunate to have so great a tradition and standard as a bulwark for the stage.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Music...and fancies
June 3, 1909
Music sets all my fancies flying and suspends my soul amid the fathomless eternities.
Monday, June 1, 2009
March 11, 1909
At times certain tones in music, certain sounds heard at night and whistling winds, particularly at sea have put me in a disturbed but reflective mood, when all else seemed stilled, and I looked into the depths of being with unusual clarity, and felt with an emotion as though my heart would fail the surge and mystery of the universal life: yet tossing as I seemed in a frail shallop far out on treacherous, darkling, unsheltered seas, I remained undismayed. I had a poise in this elemental feeling, a sense of security -I knew I carried with me an isle of safety in my very soul -something that nothing could daunt, that no hazards of fortune or misadventures amongst men or perils of nature could render nugatory. My breath might stop or quicken, my heart beat intensely or quit, the corporeal envelope disappear, but my soul was self-centered and serene, stablished as on a rock, unconquered and indestructible.
March 16, 1909
My most congenial companion is my own mind or soul, with which I am on familiar terms, and can commune intimately as with an alter ego, or alterum rue (L. altera).
I should like to marry a comprehensive mind as well as an attractive body, but can not find that particular combination that fills my intent. In earlier days love may be collish, illusive or confused, it may strike fire aright and fulfil, or dissipate itself, but later it should have some raison d'etre*, some congeniality of soul and ethical consideration or sanctions.
*
March 18, 1909
Club night, Princeton Club, Manhattan
March 22, 1909
Sunday morning I attended the services at St. Mark's with Marie and Blanche. Again I felt as by discovery the wonderfully rich deposit of truth found here, accumulated, whipped, worn into beautiful shapes and forms through the ages -a noble growth and structure. With all its defects and shortcomings, the man who would lay rude hands on the Church -I care not what cold intellect or ruffling force he has -is no artist or philosopher or well-wisher of his kind, but peradventure a barbarian.
March 23, 1909
Annual Dinner and Re-union of the Old Boys of Mount Pleasant Academy, at the Hotel Manhattan.
March 25, 1909
This evening I attended a meeting of the local Historical Society in the Public Library building. Mr. John C. Payne went over some maps and records pertaining to the Hudson County waterfront. He detailed facts and statistics, giving here and there a more vitalizing point, but the treatment for the most part was dry and limited, when it might readily have been made enlarging and progressive. It showed industry and research, but in this it was by no means thorough. I might take exception to his negative view about farming out the ripa for revenue, to the proceedings and very existences of the Riparian Commission, yet again these have their defences. Mr. Payne is secretary of the commission and commended its acts, perhaps naturally enough; yet it is decidedly questionable whether a commission that has conveyed away from the people to monopolizing corporations some of the choicest, most valuable shore property in this country or abroad, for a meager or inadequate consideration, and has permitted the City on its Eastern front to be hedged in as by a veritable Chinese wall -it is a question, I say, whether such a commission is entitled to much credit or praise.
March 29, 1909
A special meeting of the Hudson County Bar Association, at the Chancery Chambers.
April 1, 1909
After a busy morning, I felt the call of spring and this afternoon strolled through Westside Park, resting by the lake and pool to see the children play and the boys at baseball on the wide playing grounds. The air was cool with a liquid softness and slightly hazed, not so much by nature as by the smoke of manufacture that blew across the park. The prevailing dun of the sward was faintly mottled and yielding to the beginnings of the oncoming green. From one of the Italian-like pergolas or shelter houses that abut the parkway I got a goodly view. The dwelling houses nestled snugly on either hand: a fair church tower looked up, the dark lines of the still leafless trees fretted the sky; there was little animation from foot or wheel, but the graying atmosphere was shot through with old gold and in the distance the sparkling waters of the Hackensack added spirit to the scene.
April 5, 1909
Yesterday -Palm Sunday -I went to St. Mark's, the morning service. Dr. Roper preached an excellent sermon about Christ the conqueror of pain: it was vital and sympathetic. I came away with palms in my hand.
Mrs. Flavel McGee dined with us. Later M., B. and I supped at the McGees' house, Fairmont Avenue and Hudson Boulevard and confabulated a while with this branch of the Flavian gens.
April 8, 1909
Engaged a man to work on the farm and sent him out there. I rambled around Manhattan the rest of the afternoon and dined there. Part of the evening I indulged in a Music Hall Melange, and part along the brilliantly lighted streets, in the folds of the protecting buildings and various night, seeing the unfamiliar in the familiar, and noting with attractive interest the movement, the surge, the personal idiom and denotement of those sensuous units or figures, made up in the inimitable fashion of men and women, and caressed by the circumambient fingers of the sentient air. The show inside was arousing, brightening, but the one outside, incomparably superior.
April 10, 1909
Algernon Charles Swinburne, the last of the greater Victorian poets, died this morning in England. I was always charmed with his flute-like voice, his swift spirit and the magic splendor of his words. He was perhaps unsurpassed as a lyric or metrist, and I treasure some of his jewels; yet in a larger sense, he diffused and flattened, is too adjectival, too slightly substantive. He sang of the flashing or darkening sea but sounded not the spiritual deeps. You remark the rare manipulation, the dexterity of the word-jugglers, brilliant, but not deeply or naturally melodic, and the impression is faint, apt to fade, the thought fails to provoke, stimulate, the feeling is engaged but not aroused as by a Miltonic sonnet it is aroused. He wrote frames and with some force, but lacked the concentration, point, informing mood and culminating power of great tragedy.
April 12, 1909
Easter was blessed with a bright day. The weather was unusually fine with golden light and cool, crisp air. Marie, Helen and I attended the main morning service at St. Mark's and made our Easter offerings. Otherwise, with the exception of a short walk in the afternoon, I remained at home and read.
April 13, 1909
Sent a photograph of my father and his autograph to the Free Public Library, with a note to President Stowe, at whose request they were sent.
The Rev. Frederic E. Mortimer, Rector of St. Mark's, called in the evening and we had a pleasant chattery. He graciously sent a note of thanks yesterday for my Easter offering. He is wise in this world as well as the other, and that is just to both and becoming.
April 14, 1909
Concert at Grand View Auditorium, for the benefit of Christ Hospital.
Rain all day, pouring for the most part.
April 15, 1909
Meeting of the University Club at the Club Rooms, Hasbrouck Institute.
The morning was flecked, recovering from yesterday's storm. Mid-afternoon it brightened spring-like with a clean atmosphere. I rode about Central Park on horseback, and enjoyed the baby spring as seen in tender grass, and bud-tipped trees, and in the feel of the air. What an oasis amid the pity-less streets! After dinner I went to the theatre and later attended a variegated ball.
April 16, 1909
Marie and I sat out a concert tonight. It was not inspiriting: the minor key prevailed. The music put me in a reflective but somber mood. It lacked luster. There are those, usually the young and tyros in art, who think that a depressive seriousness is correspondingly deep. The subdued and melancholy have a sweetness of their own, yet they are secluded eddies of life. The great currents express themselves in strong music and forms: they command and uplift, they compensate, fulfil supremely and make whole.
April 20, 1909
The Shubert Glee Club concert, in the Auditorium of the High School.
Dinner to Mayor McClellan at the Waldorf-Astoria, given under the auspices of the Princeton Club. -The night was wet, rainy, but I put over river to the big hostelry, where after a brief reception we dined in the large ball-room, which was artistically decorated with the national and university colors, and suggested the spaciousness, hight, and broad relief, of some royal banqueting hall. I was pleased to meet the Mayor, who has managed municipal affairs under trying difficulties with marked success. He is short, stockily built, with a direct, manly bearing and countenance. Back in the seventies I met his father, Gen. McClellan, who was then running for Governor of New-Jersey. The General was affectionately called by the veterans, his companions in arms, ?the little idol that we love?. President Woodrow Wilson made a fine address, brilliant at times, in tribute to the Mayor and on university topics. The Mayor spoke in a straight-forward manner, in fitting terms, about his administration and Princeton. His utterance, well informed, came out of experience with the added weight or prestiges of office. I sat at a round table with some dear old fellows of '77.
April 23, 1909
America should become richer in memoirs. Besides their own peculiar interest, they give depth, relief to the personal, the social perspective and enliven the dry annals of history. We do not find ourselves sufficiently surrounded by sentient and speaking figures of the past, and wish for the enrichment of our society by their spiritual presence and voices. The barest record may have its force and suggestion, but the most accurate statement is only a segment of the truth, a skeleton of a historical presentment. Intimate pictures, richly or slightly made, if moved by insight and vision, have a friendly, revealing power that helps more nearly and subtly to complete the body, air and fashion of the times moment considered or in view, and give a wholeness and traditional solidity to life.
April 26, 1909
My acquaintance with Newyork might be regarded as familiar; we have been on more than speaking terms; along with some frowns, we have been at times really friendly and intimate, nor has this familiarity bred contempt, thought I keep my critical sense alive to form and betterments. Newyork is too great and diversified for that, it is built on too many factors, too many lives and spirits have gone into its make-up and uplift. Not only the larger unit or municipal personality, but each separate being has added its peculiar human note or dropped some encircling human trace in the bed and current of the city's structure and life. It has arisen out of much that is unaccountable when all the faces are recounted and histories rendered. I find it perennially interesting and absorbing. Its very noise is sea-like as befits its fluviatile setting. Every casual jaunt into Manhattan and its supporting environs yield surprising rescues from the shadows of the past or puts things seen into unforeseen attitudes, and at different points or angles of incidence and reflections. Infinite is the variety of types, yet even the same face or scene wears a changed light and aspect at each recurrence, whether actual or through medial refraction and altered vision. One constantly meets with such evocations, such strange revealments! To the warm imagination this is true to some extent everywhere, but where more intensely than where multitudes of human beings of mingled and contrasted cosmopolitan diversity have settled, mixed massed, built and swarmed for long generations? Here history thickens, deepens, society becomes richer, more complex and such huge centers of popular pressure electrically attract and stimulate, and about them hover, despite economic reasons, a local spirit, some indefinable glamour and divine mystery.
April 29, 1909
This morning I awoke to a snow shower -the whitened streets and tops of things presented a wintry scene. Ah, the poor spring child is cold today! The child spring is weeping in sleet and rain all thinly clad in its sea-green cape.
April 30, 1909
At the High School on the hill-top, I listened this evening to a discursive talk on ?How Music Began?, by Prof. John D. Prince, of Columbia University. He illustrated his remarks with snatches from folk-songs, of varying degrees of merit, and concluded with a composition of his own, set to the words of Kipling's ?Mandalay?, which he sang and played with marked spirit and abandon. Prof. Prince is a New-Jersey legislator -he was speaker of the last session, a teacher of languages, and manifestly practices with credit the agreeable art of music.
May 3, 1909
Miss Stewart, who has been visiting us for several days, left for home this afternoon. She is a sister, the only surviving sister of the late Judge Stewart of Trenton.
Hired a farm-hand at a West street office to work on the farm; he goes out to-morrow morning.
May 4, 1909
At a benefit concert tonight at Elks' Hall, Marie and I enjoyed some musical moments, especially the virtuoso playing of a young violinist -((Kotlarsky)).
May 6, 1909
Meeting of the local Princeton Alumni Association, at Hasbrouck Hall.
------------------------------
One's ink-pot may not always follow his think-pot, so many things are coming and going between, yet there is a charm in intermediary thoughts, and yet a special fascination in re-envisaging recollected things, seen through the haze of distance in time or space, or musing expressively on moods and memories. Here is a fly upon my window pane -the season's first: it gives a droning buzz or sound, like unto the season's last -an autumn's afternoon. It spint the circuit of contrasts and unites in a general symbol or a complexity. A creature with its uses and purposeful, a fine denizen of the natural world, looked upon more engagingly by eye than microscope, or a baleful little scavenger, good and bad, or what you will. It matters not -it matters. A trifling somewhat, but, oh, how important a trifle, perplexed or clear, is -is everything! Its interesting self apart, this dozing bug has turned my mood, my mind in several channels, and the current flows, not momently or intermittently, but continues crescendo or diminuendo to the end. Ah, the comedy of the fly, the pinnatile tragedy of the insect! It may carry you far out and on, inscrutably faring, only to defeat you of your apparent due or make the barren waste-place bloom or gold and give you fortune in desired kinds. Is it not all in the fashioning of a man, the law of being, the nemesis of fitness, the soul's protasis, to ultimate good, whether here or hereafter? Yes, it is, all that, all that and something more.
May 10, 1909
Memories of Constantinople were revived today by the official investiture of Sultan Mehmed V. with the Turkish sovereignty. He succeeds the wily Abdul Hamid who was recently deposed by the Young Turks. The latter are seeking to secure some degree of constitutional government and social emancipation. They are evidently in earnest, and in league with the time-spirit are bringing about a transformation that is epochal and far reaching. And they seem to be doing this in a preconsidered masterful way, with not more than the necessary spectacle and ado, and with less sacrifice than is usual in such a revolution. Indeed, it would appear that the army were simply executing an act of evolution, and naturally the few who stood resisting in its path were brushed aside or out of existence by this subtle but invincible power. And this fluid force finds in Mahmond Chefket Pasha a fit instrument of its progressive purposes.
May 13, 1909
Late in the afternoon I went over the river for something, and dined simply at one of those ?shining halls?, as Howells calls them. Later I went slumming.
I should like to make an illuminating remark or two about my dark trip through the Ghetto and Chinatown. These black swarms of humans, scarcely relieved against the night, have a stubborn interest, but weigh down my thoughts. They cast somber shadows, but less sinistre than those in other quarters of the city. In a lumpish, sordid way they manage to tread it out and serve. Incidentally some animal spirit awakens and leads out of it, and it has its own bargain and sale sufficiency. But alas! So little light!
The slippered, stealthy pigtails, blinking in their dingy, circuitous alleys, entries and underground passages, gave a more exotic sense. The joss-house had some interesting souvenirs, in particular some carved scenes in the life of Confucius; the restaurants looked bright and clean, the theatre bare of stage but prettily costumed, took on an endless mimetic, yet ludicrous jangle; here and around they were all to be seen -the merchant, the doctor, the porter, laundrymen -brown, slant-eyed, bloused, hand-pocketed, furtive-slippered -, opium and its den or joint, known to the initiate, the devious dance-hall, a sorry mission, gambling holes, ginger, confections, chop-suey, chinaware, punk, lanterns, fire-crackers, toys, red -yes red seemed to be the color of redemption in this swart scheme. It was all so far from the Flowery Kingdom, you know, and yet I saw my old friend the mandarin with his familiar Chinese characters on a tea-caddy, and lo! he kindly conducted me there again as in my long-ago childhood.
May 15, 1909
This afternoon Blanche and I witnessed from the McGees' house a Marathon race on the Hudson Boulevard. In the evening I amused myself at an entertainment in Manhattan.
May 17, 1909
Sunday M., B., and I attended services at St. Mark's. Mr. Mortimer preached. We came home with Mrs. Bryan and Mrs. McGill. I might descant on the beauty of going to church, but almost any one who goes must perceive its virtues and fulfillments.
I rested at home the remainder of the day, or scribbled a few notes and read.
May 18, 1909
George Meredith, the English novelist, died early this morning. The other day there died a poet with comparatively little substance or spiritual depth but of matchless, mellifluous or metrical song. With Meredith the conditions seemed to be measurably reversed: a keen wit, essentially poetic, a human analyst of rare insight, with more, however, of brittle intellect than elasticity and pervasive, humorous, comprehending soul, his sententious fragments of expression, instinct with epigram weighted, abrupt, had a strained if not affected look or gave forth a jangled music. Yet the content was originally visioned and conceived, singularly but not completely. The reading of him and Browning is a good exercise in mental gymnastics. It will stiffen your fibre if it does not please your sense of form. Still it was their several mode of getting out what was in them and should be gratefully accepted. The union of the essential and expressive marks the greatest writers. It can not be said that certain authors were less subtle and deep, whose style, nevertheless, carried their images and message with unimpeded claritude.
May 20, 1909
It is unusually cool; the sky is overcast with a slaty spread which lightens at times and lets through some tempered or subdued sunshine.
The Circus has come to town, and great is the joy of the youngster large or small.
May 21, 1909
Is the book type-written and manufactured or hand-made and heart-felt?
I like different styles, various modes of expression, provided they are good of their several kinds; nor would it seem that a composite of all were best -that might be indifferent, neither one thing nor another, confused and unindicated, a pale polished surface. What seems to be best is a rich, flexible, glancing style, informed with temper and imagination and wrought with a high simplicity.
May 24, 1909
Sometimes I wonder if the stage is not less effective than it used to be. It certainly has not the charm, the roseate hues, the indefinable beckonings that held one's morning eyes. And actually I think it is less strong and salient, if in some degree more reserved and artistic than formerly. I speak of the better sorts. In general it makes but a trifling appeal to the man of fifty. Perhaps he has seen enough, read and experienced enough to account for that. Of the higher drama, I like to read my Sophocles, and Shakespeare better than to see them enacted. Yet the theatre has its sufficient moments that compensate and count. It remains an amusing picture-book of life.
May 28, 1909
Mrs. Muirheid (Clara Pearsall) and her daughter Julia lunched with us.
May 29, 1909
The city is putting on color for Memorial day.
I dined in Newyork, and after a street stroll went to Daly's and saw ?The Climax?, a nationally acted and moving phase of artistic Bohemia, such as it is in a subdued apartment-house retreat. Music is the art this time and a lost and recovered voice the pathos and triumph of the theme with its love accompaniment. In some respects an unusually good little play, depending on itself more than on accessories. And still only a minor current. Of some intimate merit, it was as a public exhibition somewhat dull.
May 31, 1909
We had at Sunday supper Mrs. McGee (Julia Randolph). She was charmingly gowned and made an attractive picture as she toyed with her tea-cup and languidly talked.
Today is fine, and the city is bright with bunting and animated. The gayer features prevail over the grave in commemoration of the day. The parade of military and civic organizations was unusually large -about 25000 in line -and made a stirring pageant. Some of the veterans marched and others were borne in carriages. Amid a degree of dull looking-on, these crumbling remnants of war and time were regarded with lively feelings of gratitude and given becoming attention and applause. What is needed is some signal and adequate expression of the day's significance, some Lincolnian or Periclesian tribute!
At times certain tones in music, certain sounds heard at night and whistling winds, particularly at sea have put me in a disturbed but reflective mood, when all else seemed stilled, and I looked into the depths of being with unusual clarity, and felt with an emotion as though my heart would fail the surge and mystery of the universal life: yet tossing as I seemed in a frail shallop far out on treacherous, darkling, unsheltered seas, I remained undismayed. I had a poise in this elemental feeling, a sense of security -I knew I carried with me an isle of safety in my very soul -something that nothing could daunt, that no hazards of fortune or misadventures amongst men or perils of nature could render nugatory. My breath might stop or quicken, my heart beat intensely or quit, the corporeal envelope disappear, but my soul was self-centered and serene, stablished as on a rock, unconquered and indestructible.
March 16, 1909
My most congenial companion is my own mind or soul, with which I am on familiar terms, and can commune intimately as with an alter ego, or alterum rue (L. altera).
I should like to marry a comprehensive mind as well as an attractive body, but can not find that particular combination that fills my intent. In earlier days love may be collish, illusive or confused, it may strike fire aright and fulfil, or dissipate itself, but later it should have some raison d'etre*, some congeniality of soul and ethical consideration or sanctions.
*
March 18, 1909
Club night, Princeton Club, Manhattan
March 22, 1909
Sunday morning I attended the services at St. Mark's with Marie and Blanche. Again I felt as by discovery the wonderfully rich deposit of truth found here, accumulated, whipped, worn into beautiful shapes and forms through the ages -a noble growth and structure. With all its defects and shortcomings, the man who would lay rude hands on the Church -I care not what cold intellect or ruffling force he has -is no artist or philosopher or well-wisher of his kind, but peradventure a barbarian.
March 23, 1909
Annual Dinner and Re-union of the Old Boys of Mount Pleasant Academy, at the Hotel Manhattan.
March 25, 1909
This evening I attended a meeting of the local Historical Society in the Public Library building. Mr. John C. Payne went over some maps and records pertaining to the Hudson County waterfront. He detailed facts and statistics, giving here and there a more vitalizing point, but the treatment for the most part was dry and limited, when it might readily have been made enlarging and progressive. It showed industry and research, but in this it was by no means thorough. I might take exception to his negative view about farming out the ripa for revenue, to the proceedings and very existences of the Riparian Commission, yet again these have their defences. Mr. Payne is secretary of the commission and commended its acts, perhaps naturally enough; yet it is decidedly questionable whether a commission that has conveyed away from the people to monopolizing corporations some of the choicest, most valuable shore property in this country or abroad, for a meager or inadequate consideration, and has permitted the City on its Eastern front to be hedged in as by a veritable Chinese wall -it is a question, I say, whether such a commission is entitled to much credit or praise.
March 29, 1909
A special meeting of the Hudson County Bar Association, at the Chancery Chambers.
April 1, 1909
After a busy morning, I felt the call of spring and this afternoon strolled through Westside Park, resting by the lake and pool to see the children play and the boys at baseball on the wide playing grounds. The air was cool with a liquid softness and slightly hazed, not so much by nature as by the smoke of manufacture that blew across the park. The prevailing dun of the sward was faintly mottled and yielding to the beginnings of the oncoming green. From one of the Italian-like pergolas or shelter houses that abut the parkway I got a goodly view. The dwelling houses nestled snugly on either hand: a fair church tower looked up, the dark lines of the still leafless trees fretted the sky; there was little animation from foot or wheel, but the graying atmosphere was shot through with old gold and in the distance the sparkling waters of the Hackensack added spirit to the scene.
April 5, 1909
Yesterday -Palm Sunday -I went to St. Mark's, the morning service. Dr. Roper preached an excellent sermon about Christ the conqueror of pain: it was vital and sympathetic. I came away with palms in my hand.
Mrs. Flavel McGee dined with us. Later M., B. and I supped at the McGees' house, Fairmont Avenue and Hudson Boulevard and confabulated a while with this branch of the Flavian gens.
April 8, 1909
Engaged a man to work on the farm and sent him out there. I rambled around Manhattan the rest of the afternoon and dined there. Part of the evening I indulged in a Music Hall Melange, and part along the brilliantly lighted streets, in the folds of the protecting buildings and various night, seeing the unfamiliar in the familiar, and noting with attractive interest the movement, the surge, the personal idiom and denotement of those sensuous units or figures, made up in the inimitable fashion of men and women, and caressed by the circumambient fingers of the sentient air. The show inside was arousing, brightening, but the one outside, incomparably superior.
April 10, 1909
Algernon Charles Swinburne, the last of the greater Victorian poets, died this morning in England. I was always charmed with his flute-like voice, his swift spirit and the magic splendor of his words. He was perhaps unsurpassed as a lyric or metrist, and I treasure some of his jewels; yet in a larger sense, he diffused and flattened, is too adjectival, too slightly substantive. He sang of the flashing or darkening sea but sounded not the spiritual deeps. You remark the rare manipulation, the dexterity of the word-jugglers, brilliant, but not deeply or naturally melodic, and the impression is faint, apt to fade, the thought fails to provoke, stimulate, the feeling is engaged but not aroused as by a Miltonic sonnet it is aroused. He wrote frames and with some force, but lacked the concentration, point, informing mood and culminating power of great tragedy.
April 12, 1909
Easter was blessed with a bright day. The weather was unusually fine with golden light and cool, crisp air. Marie, Helen and I attended the main morning service at St. Mark's and made our Easter offerings. Otherwise, with the exception of a short walk in the afternoon, I remained at home and read.
April 13, 1909
Sent a photograph of my father and his autograph to the Free Public Library, with a note to President Stowe, at whose request they were sent.
The Rev. Frederic E. Mortimer, Rector of St. Mark's, called in the evening and we had a pleasant chattery. He graciously sent a note of thanks yesterday for my Easter offering. He is wise in this world as well as the other, and that is just to both and becoming.
April 14, 1909
Concert at Grand View Auditorium, for the benefit of Christ Hospital.
Rain all day, pouring for the most part.
April 15, 1909
Meeting of the University Club at the Club Rooms, Hasbrouck Institute.
The morning was flecked, recovering from yesterday's storm. Mid-afternoon it brightened spring-like with a clean atmosphere. I rode about Central Park on horseback, and enjoyed the baby spring as seen in tender grass, and bud-tipped trees, and in the feel of the air. What an oasis amid the pity-less streets! After dinner I went to the theatre and later attended a variegated ball.
April 16, 1909
Marie and I sat out a concert tonight. It was not inspiriting: the minor key prevailed. The music put me in a reflective but somber mood. It lacked luster. There are those, usually the young and tyros in art, who think that a depressive seriousness is correspondingly deep. The subdued and melancholy have a sweetness of their own, yet they are secluded eddies of life. The great currents express themselves in strong music and forms: they command and uplift, they compensate, fulfil supremely and make whole.
April 20, 1909
The Shubert Glee Club concert, in the Auditorium of the High School.
Dinner to Mayor McClellan at the Waldorf-Astoria, given under the auspices of the Princeton Club. -The night was wet, rainy, but I put over river to the big hostelry, where after a brief reception we dined in the large ball-room, which was artistically decorated with the national and university colors, and suggested the spaciousness, hight, and broad relief, of some royal banqueting hall. I was pleased to meet the Mayor, who has managed municipal affairs under trying difficulties with marked success. He is short, stockily built, with a direct, manly bearing and countenance. Back in the seventies I met his father, Gen. McClellan, who was then running for Governor of New-Jersey. The General was affectionately called by the veterans, his companions in arms, ?the little idol that we love?. President Woodrow Wilson made a fine address, brilliant at times, in tribute to the Mayor and on university topics. The Mayor spoke in a straight-forward manner, in fitting terms, about his administration and Princeton. His utterance, well informed, came out of experience with the added weight or prestiges of office. I sat at a round table with some dear old fellows of '77.
April 23, 1909
America should become richer in memoirs. Besides their own peculiar interest, they give depth, relief to the personal, the social perspective and enliven the dry annals of history. We do not find ourselves sufficiently surrounded by sentient and speaking figures of the past, and wish for the enrichment of our society by their spiritual presence and voices. The barest record may have its force and suggestion, but the most accurate statement is only a segment of the truth, a skeleton of a historical presentment. Intimate pictures, richly or slightly made, if moved by insight and vision, have a friendly, revealing power that helps more nearly and subtly to complete the body, air and fashion of the times moment considered or in view, and give a wholeness and traditional solidity to life.
April 26, 1909
My acquaintance with Newyork might be regarded as familiar; we have been on more than speaking terms; along with some frowns, we have been at times really friendly and intimate, nor has this familiarity bred contempt, thought I keep my critical sense alive to form and betterments. Newyork is too great and diversified for that, it is built on too many factors, too many lives and spirits have gone into its make-up and uplift. Not only the larger unit or municipal personality, but each separate being has added its peculiar human note or dropped some encircling human trace in the bed and current of the city's structure and life. It has arisen out of much that is unaccountable when all the faces are recounted and histories rendered. I find it perennially interesting and absorbing. Its very noise is sea-like as befits its fluviatile setting. Every casual jaunt into Manhattan and its supporting environs yield surprising rescues from the shadows of the past or puts things seen into unforeseen attitudes, and at different points or angles of incidence and reflections. Infinite is the variety of types, yet even the same face or scene wears a changed light and aspect at each recurrence, whether actual or through medial refraction and altered vision. One constantly meets with such evocations, such strange revealments! To the warm imagination this is true to some extent everywhere, but where more intensely than where multitudes of human beings of mingled and contrasted cosmopolitan diversity have settled, mixed massed, built and swarmed for long generations? Here history thickens, deepens, society becomes richer, more complex and such huge centers of popular pressure electrically attract and stimulate, and about them hover, despite economic reasons, a local spirit, some indefinable glamour and divine mystery.
April 29, 1909
This morning I awoke to a snow shower -the whitened streets and tops of things presented a wintry scene. Ah, the poor spring child is cold today! The child spring is weeping in sleet and rain all thinly clad in its sea-green cape.
April 30, 1909
At the High School on the hill-top, I listened this evening to a discursive talk on ?How Music Began?, by Prof. John D. Prince, of Columbia University. He illustrated his remarks with snatches from folk-songs, of varying degrees of merit, and concluded with a composition of his own, set to the words of Kipling's ?Mandalay?, which he sang and played with marked spirit and abandon. Prof. Prince is a New-Jersey legislator -he was speaker of the last session, a teacher of languages, and manifestly practices with credit the agreeable art of music.
May 3, 1909
Miss Stewart, who has been visiting us for several days, left for home this afternoon. She is a sister, the only surviving sister of the late Judge Stewart of Trenton.
Hired a farm-hand at a West street office to work on the farm; he goes out to-morrow morning.
May 4, 1909
At a benefit concert tonight at Elks' Hall, Marie and I enjoyed some musical moments, especially the virtuoso playing of a young violinist -((Kotlarsky)).
May 6, 1909
Meeting of the local Princeton Alumni Association, at Hasbrouck Hall.
------------------------------
One's ink-pot may not always follow his think-pot, so many things are coming and going between, yet there is a charm in intermediary thoughts, and yet a special fascination in re-envisaging recollected things, seen through the haze of distance in time or space, or musing expressively on moods and memories. Here is a fly upon my window pane -the season's first: it gives a droning buzz or sound, like unto the season's last -an autumn's afternoon. It spint the circuit of contrasts and unites in a general symbol or a complexity. A creature with its uses and purposeful, a fine denizen of the natural world, looked upon more engagingly by eye than microscope, or a baleful little scavenger, good and bad, or what you will. It matters not -it matters. A trifling somewhat, but, oh, how important a trifle, perplexed or clear, is -is everything! Its interesting self apart, this dozing bug has turned my mood, my mind in several channels, and the current flows, not momently or intermittently, but continues crescendo or diminuendo to the end. Ah, the comedy of the fly, the pinnatile tragedy of the insect! It may carry you far out and on, inscrutably faring, only to defeat you of your apparent due or make the barren waste-place bloom or gold and give you fortune in desired kinds. Is it not all in the fashioning of a man, the law of being, the nemesis of fitness, the soul's protasis, to ultimate good, whether here or hereafter? Yes, it is, all that, all that and something more.
May 10, 1909
Memories of Constantinople were revived today by the official investiture of Sultan Mehmed V. with the Turkish sovereignty. He succeeds the wily Abdul Hamid who was recently deposed by the Young Turks. The latter are seeking to secure some degree of constitutional government and social emancipation. They are evidently in earnest, and in league with the time-spirit are bringing about a transformation that is epochal and far reaching. And they seem to be doing this in a preconsidered masterful way, with not more than the necessary spectacle and ado, and with less sacrifice than is usual in such a revolution. Indeed, it would appear that the army were simply executing an act of evolution, and naturally the few who stood resisting in its path were brushed aside or out of existence by this subtle but invincible power. And this fluid force finds in Mahmond Chefket Pasha a fit instrument of its progressive purposes.
May 13, 1909
Late in the afternoon I went over the river for something, and dined simply at one of those ?shining halls?, as Howells calls them. Later I went slumming.
I should like to make an illuminating remark or two about my dark trip through the Ghetto and Chinatown. These black swarms of humans, scarcely relieved against the night, have a stubborn interest, but weigh down my thoughts. They cast somber shadows, but less sinistre than those in other quarters of the city. In a lumpish, sordid way they manage to tread it out and serve. Incidentally some animal spirit awakens and leads out of it, and it has its own bargain and sale sufficiency. But alas! So little light!
The slippered, stealthy pigtails, blinking in their dingy, circuitous alleys, entries and underground passages, gave a more exotic sense. The joss-house had some interesting souvenirs, in particular some carved scenes in the life of Confucius; the restaurants looked bright and clean, the theatre bare of stage but prettily costumed, took on an endless mimetic, yet ludicrous jangle; here and around they were all to be seen -the merchant, the doctor, the porter, laundrymen -brown, slant-eyed, bloused, hand-pocketed, furtive-slippered -, opium and its den or joint, known to the initiate, the devious dance-hall, a sorry mission, gambling holes, ginger, confections, chop-suey, chinaware, punk, lanterns, fire-crackers, toys, red -yes red seemed to be the color of redemption in this swart scheme. It was all so far from the Flowery Kingdom, you know, and yet I saw my old friend the mandarin with his familiar Chinese characters on a tea-caddy, and lo! he kindly conducted me there again as in my long-ago childhood.
May 15, 1909
This afternoon Blanche and I witnessed from the McGees' house a Marathon race on the Hudson Boulevard. In the evening I amused myself at an entertainment in Manhattan.
May 17, 1909
Sunday M., B., and I attended services at St. Mark's. Mr. Mortimer preached. We came home with Mrs. Bryan and Mrs. McGill. I might descant on the beauty of going to church, but almost any one who goes must perceive its virtues and fulfillments.
I rested at home the remainder of the day, or scribbled a few notes and read.
May 18, 1909
George Meredith, the English novelist, died early this morning. The other day there died a poet with comparatively little substance or spiritual depth but of matchless, mellifluous or metrical song. With Meredith the conditions seemed to be measurably reversed: a keen wit, essentially poetic, a human analyst of rare insight, with more, however, of brittle intellect than elasticity and pervasive, humorous, comprehending soul, his sententious fragments of expression, instinct with epigram weighted, abrupt, had a strained if not affected look or gave forth a jangled music. Yet the content was originally visioned and conceived, singularly but not completely. The reading of him and Browning is a good exercise in mental gymnastics. It will stiffen your fibre if it does not please your sense of form. Still it was their several mode of getting out what was in them and should be gratefully accepted. The union of the essential and expressive marks the greatest writers. It can not be said that certain authors were less subtle and deep, whose style, nevertheless, carried their images and message with unimpeded claritude.
May 20, 1909
It is unusually cool; the sky is overcast with a slaty spread which lightens at times and lets through some tempered or subdued sunshine.
The Circus has come to town, and great is the joy of the youngster large or small.
May 21, 1909
Is the book type-written and manufactured or hand-made and heart-felt?
I like different styles, various modes of expression, provided they are good of their several kinds; nor would it seem that a composite of all were best -that might be indifferent, neither one thing nor another, confused and unindicated, a pale polished surface. What seems to be best is a rich, flexible, glancing style, informed with temper and imagination and wrought with a high simplicity.
May 24, 1909
Sometimes I wonder if the stage is not less effective than it used to be. It certainly has not the charm, the roseate hues, the indefinable beckonings that held one's morning eyes. And actually I think it is less strong and salient, if in some degree more reserved and artistic than formerly. I speak of the better sorts. In general it makes but a trifling appeal to the man of fifty. Perhaps he has seen enough, read and experienced enough to account for that. Of the higher drama, I like to read my Sophocles, and Shakespeare better than to see them enacted. Yet the theatre has its sufficient moments that compensate and count. It remains an amusing picture-book of life.
May 28, 1909
Mrs. Muirheid (Clara Pearsall) and her daughter Julia lunched with us.
May 29, 1909
The city is putting on color for Memorial day.
I dined in Newyork, and after a street stroll went to Daly's and saw ?The Climax?, a nationally acted and moving phase of artistic Bohemia, such as it is in a subdued apartment-house retreat. Music is the art this time and a lost and recovered voice the pathos and triumph of the theme with its love accompaniment. In some respects an unusually good little play, depending on itself more than on accessories. And still only a minor current. Of some intimate merit, it was as a public exhibition somewhat dull.
May 31, 1909
We had at Sunday supper Mrs. McGee (Julia Randolph). She was charmingly gowned and made an attractive picture as she toyed with her tea-cup and languidly talked.
Today is fine, and the city is bright with bunting and animated. The gayer features prevail over the grave in commemoration of the day. The parade of military and civic organizations was unusually large -about 25000 in line -and made a stirring pageant. Some of the veterans marched and others were borne in carriages. Amid a degree of dull looking-on, these crumbling remnants of war and time were regarded with lively feelings of gratitude and given becoming attention and applause. What is needed is some signal and adequate expression of the day's significance, some Lincolnian or Periclesian tribute!
Saturday, March 7, 2009
1909 February 25-March 6
February 25, 1909
Dr. Rudolph. Next treatment put over till next June.
Meeting of the Historical Society at the Public Library. Mr. Edgar J. Fisher, of Columbia University, speaks on the “Colonial Land Troubles in New Jersey”.
Mr. Mortimer called in the evening. He seemed to be in good spirits after his recent trip to Florida, and gave some interesting particulars of it. The climate was helpful, but I fancied from what he said that his romance conceptions of the south were somewhat pricked by the reality.
March 1, 1909
There was a ceaseless throng of matters today, mostly business interviews, with the preparation of some legal papers, letters and accounts. As luck would have it, my thoughts kept preferably wandering far afield, gathering up interesting sorts the world over and in the heavens of conception. With the intermittent ringing of the front door and telephone bells, I constantly dropped into the prose of the present, which had its attractive side and lended to nimbleness of mind, but interrupted the syren strain and broke the maturing of ideas. This would seem to be too generally the case, yet active life has its sufficient, redeeming compensations. Who does not know its healthfulness, its zest of doing, of accomplishment, its constancy yet variableness of interest, its disappointments, it’s failures to be overcome, its triumphs, satisfactions and joys? Even its aspects of everydayness have a friendly look for those who keep themselves in tune.
March 3, 1909
Yesterday was rainy, but they needed a workman at the farm, so I trudged over to Manhattan, after turning aside some not very engaging applicants here, and went through the polyglot employment offices on lower Greenwich Street. Most of the subjects stood like inarticulate sticks under cross-examination. At last I secured a reasonably articulate Pole – measurably better than a speechless stick; he was hired and went out to the farm this morning.
March 4, 1909
After the picturesque, impulsive Roosevelt, a roughrider in a double sense, a knight-errant in peace and war, the placid bovine Taft appears to be somewhat lame domesticated, yet he is an able and especially well-trained man for the presidency. He is sensible of the responsibilities of his great office and will hold a knowledge and grasp of its powers, not too curious, original and passion-provoking, yet informed, save commanding and wide-looking. His inauguration took place today in the Senate Chamber, the snow-stormy, inclement weather preventing the open-air ceremony in front of the Capitol.
March 6, 1909
My last birthday was spent in Jerusalem. How blue, how deeply blue the sky appeared that night, as I trod the sepulchral streets far over there in the east. How I watched the crystal stars, how intently I searched for the star, as it were, dipping, prudent in the heavens, that led the wise men to Bethlehem, where I too as a wise man went. The hushed, rich, mysterious night, amidst such arresting associations, seemed fraught with crucial significance. I momently paused unaffrighted but surprised. The shadows projected memorable shapes, historic figures. I assisted at a conclave of the invisibles, and felt thronging presences. I heard overhead unwonted strains of music – I was listening to a symphony of the Eternities.
Afterward
I.
After the worry and the fret,
After the darkness and the wet,
After the stress and storm, -
So am I fashioned to a form,
Fin for home.
II.
I have traveled a little way
Into the world, through the long day.
Seeing the murk and light –
Now I have come to my right,
Anchored at home.
III.
O, I thought life was so fine!
O, I had love and my rhyme!
Thank God, less of tine than joy –
Over here I’m as bright as a boy,
In my new home!
Dr. Rudolph. Next treatment put over till next June.
Meeting of the Historical Society at the Public Library. Mr. Edgar J. Fisher, of Columbia University, speaks on the “Colonial Land Troubles in New Jersey”.
Mr. Mortimer called in the evening. He seemed to be in good spirits after his recent trip to Florida, and gave some interesting particulars of it. The climate was helpful, but I fancied from what he said that his romance conceptions of the south were somewhat pricked by the reality.
March 1, 1909
There was a ceaseless throng of matters today, mostly business interviews, with the preparation of some legal papers, letters and accounts. As luck would have it, my thoughts kept preferably wandering far afield, gathering up interesting sorts the world over and in the heavens of conception. With the intermittent ringing of the front door and telephone bells, I constantly dropped into the prose of the present, which had its attractive side and lended to nimbleness of mind, but interrupted the syren strain and broke the maturing of ideas. This would seem to be too generally the case, yet active life has its sufficient, redeeming compensations. Who does not know its healthfulness, its zest of doing, of accomplishment, its constancy yet variableness of interest, its disappointments, it’s failures to be overcome, its triumphs, satisfactions and joys? Even its aspects of everydayness have a friendly look for those who keep themselves in tune.
March 3, 1909
Yesterday was rainy, but they needed a workman at the farm, so I trudged over to Manhattan, after turning aside some not very engaging applicants here, and went through the polyglot employment offices on lower Greenwich Street. Most of the subjects stood like inarticulate sticks under cross-examination. At last I secured a reasonably articulate Pole – measurably better than a speechless stick; he was hired and went out to the farm this morning.
March 4, 1909
After the picturesque, impulsive Roosevelt, a roughrider in a double sense, a knight-errant in peace and war, the placid bovine Taft appears to be somewhat lame domesticated, yet he is an able and especially well-trained man for the presidency. He is sensible of the responsibilities of his great office and will hold a knowledge and grasp of its powers, not too curious, original and passion-provoking, yet informed, save commanding and wide-looking. His inauguration took place today in the Senate Chamber, the snow-stormy, inclement weather preventing the open-air ceremony in front of the Capitol.
March 6, 1909
My last birthday was spent in Jerusalem. How blue, how deeply blue the sky appeared that night, as I trod the sepulchral streets far over there in the east. How I watched the crystal stars, how intently I searched for the star, as it were, dipping, prudent in the heavens, that led the wise men to Bethlehem, where I too as a wise man went. The hushed, rich, mysterious night, amidst such arresting associations, seemed fraught with crucial significance. I momently paused unaffrighted but surprised. The shadows projected memorable shapes, historic figures. I assisted at a conclave of the invisibles, and felt thronging presences. I heard overhead unwonted strains of music – I was listening to a symphony of the Eternities.
Afterward
I.
After the worry and the fret,
After the darkness and the wet,
After the stress and storm, -
So am I fashioned to a form,
Fin for home.
II.
I have traveled a little way
Into the world, through the long day.
Seeing the murk and light –
Now I have come to my right,
Anchored at home.
III.
O, I thought life was so fine!
O, I had love and my rhyme!
Thank God, less of tine than joy –
Over here I’m as bright as a boy,
In my new home!
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