Though all the bards of earth were dead,
And all their music passed away,
What Nature wishes should be said
She'll find the rightful voice to say!
And all their music passed away,
What Nature wishes should be said
She'll find the rightful voice to say!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v27 - Wat to Zor
And in his more general contributions to belles-
lettres, whether in prose or verse, the qualities of sympathy and im-
agination have always been apparent. Mr. Winter, as a writer upon
the drama, past or contemporaneous, brings philosophic principles and
a wide knowledge of literature to bear upon
his judgments of actors and the art of act-
ing; and this gives his critiques perspective
and atmosphere. He has strong prejudices;
but no one can question his earnestness and
honesty, or misunderstand his position as a
student of the practical drama, who claims
that in all which pertains to dramaturgy,
moral health is as important as artistic
merit.
Mr. Winter is a New-Englander; drawing
thence, perhaps, his tendency to “moral on
the time. He was born at Gloucester, Mas-
sachusetts, July 15th, 1836; was educated in William WINTER
Boston, and is a graduate of the Harvard
Law School. In 1859 he went to New York, and did book reviewing
for the Sunday Press, and other writing for Vanity Fair, the Albion,
and the Weekly Review. In 1865 he became the dramatic critic of
the New York Tribune, a position he has held for over thirty years.
A number of his books, studying the personalities or events of the
current drama, have been drawn from or based upon his contribu-
tions to that newspaper.
Mr. Winter began to publish poetry in 1854, with the maiden volume
(The Convent and Other Poems'; and half a dozen books of verse
have come from his pen. The latest collection, Wanderers,' in 1888,
contains what he deems most worthy of preservation. These poems,
in purity of diction and form, suggest the influence of the standard
older singers, and outbreathe a sweet and true lyric spirit. They
deal with friendship and love, with the bitter-sweet of life and death.
## p. 16062 (#408) ##########################################
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WILLIAM WINTER
Many are elegiac or commemorative, and these are among the most
felicitous. Mr. Winter, in a preface to this latest volume, expresses
the hope that his verse may prove “a not altogether unworthy addition
to that old school of English Lyrical Poetry, of which gentleness is
the soul and simplicity the garment,” — and this describes not ill his
accomplishment as well as his aim in poetry.
His prose falls into two main classes: the biographies and studies
of stage celebrities, and the essays in which his wanderings in the
storied British islands are chronicled. Of the latter, English Rambles,
'Gray Days and Gold, Old Shrines and Ivy,' and 'Shakespeare's
England,' are representative. Winter writes these sketches pictur-
esquely, mingling fact and sentiment in a way to make very pleasant
and stimulating reading. To the critical studies belong carefully
wrought sketches of Booth, Jefferson, Mary Anderson, and Henry
Irving, and briefer appreciations of many other noteworthy players.
In these critiques, Mr. Winter's views on the technique of the actor's
art are set forth interestingly, with much of literary attraction. In
his daily dramatic criticism, he often indulges in trenchant satire
when attacking what he considers the latter-day fads of the drama, -
the problem play, the Ibsen craze, and the like; and is never more
vigorous and amusing, though hardly fair to some of the newer liter-
ary forces. But Mr. Winter's preaching is both sane and wholesome,
and no doubt it is needed in a day of so much literary confusion.
Altogether, he may be described as a versatile, charming, high-
motived writer, whose influence in his sphere has been decided and
salutary.
JEFFERSON'S RIP VAN WINKLE
From Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson. Copyright 1893, by Macmillan & Co.
E
VERY reader of Washington Irving knows the story of Rip
Van Winkle's adventure on the Catskill Mountains, - that
delightful, romantic idyl, in which character, humor, and
fancy are so delicately blended. Under the spell of Jefferson's
acting the spectator was transported into the past, and made to
see, as with bodily eyes, the orderly Dutch civilization as it crept
up the borders of the Hudson: the quaint villages; the stout
Hollanders, with their pipes and schnapps; the loves and troubles
of an elder generation. It is a calmer life than ours; yet the
same elements compose it. Here is a mean and cruel schemer
making a heedless man his victim, and thriving on the weakness
that he well knows how to betray. Here is parental love, tried,
## p. 16063 (#409) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
1бобз
ease, but
as it often is, by. sad cares; and here the love of young and
hopeful hearts, blooming amid flowers, sunshine, music, and hap-
piness. Rip Van Winkle never seemed so lovable as in the
form of this great actor, standing in poetic relief against the
background of actual life. Jefferson has made him our familiar
friend We see that Rip is a dreamer, fond of his bottle and his
beneath all his rags and tatters, of character as well
as raiment - essentially good. We understand why the children
love him, why the dogs run after him with joy, and why the
jolly boys at the tavern welcome his song and story and genial
companionship. He has wasted his fortune and impoverished
his wife and child, and we know that he is much to blame. He
knows it too; and his talk with the children shows how keenly
he feels the consequence of a weakness which yet he is unable
to discard. It is in those minute touches that Jefferson denoted
his sympathetic study of human nature, - his intuitive perception,
looking quite through the hearts and thoughts of men. The
observer saw this in the struggle of Rip's long-submerged but
only dormant spirit of manliness, when his wife turns him from
their home, in night and storm and abandoned degradation. Still
more vividly was it shown in his pathetic bewilderment, -- his
touching embodiment of the anguish of lonely age bowed down
by sorrow and doubt, — when he comes back from his sleep of
twenty years. His disclosure of himself to his daughter marked
the climax of pathos; and every heart was melted by those
imploring looks of mute suspense, those broken accents of love
that almost fears an utterance. Perhaps the perfection of Jeffer-
son's acting was seen in the weird interview with the ghosts.
That situation is one of the best ever devised for the stage; and
the actor devised it. Midnight on the highest peak of the Cats-
kill, dimly lighted by the moon. No one speaks but Rip. The
ghosts cluster around him. The grim shade of Hudson proffers
a cup of drink to the mortal intruder, already dazed by supernat-
ural surroundings. Rip, almost shuddering in the awful silence,
pledges the ghosts in their liquor. Then suddenly the spell is
broken: the moon is lost in struggling clouds; the spectres glide
away and slowly vanish; and Rip Van Winkle, with the drowsy,
piteous murmur, "Don't leave me, boys," falls into his mystic
sleep.
The idle, dram-drinking Dutch spendthrift — so perfectly re-
produced, yet so exalted by ideal treatment is not a heroic
## p. 16064 (#410) ##########################################
16064
WILLIAM WINTER
figure, and cannot be said to possess an exemplary significance
either in himself or his experience. Yet his temperament has
the fine fibre that everybody loves; and everybody, accordingly,
has a good feeling for him, although nobody may have a good
word for his way of life. All observers know that order of man.
He is generally poor. He never did a bad action in all his life.
He is continually cheering the weak and lowly. He always wears
a smile the reflex of a gentle heart. Ambition does not trouble
him. His wants are few. He has no care, except when, now
and then, he feels that he may have wasted time and talent, or
when the sorrow of others falls darkly on his heart. This, how-
ever, is rare; for at most times he is “bright as light and clear
as wind. ” Nature has established with him a kind of kindred
that she allows with only a chosen few. In him Shakespeare's
rosy ideal is suggested:
Suppose the singing birds musicians:
The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strewed;
The flowers fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance. ”
Nobody would dream of setting up Jefferson's Rip as a model,
but everybody is glad that he exists. Most persons are so full
of care and trouble, so weighed down with the sense of duty, so
anxious to regulate the world, that contact with a nature which
is careless in the stress and din of toil, dwells in an atmosphere
of sunshine idleness, and is the embodiment of careless mirth,
brings a positive relief. This is the feeling that Jefferson's act-
ing inspired. The halo of genius was all around it. Sincerity,
humor, pathos, imagination, -- the glamour of wild flowers and
woodland brooks, slumberous, slow-drifting summer clouds, and
soft music heard upon the waters, in starlit nights of June, –
those are the springs of the actor's art.
There are
a hundred
beauties of method in it which satisfy the judgment and fasci-
nate the sense of symmetry; but underlying those beauties there
is a magical sweetness of temperament, a delicate blending of
emotion, gentleness, quaintness, and dream-like repose, which
awakens the most affectionate sympathy. Art could not supply
that subtle, potent charm. It is the divine fire.
In his embodiment of Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson delineates an
individual character, through successive stages of growth, till the
story of a life is completely told. If the student of acting would
## p. 16065 (#411) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16065
appreciate the fineness and force of the dramatic art that is dis-
played in the work, let him consider the complexity and depth of
the effect, as contrasted with the simplicity of the means that are
used to produce it. The sense of beauty is satisfied, because the
object that it apprehends is beautiful. The heart is deeply and
surely touched, for the simple and sufficient reason that the char-
acter and experience revealed to it are lovely and pathetic. For
Rip Van Winkle's goodness exists as an oak exists, and is not de-
pendent on principle, precept, or purpose. However he may drift,
he cannot drift away from human affection. Weakness was never
punished with more sorrowful misfortune than his. Dear to us
for what he is, he becomes dearer still for what he suffers; and
in the acting of Jefferson, for the manner in which he suffers it.
That manner, arising out of complete identification with the part,
informed by intuitive and liberal knowledge of human nature, and
guided by an unerring instinct of taste, is unfettered, graceful,
free from effort; and it shows with delicate precision the grad-
ual, natural changes of the character, as wrought by the pressure
of experience. Its result is the winning embodiment of a rare
type of human nature and mystical experience, embellished by
the hues of romance, and exalted by the atmosphere of poetry;
and no person of imagination and sensibility can see it without
being charmed by its humor, thrilled by its spiritual beauty, and
beneath the spell of its humanity, made deeply conscious that life
is worthless, however its ambition may be rewarded, unless it is
hallowed by love.
There will be, as there have been, many performers of Rip
Van Winkle; there is but one Jefferson. For him it was reserved
to idealize the subject; to elevate a prosaic type of good-natured
indolence into an emblem of poetical freedom; to construct and
translate, in the world of fact, the Arcadian vagabond of the
world of dreams. In the presence of his fascinating embodiment
of that droll, gentle, drifting human creature,-to whom trees
and brooks and flowers are familiar companions, to whom spir-
its appear, and for whom the mysterious voices of the lonely
midnight forest have a meaning and a charm, - the observer
feels that poetry is no longer restricted to canvas and marble, but
walks forth crystallized in a human form, spangled with the dia-
mond light of morning, mysterious with spiritual intimations,
lovely with rustic freedom, and fragrant with the incense of the
woods.
XXVII-1005
## p. 16066 (#412) ##########################################
16066
WILLIAM WINTER
-
Jefferson's acting is an education as well as a delight. It
especially teaches the imperative importance, in dramatic art, of a
thorough and perfect plan; which yet, by freshness of spirit and
spontaneity of execution, shall be made to seem free and care.
less. Jefferson's embodiment of Rip has been prominently be-
fore the public for thirty years; yet it is not hackneyed, and it
does not grow tiresome. The secret of its vitality is its poetry.
A thriftless, commonplace sot, as drawn by Washington Irving,
becomes a poetic vagabond, as transfigured and embodied by the
actor; and the dignity of his artistic work is augmented rather
than diminished from the fact that he plays in a drama through-
out which the expedient of inebriety, as a motive of action, is
exaggerated. Boucicault, working under explicit information as
to Jefferson's views and wishes with reference to the part, cer-
tainly improved the old piece; but as certainly, the scheme to
show the sunny sweetness and indolent temperament of Rip is
clumsily planned, while the text is devoid of literary excellence
and intellectual character, - attributes which, though not dra-
matic, are desirable. The actor is immensely superior to the
play, and may indeed be said to make it. The obvious goodness
of his heart, the deep sincerity of his moral purpose, the poten-
tial force of his sense of beauty, the supremacy in him of what
Voltaire was the first to call the "faculty of taste," the inces-
sant charm of his temperament, — those are the means, ruled and
guided by clear vision and strong will, and made to animate an
artistic figure possessing both symmetry and luxuriant wildness,
that make the greatness of Jefferson's embodiment of Rip. He
has created a character that everybody will continue to love, not-
withstanding weakness of nature and indolent conduct. Jefferson
never had the purpose to extol improvidence, or extenuate the
wrong and misery of inebriety. The opportunity that he dis-
cerned and has brilliantly improved was that of showing a lovely
nature, set free from the shackles of conventionality, and cir-
cumscribed with picturesque, romantic surroundings, during a
momentous experience of spiritual life, and of the mutability of
the world. The obvious defects in the structure are an undue
emphasis upon the bottle, as poor Rip's failing, and an undue
exaggeration of the virago quality in Gretchen. It would be
easy, taking the prosy tone of the temperance lecturer, to look at
Jefferson's design as a matter of fact, and not of poetry; and by
dwelling on the impediments of his subject rather than the spirit
## p. 16067 (#413) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16067
.
of his art and the beauty of his execution, to set his beautiful
and elevating achievement in a degraded and degrading light.
But fortunately the heart has its logic as well as the head,
and all observers are not without imagination. The heart and
imagination of our age know what Jefferson means in Rip, and
have accepted him therefore into the sanctuary of affection.
The world does not love Rip Van Winkle because of his
faults, but in spite of them. Underneath his defects the human
nature is sound and bright; and it is out of this interior beauty
that the charm of Jefferson's personation arises. The conduct of
Rip Van Winkle is the result of his character, not of his drams.
At the sacrifice of comicality, here and there, the element of
inebriety might be left out of his experience, and he would still
act in the same way, and possess the same fascination. The
drink is only an expedient to involve the hero in domestic strife,
and open the way for his ghostly adventure and his pathetic
resuscitation. The machinery is clumsy; but that does not inval-
idate either the beauty of the character or the supernatural thrill
and mortal anguish of the experience. Those elements make the
soul of this great work; which, while it captivates the heart, also
enthralls the imagination, — lifting us above the storms of life, its
sorrows, its losses, and its fret, till we rest at last on Nature's
bosom, children once more, and once more happy.
Most persons who have seen Jefferson as Rip would probably
name that achievement as essentially the most natural piece of
acting ever presented within their observation. In its effect it
is natural; in its method, in the process by which it is wrought,
it is absolutely artificial. In that method not forgetting the
soul within that method - will be found the secret of its power;
in the art with which genius transfigures and interprets actual
life: and in that, furthermore, dwells the secret of all good
acting. If you would produce the effect of nature in dramatic
art, you must not be natural; you must be artificial, but you
must seem to be natural. The same step, the same gesture, the
same tone of voice, the same force of facial expression that you
involuntarily use in the proceedings of actual, every-day life, will
not upon the stage prove adequate. They may indicate your
meaning, but they will not convey it. Their result will be
tame, narrow, and insufficient. Your step must be lengthened;
your tone must be elevated; your facial muscles must be allowed
a freer play; the sound with which you intend to produce the
## p. 16068 (#414) ##########################################
16068
WILLIAM WINTER
-
effect of a sigh must leave your lips as a sob. The actor who
is exactly natural in his demeanor and speech upon the stage -
who acts and speaks precisely as he would act and speak in a
room - wearies his audience, because he falls short of his object,
and is indefinite and commonplace. Jefferson, as Rip, has to
present, among other aspects of human nature, a temperament
that to some extent is swayed by an infirmity,- the appetite for
intoxicant liquor. That, in actual life, is offensive; but that, as
shown by Jefferson, when it reaches his auditors, reaches them
only as the token or suggestion of an amiable weakness; and
that weakness, and not the symptom of it, is the spring of the
whole character and action. The hiccough with which Rip looks
in at the window of the cottage where the offended Gretchen is
waiting for him, is not the obnoxious hiccough of a sot, but the
playful hiccough of an artist who is only suggesting a sot. The
effect is natural. The process is artificial. Jefferson constantly
addresses the imagination, and he uses imagination with which
to address it. In actual life the garments worn by Rip would
be soiled. In Jefferson's artistic scheme the studied shabbiness
and carefully selected tatters are scrupulously clean; and they
are made not only harmonious in color,- and thus so pleasing to
the eye that they attract no especial attention, but accordant
with the sweet drollery and listless, indolent, drifting spirit of
the character. No idea could easily be suggested more incongru-
ous with probability, more unnatural and fantastic, than the idea
of a tipsy vagabond encircled by a ring of Dutch ghosts, on the
top of a mountain, in the middle of the night; but when Jeffer-
son — by the deep feeling and affluent imagination with which
he fills the scene, and by the vigilant, firm, unerring, technical
skill with which he controls his forces and guides them to effect
— has made that idea a living fact, no spectator of the weird,
thrilling, pathetic picture ever thinks of it as unnatural. The
illusion is perfect, and it is perfectly maintained. All along its
line the character of Rip — the impossible hero of an impossible
experience - is so essentially unnatural that if it were imperson-
ated in the literal manner of nature it would produce the effect
of whirling extravagance. Jefferson, pouring his soul into an
ideal of which he is himself the creator,- an ideal which does
not exist either in Washington Irving's story, or Charles Burke's
play, or Dion Boucicault's adaptation of Burke, — and treating
that idea in a poetic spirit, as to every fibre, tone, hue, motion,
-
-
## p. 16069 (#415) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16069
and attitude, has made Rip as natural as if we had personally
participated in his aimless and wandering life. So potent, in-
deed, is the poetic art of the actor, that the dog Schneider, who
is never shown, possesses all the same a positive existence in
our thoughts. The principal truth denoted by Jefferson's acting,
therefore, is the necessity of clear perception of what is meant
by “nature. ” The heights are reached only when inspiration
is guided by intellectual purpose, and used with artistic skill.
Shakespeare, with his incomparable felicity, has crystallized this
principle into diamond light:-
< Over that art,
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
Which nature makes. ”
>
(All the following poems are from (Wanderers,' copyright 1888, by William
Winter, and published by Ticknor & Co. ; and are reprinted with the
approval of Mr. Winter. ]
A PLEDGE TO THE DEAD
F
READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, AT ALBANY,
N. Y. , JUNE 18TH, 1879
ROM the lily of love that uncloses
In the glow of a festival kiss,
On the wind that is heavy with roses,
And shrill with the bugles of bliss,
Let it float o'er the mystical ocean
That breaks on the kingdom of night -
Our oath of eternal devotion
To the heroes who died for the right!
They loved, as we love — yet they parted
From all that man's spirit can prize;
Left woman and child broken-hearted,
Staring up to the pitiless skies;
Left the tumult of youth, the rich guerdon
Hope promised to conquer from fate;
Gave all for the agonized burden
Of death, for the Flag and the State.
Where they roam on the slopes of the mountain
That only by angels is trod,
Where they muse by the crystalline fountain
That springs in the garden of God,
## p. 16070 (#416) ##########################################
16070
WILLIAM WINTER
Are they lost in unspeakable splendor ?
Do they never look back and regret ?
Ah, the valiant are constant and tender,
And Honor can never forget!
Divine in their pitying sadness,
They grieve for their comrades of earth:
They will hear us, and start into gladness,
And echo the notes of our mirth;
They will lift their white hands with a blessing
We shall know by the tear that it brings -
The rapture of friendship confessing,
With harps and the waving of wings.
In the grim and relentless upheaval
That blesses the world through a curse,
Still bringing the good out of evil —
The garland of peace on the hearse! -
They were shattered, consumed, and forsaken,
Like the shadows that fly from the dawn:
We may never know why they were taken,
But we always shall feel they are gone.
If the wind that sighs over our prairies
No longer is solemn with knells,
But lovely with flowers and fairies,
And sweet with the calm Sabbath bells;
If virtue, in cottage and palace,
Leads love to the bridal of pride,
'Tis because out of war's bitter chalice
Our heroes drank deeply — and died.
Ah, grander in doom-stricken glory
Than the greatest that linger behind,
They shall live in perpetual story,
Who saved the last hope of mankind !
For their cause was the cause of the races
That languished in slavery's night;
And the death that was pale on their faces
Has filled the whole world with its light!
To the clouds and the mountains we breathe it:
To the freedom of planet and star;
Let the tempests of ocean enwreathe it;
Let the winds of the night bear it far,–
## p. 16071 (#417) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16071
Our oath, that till manhood shall perish,
And honor and virtue are sped,
We are true to the cause that they cherish,
And eternally true to the dead!
EDWIN BOOTH
READ AT A FAREWELL FEAST TO Edwin Booth, AT DELMONICO's, N. Y. ,
JUNE 15TH, 1880
H"
is barque will fade, in mist and night,
Across the dim sea-line,
And coldly on our aching sight
The solemn stars will shine.
All, all in mournful silence, save
For ocean's distant roar,
Heard where the slow, regretful wave
Sobs on the lonely shore.
But oh, while, winged with love and prayer,
Our thoughts pursue his track,
What glorious sights the midnight air
Will proudly waft us back!
What golden words will flutter down
From many a peak of fame!
What glittering shapes of old renown
That cluster round his name!
O'er storied Denmark's haunted ground
Will darkly drift again,
Dream-like and vague, without a sound,
The spectre of the Dane;
And breaking hearts will be the wreath
For grief that knows no tear,
When shine on Cornwall's storm-swept heath
The blazing eyes of Lear.
Slow, 'mid the portents of the storm
And fate's avenging powers,
Will moody Richard's haggard form
Pace through the twilight hours;
And wildly hurtling o'er the sky,
The red star of Macbeth
Torn from the central arch on high-
Go down in dusky death!
## p. 16072 (#418) ##########################################
16072
WILLIAM WINTER
But — best of all! — will softly rise
His form of manly grace —
The noble brow, the honest eyes,
The sweetly patient face,
The loving heart, the stately mind
That, conquering every ill,
Through seas of trouble cast behind,
Was grandly steadfast still.
Though skies might gloom and tempest rave,
Though friends and hopes might fall,
His constant spirit, simply brave,
Would meet and suffer all;
Would calmly smile at fortune's frown,
Supreme o'er gain or loss:
And he the worthiest wears the crown
That gently bore the cross!
Be blithe and bright, thou jocund day
That golden England knows!
Bloom sweetly round the wanderer's way,
Thou royal English rose!
And, English hearts, (no need to tell
How truth itself endures ! )
This soul of manhood treasure well,
Our love commits to yours!
Farewell! nor mist nor flying cloud
Nor night can ever dim
The wreath of honors, pure and proud,
Our hearts have twined for him!
But bells of memory still shall chime,
And violets star the sod,
Till our last broken wave of time
Dies on the shores of God.
VIOLET
O
NE name I shall not forget -
Gentle name of Violet.
Many and strange the years have sped:
She who bore that name is dead;
Dead — and resting by the sea,
Where she gave her heart to me.
## p. 16073 (#419) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16073
Dead - and now the grasses wave,
And the dry leaves, o'er her grave,
Rustling in the autumn wind,
Like the sad thoughts in my mind.
She was light, and soon forgot;
Loved me well, and loved me not;
Changeful as the April sky,-
Kind or cruel, sad or shy;
Gray eyes, winsome, arch, and fair-
My youth's passion and despair.
Now through storms of many years,
Now through tender mist of tears,
Looking backward, I can see
She was always true to me:
Yet, with prisoned tears that burn,
Cold we parted, wayward, stern;
Spoke the quiet, farewell word,
Neither meant and neither heard;
Spoke- and parted in our pain,
Never more to meet again.
Sometimes underneath the moon,
On rose-laden nights of June,
When white clouds drift o'er the blue,
While the pale stars glimmer through,
And the honeysuckle throws
Fragrant challenge to the rose,
And the liberal pine-tree Alings
Perfume on the midnight's wings,-
Came, with thrills of hope and fear,
Mystic sense that she was near;
Came the thought: Through good and ill
She loves, and she remembers still!
But no word e'er came or went;
And when nine long years were spent,
## p. 16074 (#420) ##########################################
16074
WILLIAM WINTER
Something in my bosom said,
Very softly: She is dead!
Now, at sombre autumn eve,
Wandering where the woodlands grieve,
Or where wild winds whistle free,
On the hills that front the sea,
Cruel thoughts of love and loss
Nail my spirit to the cross.
Friends have fallen, youth is gone,
Fields are brown and skies are wan;
One"name I shall not forget,
Gentle name of Violet.
THE GOLDEN SILENCE
W***
THAT though I sing no other song ?
What though I speak no other word ?
Is silence shame? Is patience wrong?
At least one song of mine was heard:
One echo from the mountain air,
One ocean murmur, glad and free,
One sign that nothing grand or fair
In all this world was lost to me.
I will not wake the sleeping lyre;
I will not strain the chords of thought:
The sweetest fruit of all desire
Comes its own way, and comes unsought.
Though all the bards of earth were dead,
And all their music passed away,
What Nature wishes should be said
She'll find the rightful voice to say!
Her heart is in the shimmering leaf,
The drifting cloud, the lonely sky;
And all we know of bliss or grief
She speaks, in forms that cannot die.
The mountain peaks that shine afar,
The silent stars, the pathless sea,
Are living signs of all we are,
And types of all we hope to be.
## p. 16075 (#421) ##########################################
16075
THEODORE WINTHROP
(1828–1861)
Chuo
He figure of Theodore Winthrop was a heroic one in the open-
ing days of the American War of the Rebellion. He bore a
G historic name; his character was chivalric; his literary tal-
ent, just beginning to express itself, was brilliant; he died young
and bravely at the head of his column, fighting for what he deemed
the right. Here were all the elements for hero-making. Small won-
der that his books, posthumously published, were eagerly bought
and read. To read them now is to realize what an unusual gift in
him was quenched untimely. The work was
tentative, of promise rather than full per-
formance. But it is worth remembrance;
it calls for recognition.
Theodore Winthrop was born in New
Haven, September 22d, 1828; a direct de-
scendant of John Winthrop, early governor
of Connecticut. He was graduated from
Yale University when twenty years of age,
and was a notable student, winning prizes
and greatly admired of his fellows. From
graduation to the outbreaking of war -
more than a dozen years — his life was a
roving one, his activity varied. His health THEODORE WINTHROP
was delicate, and at first he traveled much
abroad; then entered an Eastern counting-house; went to Panama
in the employment of the Pacific Steamship Company; and later made
a tour of California and Oregon, extending it to Vancouver's Island
and Puget Sound, and visiting the Hudson's Bay Company's stations.
He was often ill, but the rough nomadic life seemed the tonic for
his restoration. Again he tried the counting-room, only to be off
some adventurous expedition. In spite of his uncertain
health, he was an athlete, skillful on horseback and in all out-door
sports.
In 1855 he studied law, and was admitted to the bar; trying St.
Louis first, then settling in New York. He threw himself with ardor
into the Fremont campaign, and was active in making speeches
among the Pennsylvania working-folk,- an occupation he liked far
soon
on
-
## p. 16076 (#422) ##########################################
16076
THEODORE WINTHROP
better than practicing his profession, for which he had little taste.
Thus the war found him unsettled, unproved: a man with a strong
instinct for action, and a love for unconventional and wild life; a keen
observer, who had seen much, and from his college days had been
fond of writing.
Here was an unusual equipment for a literary man. The war
seemed to his friends to be his opportunity: certainly he himself wel-
comed its call to deeds. As George William Curtis said in a sympa-
thetic biographical sketch, " Theodore Winthrop's life, like a fire long
smoldering, suddenly blazed up into a clear bright flame and van-
ished. ” On settling in New York, he had joined the crack Seventh
Regiment. In April 1861 he went with it to the front. General
Butler made him his military secretary and aide. At Big Bethel, on
June roth, in the flush of his manhood, he fell with his face to the
enemy, a beautiful young leader.
While in camp, Winthrop was contributing to the Atlantic Monthly
admirably graphic papers on his war experiences: he began to draw
public attention as a writer. He left a large amount of manuscript,
and his books appeared in rapid succession after his death: Cecil
Dreeme) in 1861; John Brent,' 'Edwin Brothertoft,' and (The Canoe
and the Saddle) in 1862; Life in the Open Air and Other Papers) in
1863. The two novels first named proved the most popular: Cecil
Dreeme' reached its seventeenth edition by 1864, John Brent' its
fourteenth. The latter is unquestionably his strongest work. Win-
throp has fine qualities as a story-maker. The light and shade in
human existence is dramatically rendered in his fiction. He gives
his readers plot and action in plenty; writing in crisp, idiomatic, vig-
orous English. In such a book as John Brent' there is an open-air
wholesomeness that is infectious. That tale of the Western plains,
with its heroic men and horses, its knightly rescue of woman in
distress, its thrilling ride for love and life, is one of the breeziest
imaginable. It is thoroughly American in tone and atmosphere; and
had the merit, in its day especially, of delineating Western scenes
and characters with sympathy and skill, at a time when the West
was almost virgin soil to literature. In Cecil Dreeme) the drama is
enacted in the city, and it is dark and gruesome, running into melo-
drama: the story seems less mature. Yet it has unquestionable power
and charm.
Winthrop is always the poet and idealist, interested in character on
its spiritual side, - this tendency being healthily blended with the
objective narrative interest of plot. One feels in reading his vital
stories that in his early death American literature suffered a genuine
loss. “The Life and Poems of Theodore Winthrop,' edited by his
sister, appeared in 1884.
## p. 16077 (#423) ##########################################
THEODORE WINTHROP
16077
A GALLOP OF THREE
From John Brent. Copyright 1862, by Ticknor & Fields
W*
E WERE off, we Three on our Gallop to save and to slay.
Pumps and Fulano took fire at once. They were ready
to burst into their top speed, and go off in a frenzy.
Steady, steady,” cried Brent. “Now we'll keep this long
easy lope for a while, and I'll tell you my plan. — They have
gone to the southward, — those two men. They could not get
away in any other direction. I have heard Murker say he knows
all the country between here and the Arkansaw. Thank Heaven!
so do I, foot by foot. ”
I recalled the sound of galloping hoofs I had heard in the
night to the southward.
"I heard them, then," said I, “in my watch after Fulano's
lariat was cut. The wind lulled, and there came a sound of
horses, and another sound, which I then thought a fevered fancy
of my own, a far-away scream of a woman.
Brent had been quite unimpassioned in his manner until now.
He groaned as I spoke of the scream.
“O Wade! O Richard! ” he said, "why did you not know the
voice? It was she. They have terrible hours the start. ”
.
He was silent a moment, looking sternly forward. Then he
began again; and as he spoke, his iron-gray edged on with a
looser rein.
“It is well you heard them: it makes their course unmistaka-
ble. We know we are on their track, Seven or eight full hours!
It is long odds of a start. But they are not mounted as we
are mounted. They did not ride as we shall ride. They had a
woman to carry, and their mules to drive. They will fear pur-
suit, and push on without stopping. But we shall catch them;
we shall catch them before night, so help us God! ”
You are aiming for the mountains ? ” I asked.
“For Luggernel Alley,” he said.
I remembered how, in our very first interview, a thousand
miles away at the Fulano mine, he had spoken of this spot. All
the conversation then, all the talk about my horse, came back
to me like a Delphic prophecy suddenly fulfilled. I made a good
omen of this remembrance.
“For Luggernel Alley,” said Brent. “Do you recollect my
pointing out a notch in the sierra, yesterday, when I said I
(c
## p. 16078 (#424) ##########################################
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THEODORE WINTHROP
>
would like to spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a woman
brave enough for this plains life ? »
He grew very white as he spoke, and again Pumps led off by
a neck, we ranging up instantly.
“They will make for the Luggernel Springs. The alley is
the only gate through the mountains towards the Arkansaw.
they can get by there, they are safe. They can strike off New
Mexico way; or keep on to the States out of the line of emigra-
tion or any Mormon pursuit. The Springs are the only water to
be had at this season, without digging, anywhere in that quarter.
They must go there. We are no farther from the spot than we
were at Bridger. We have been traveling along the base of the
triangle. We have only lost time. And now that we are fairly
under way, I think we might shake out another reef.
faster, friends- a little faster yet! ”
It was a vast desert level where we were riding. Here and
there a scanty tuft of grass appeared, to prove that Nature had
tried her benign experiment, and wafted seeds hither to let the
scene be verdant, if it would. Nature had failed. The land
refused any mantle over its brown desolation. The soil was dis-
integrated, igneous rock, fine and well beaten down as the most
thoroughly laid macadam.
Behind was the rolling region where the Great Trail passes;
before and far away, the faint blue of the sierra. Not a bird
sang in the hot noon; not a cricket chirped. No sound except
the beat of our horses' hoofs on the pavement. We rode side by
side, taking our strides together. It was a waiting race. The
horses traveled easily. They learned, as a horse with a self-
possessed rider will, that they were not to waste strength in
rushes. “Spend, but waste not,” — not a step, not a breath, in
that gallop for life! This must be our motto.
We three rode abreast over the sere brown plain on our gal-
lop to save and to slay.
Far - ah, how terribly dim and distant! - was the sierra, a
slowly lifting cloud. Slowly, slowly they lifted, those gracious
heights, while we sped over the harsh levels of the desert. Harsh
levels, abandoned or unvisited by verdancy. But better so: there
was no long herbage to check our great pace over the smooth
race-course; no thickets here to baffle us; no forests to mislead.
We galloped abreast, —Armstrong at the right. His weird,
gaunt white held his own with the best of us. No whip, no
## p. 16079 (#425) ##########################################
THEODORE WINTHROP
16079
.
spur, for that deathly creature. He went as if his master's pur-
pose were stirring him through and through. That stern intent
made his sinews steel, and put an agony of power into every
stride. The man never stirred, save sometimes to put a hand
to that bloody blanket bandage across his head and temple. He
had told his story, he had spoken his errand, he breathed not a
word; but with his lean, pallid face set hard, his gentle blue eyes
scourged of their kindliness and fixed upon those distant mount-
ains where his vengeance lay, he rode on like a relentless fate.
Next in the line I galloped. Oh, my glorious black! The
great killing pace seemed mere playful canter to him,- such as
one might ride beside a timid girl, thrilling with her first free
dash over a flowery common, or a golden beach between sea and
shore. But from time to time he surged a little forward with
his great shoulders, and gave a mighty writhe of his body, while
his hind legs came lifting his flanks under me, and telling of the
giant reserve of speed and power he kept easily controlled. Then
his ear would go back, and his large brown eye, with its purple-
black pupil, would look round at my bridle hand and then into
my eye, saying as well as words could have said it, « This is
mere sport, my friend and master. You do not know me. I have
stuff in me of which you do not dream. Say the word, and I
can double this, treble it. Say the word! let me show you how I
can spurn the earth. ” Then with the lightest love pressure on
the snaffle, I would say, "Not yet! not yet! Patience, my noble
! !
friend! Your time will come. ”
At the left rode Brent, our leader. He knew the region; he
made the plan; he had the hope; his was the ruling passion, -
stronger than brotherhood, than revenge. Love made him leader
of that galloping three. His iron-gray bent grandly, with white
mane flapping the air like a signal flag of reprieve. Eager hope
and kindling purpose made the rider's face more beautiful than
He seemed to behold Sidney's motto written on the golden
haze before him, “Viam aut inveniam aut faciam. ” I felt my
heart grow great when I looked at his calm features, and caught
his assuring smile,-a gay smile but for the dark, fateful resolve
beneath it. And when he launched some stirring word of cheer,
and shook another ten of seconds out of the gray's mile, even
Armstrong's countenance grew less deathly, as he turned to our
leader in silent response. Brent looked a fit chieftain for such
a wild charge over the desert waste; with his buckskin hunting-
»
ever.
## p. 16080 (#426) ##########################################
16080
THEODORE WINTHROP
shirt and leggins with flaring fringes, his otter cap and eagle's
plume, his bronze face with its close brown beard, his elate head,
and his seat like a centaur.
So we galloped three abreast, neck and neck, hoof with hoof,
steadily quickening our pace over the sere width of desert. We
must make the most of the levels. Rougher work, cruel obstacles
were before. All the wild, triumphant music I had ever heard
came and sang in my ears to the flinging cadence of the resonant
feet, tramping on hollow arches of the volcanic rock, over great
vacant chasms underneath. Sweet and soft around us melted
the hazy air of October; and its warm, flickering currents shook
like a veil of gauzy gold between us and the blue bloom of the
mountains far away, but nearing now and lifting step by step.
On we galloped — the avenger, the friend, the lover — on our
errand to save and to slay.
It came afternoon, as we rode on steadily. The country grew
rougher. The horses never flinched; but they sweated freely, and
foam from their nostrils flecked their shoulders. By-and-by, with
little pleasant admonitory puffs, a breeze drew down from the
glimmering frosty edges of the sierra and cooled us. Horses and
men' were cheered and freshened, and lifted anew to their work.
We had seen and heard no life on the desert. Now, in the
broken country, a coyote or two scuttled away as we passed.
Sometimes a lean gray. wolf would skulk out of a brake, canter
after us a little way, and then squat on his haunches, staring at
our strange speed. Flight and chase he could understand; but
ours was not flight for safety, or chase for food. Men are queer
mysteries to beasts. So our next companions found. Over the
edge of a slope, bending away to a valley of dry scanty pasture
at the left, a herd of antelopes appeared. They were close to
us, within easy revolver shot. They sprang into graceful flight,
some score of them, with tails up and black hoofs glancing. Pres-
ently, pausing for curiosity, they saw that we fled, not followed;
and they in turn became pursuers, careering after us for a mile
or more, until our stern business left their gamboling play far
behind.
We held steadily for that notch in the blue sierra. The
mountain lines grew sharper, the country where we traveled
rougher, every stride. We came upon a wide tract covered with
wild sage-bushes. These delayed and baffled us.
-
It was a pigmy
forest of trees, mature and complete, but no higher than the knee.
## p. 16081 (#427) ##########################################
THEODORE WINTHROP
16081
>
Every dwarfed, stunted, gnarled bush had the trunk, limbs, twigs,
and gray withered foliage, all in miniature, of some tree, hap-
less but sturdy, that has had a weather-beaten struggle for life
on a storm-threshed crag by the shore, or on a granite side of
a mountain, with short allowance of soil to eat and water
to drink. Myriads of square miles of that arid region have no
important vegetation except this wild sage or Artemisia, and a
meaner brother, not even good to burn,- the greasewood.
One may ride through the tearing thickets of a forest pri-
meval, as one may shoulder through a crowd of civilized barba-
rians at a spectacle. Our gallop over the top of this pigmy wood
was as difficult as to find passage over the heads of the same
crowd, tall men and short, men hatted with slouched hats, wash-
bowls, and stove-pipes. It was a rough scramble. It checked our
speed and chafed our horses. Sometimes we could find natural
pathways for a few rods. Then these strayed aside or closed up,
and we must plunge straight on. We lost time; moments we lost
more precious than if every one were marked by a drop in a
clepsydra, and each drop as it fell changed itself and tinkled in
the basin, a priceless pearl.
“It worries me, this delay," I said to Brent.
“They lost as much more time than we,” he said.
And he crowded on more desperately, as man rides for
dearer than life. as a lover rides for love.
We tore along, breaking through and over the sage-bushes,
each man where best he could. Fulano began to show me what
leaps were in him. I gave him his head. No bridle would
have held him. I kept my mastery by the voice, or rather by
the perfect identification of his will with mine. Our minds acted
together.
lettres, whether in prose or verse, the qualities of sympathy and im-
agination have always been apparent. Mr. Winter, as a writer upon
the drama, past or contemporaneous, brings philosophic principles and
a wide knowledge of literature to bear upon
his judgments of actors and the art of act-
ing; and this gives his critiques perspective
and atmosphere. He has strong prejudices;
but no one can question his earnestness and
honesty, or misunderstand his position as a
student of the practical drama, who claims
that in all which pertains to dramaturgy,
moral health is as important as artistic
merit.
Mr. Winter is a New-Englander; drawing
thence, perhaps, his tendency to “moral on
the time. He was born at Gloucester, Mas-
sachusetts, July 15th, 1836; was educated in William WINTER
Boston, and is a graduate of the Harvard
Law School. In 1859 he went to New York, and did book reviewing
for the Sunday Press, and other writing for Vanity Fair, the Albion,
and the Weekly Review. In 1865 he became the dramatic critic of
the New York Tribune, a position he has held for over thirty years.
A number of his books, studying the personalities or events of the
current drama, have been drawn from or based upon his contribu-
tions to that newspaper.
Mr. Winter began to publish poetry in 1854, with the maiden volume
(The Convent and Other Poems'; and half a dozen books of verse
have come from his pen. The latest collection, Wanderers,' in 1888,
contains what he deems most worthy of preservation. These poems,
in purity of diction and form, suggest the influence of the standard
older singers, and outbreathe a sweet and true lyric spirit. They
deal with friendship and love, with the bitter-sweet of life and death.
## p. 16062 (#408) ##########################################
16062
WILLIAM WINTER
Many are elegiac or commemorative, and these are among the most
felicitous. Mr. Winter, in a preface to this latest volume, expresses
the hope that his verse may prove “a not altogether unworthy addition
to that old school of English Lyrical Poetry, of which gentleness is
the soul and simplicity the garment,” — and this describes not ill his
accomplishment as well as his aim in poetry.
His prose falls into two main classes: the biographies and studies
of stage celebrities, and the essays in which his wanderings in the
storied British islands are chronicled. Of the latter, English Rambles,
'Gray Days and Gold, Old Shrines and Ivy,' and 'Shakespeare's
England,' are representative. Winter writes these sketches pictur-
esquely, mingling fact and sentiment in a way to make very pleasant
and stimulating reading. To the critical studies belong carefully
wrought sketches of Booth, Jefferson, Mary Anderson, and Henry
Irving, and briefer appreciations of many other noteworthy players.
In these critiques, Mr. Winter's views on the technique of the actor's
art are set forth interestingly, with much of literary attraction. In
his daily dramatic criticism, he often indulges in trenchant satire
when attacking what he considers the latter-day fads of the drama, -
the problem play, the Ibsen craze, and the like; and is never more
vigorous and amusing, though hardly fair to some of the newer liter-
ary forces. But Mr. Winter's preaching is both sane and wholesome,
and no doubt it is needed in a day of so much literary confusion.
Altogether, he may be described as a versatile, charming, high-
motived writer, whose influence in his sphere has been decided and
salutary.
JEFFERSON'S RIP VAN WINKLE
From Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson. Copyright 1893, by Macmillan & Co.
E
VERY reader of Washington Irving knows the story of Rip
Van Winkle's adventure on the Catskill Mountains, - that
delightful, romantic idyl, in which character, humor, and
fancy are so delicately blended. Under the spell of Jefferson's
acting the spectator was transported into the past, and made to
see, as with bodily eyes, the orderly Dutch civilization as it crept
up the borders of the Hudson: the quaint villages; the stout
Hollanders, with their pipes and schnapps; the loves and troubles
of an elder generation. It is a calmer life than ours; yet the
same elements compose it. Here is a mean and cruel schemer
making a heedless man his victim, and thriving on the weakness
that he well knows how to betray. Here is parental love, tried,
## p. 16063 (#409) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
1бобз
ease, but
as it often is, by. sad cares; and here the love of young and
hopeful hearts, blooming amid flowers, sunshine, music, and hap-
piness. Rip Van Winkle never seemed so lovable as in the
form of this great actor, standing in poetic relief against the
background of actual life. Jefferson has made him our familiar
friend We see that Rip is a dreamer, fond of his bottle and his
beneath all his rags and tatters, of character as well
as raiment - essentially good. We understand why the children
love him, why the dogs run after him with joy, and why the
jolly boys at the tavern welcome his song and story and genial
companionship. He has wasted his fortune and impoverished
his wife and child, and we know that he is much to blame. He
knows it too; and his talk with the children shows how keenly
he feels the consequence of a weakness which yet he is unable
to discard. It is in those minute touches that Jefferson denoted
his sympathetic study of human nature, - his intuitive perception,
looking quite through the hearts and thoughts of men. The
observer saw this in the struggle of Rip's long-submerged but
only dormant spirit of manliness, when his wife turns him from
their home, in night and storm and abandoned degradation. Still
more vividly was it shown in his pathetic bewilderment, -- his
touching embodiment of the anguish of lonely age bowed down
by sorrow and doubt, — when he comes back from his sleep of
twenty years. His disclosure of himself to his daughter marked
the climax of pathos; and every heart was melted by those
imploring looks of mute suspense, those broken accents of love
that almost fears an utterance. Perhaps the perfection of Jeffer-
son's acting was seen in the weird interview with the ghosts.
That situation is one of the best ever devised for the stage; and
the actor devised it. Midnight on the highest peak of the Cats-
kill, dimly lighted by the moon. No one speaks but Rip. The
ghosts cluster around him. The grim shade of Hudson proffers
a cup of drink to the mortal intruder, already dazed by supernat-
ural surroundings. Rip, almost shuddering in the awful silence,
pledges the ghosts in their liquor. Then suddenly the spell is
broken: the moon is lost in struggling clouds; the spectres glide
away and slowly vanish; and Rip Van Winkle, with the drowsy,
piteous murmur, "Don't leave me, boys," falls into his mystic
sleep.
The idle, dram-drinking Dutch spendthrift — so perfectly re-
produced, yet so exalted by ideal treatment is not a heroic
## p. 16064 (#410) ##########################################
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WILLIAM WINTER
figure, and cannot be said to possess an exemplary significance
either in himself or his experience. Yet his temperament has
the fine fibre that everybody loves; and everybody, accordingly,
has a good feeling for him, although nobody may have a good
word for his way of life. All observers know that order of man.
He is generally poor. He never did a bad action in all his life.
He is continually cheering the weak and lowly. He always wears
a smile the reflex of a gentle heart. Ambition does not trouble
him. His wants are few. He has no care, except when, now
and then, he feels that he may have wasted time and talent, or
when the sorrow of others falls darkly on his heart. This, how-
ever, is rare; for at most times he is “bright as light and clear
as wind. ” Nature has established with him a kind of kindred
that she allows with only a chosen few. In him Shakespeare's
rosy ideal is suggested:
Suppose the singing birds musicians:
The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strewed;
The flowers fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance. ”
Nobody would dream of setting up Jefferson's Rip as a model,
but everybody is glad that he exists. Most persons are so full
of care and trouble, so weighed down with the sense of duty, so
anxious to regulate the world, that contact with a nature which
is careless in the stress and din of toil, dwells in an atmosphere
of sunshine idleness, and is the embodiment of careless mirth,
brings a positive relief. This is the feeling that Jefferson's act-
ing inspired. The halo of genius was all around it. Sincerity,
humor, pathos, imagination, -- the glamour of wild flowers and
woodland brooks, slumberous, slow-drifting summer clouds, and
soft music heard upon the waters, in starlit nights of June, –
those are the springs of the actor's art.
There are
a hundred
beauties of method in it which satisfy the judgment and fasci-
nate the sense of symmetry; but underlying those beauties there
is a magical sweetness of temperament, a delicate blending of
emotion, gentleness, quaintness, and dream-like repose, which
awakens the most affectionate sympathy. Art could not supply
that subtle, potent charm. It is the divine fire.
In his embodiment of Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson delineates an
individual character, through successive stages of growth, till the
story of a life is completely told. If the student of acting would
## p. 16065 (#411) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16065
appreciate the fineness and force of the dramatic art that is dis-
played in the work, let him consider the complexity and depth of
the effect, as contrasted with the simplicity of the means that are
used to produce it. The sense of beauty is satisfied, because the
object that it apprehends is beautiful. The heart is deeply and
surely touched, for the simple and sufficient reason that the char-
acter and experience revealed to it are lovely and pathetic. For
Rip Van Winkle's goodness exists as an oak exists, and is not de-
pendent on principle, precept, or purpose. However he may drift,
he cannot drift away from human affection. Weakness was never
punished with more sorrowful misfortune than his. Dear to us
for what he is, he becomes dearer still for what he suffers; and
in the acting of Jefferson, for the manner in which he suffers it.
That manner, arising out of complete identification with the part,
informed by intuitive and liberal knowledge of human nature, and
guided by an unerring instinct of taste, is unfettered, graceful,
free from effort; and it shows with delicate precision the grad-
ual, natural changes of the character, as wrought by the pressure
of experience. Its result is the winning embodiment of a rare
type of human nature and mystical experience, embellished by
the hues of romance, and exalted by the atmosphere of poetry;
and no person of imagination and sensibility can see it without
being charmed by its humor, thrilled by its spiritual beauty, and
beneath the spell of its humanity, made deeply conscious that life
is worthless, however its ambition may be rewarded, unless it is
hallowed by love.
There will be, as there have been, many performers of Rip
Van Winkle; there is but one Jefferson. For him it was reserved
to idealize the subject; to elevate a prosaic type of good-natured
indolence into an emblem of poetical freedom; to construct and
translate, in the world of fact, the Arcadian vagabond of the
world of dreams. In the presence of his fascinating embodiment
of that droll, gentle, drifting human creature,-to whom trees
and brooks and flowers are familiar companions, to whom spir-
its appear, and for whom the mysterious voices of the lonely
midnight forest have a meaning and a charm, - the observer
feels that poetry is no longer restricted to canvas and marble, but
walks forth crystallized in a human form, spangled with the dia-
mond light of morning, mysterious with spiritual intimations,
lovely with rustic freedom, and fragrant with the incense of the
woods.
XXVII-1005
## p. 16066 (#412) ##########################################
16066
WILLIAM WINTER
-
Jefferson's acting is an education as well as a delight. It
especially teaches the imperative importance, in dramatic art, of a
thorough and perfect plan; which yet, by freshness of spirit and
spontaneity of execution, shall be made to seem free and care.
less. Jefferson's embodiment of Rip has been prominently be-
fore the public for thirty years; yet it is not hackneyed, and it
does not grow tiresome. The secret of its vitality is its poetry.
A thriftless, commonplace sot, as drawn by Washington Irving,
becomes a poetic vagabond, as transfigured and embodied by the
actor; and the dignity of his artistic work is augmented rather
than diminished from the fact that he plays in a drama through-
out which the expedient of inebriety, as a motive of action, is
exaggerated. Boucicault, working under explicit information as
to Jefferson's views and wishes with reference to the part, cer-
tainly improved the old piece; but as certainly, the scheme to
show the sunny sweetness and indolent temperament of Rip is
clumsily planned, while the text is devoid of literary excellence
and intellectual character, - attributes which, though not dra-
matic, are desirable. The actor is immensely superior to the
play, and may indeed be said to make it. The obvious goodness
of his heart, the deep sincerity of his moral purpose, the poten-
tial force of his sense of beauty, the supremacy in him of what
Voltaire was the first to call the "faculty of taste," the inces-
sant charm of his temperament, — those are the means, ruled and
guided by clear vision and strong will, and made to animate an
artistic figure possessing both symmetry and luxuriant wildness,
that make the greatness of Jefferson's embodiment of Rip. He
has created a character that everybody will continue to love, not-
withstanding weakness of nature and indolent conduct. Jefferson
never had the purpose to extol improvidence, or extenuate the
wrong and misery of inebriety. The opportunity that he dis-
cerned and has brilliantly improved was that of showing a lovely
nature, set free from the shackles of conventionality, and cir-
cumscribed with picturesque, romantic surroundings, during a
momentous experience of spiritual life, and of the mutability of
the world. The obvious defects in the structure are an undue
emphasis upon the bottle, as poor Rip's failing, and an undue
exaggeration of the virago quality in Gretchen. It would be
easy, taking the prosy tone of the temperance lecturer, to look at
Jefferson's design as a matter of fact, and not of poetry; and by
dwelling on the impediments of his subject rather than the spirit
## p. 16067 (#413) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16067
.
of his art and the beauty of his execution, to set his beautiful
and elevating achievement in a degraded and degrading light.
But fortunately the heart has its logic as well as the head,
and all observers are not without imagination. The heart and
imagination of our age know what Jefferson means in Rip, and
have accepted him therefore into the sanctuary of affection.
The world does not love Rip Van Winkle because of his
faults, but in spite of them. Underneath his defects the human
nature is sound and bright; and it is out of this interior beauty
that the charm of Jefferson's personation arises. The conduct of
Rip Van Winkle is the result of his character, not of his drams.
At the sacrifice of comicality, here and there, the element of
inebriety might be left out of his experience, and he would still
act in the same way, and possess the same fascination. The
drink is only an expedient to involve the hero in domestic strife,
and open the way for his ghostly adventure and his pathetic
resuscitation. The machinery is clumsy; but that does not inval-
idate either the beauty of the character or the supernatural thrill
and mortal anguish of the experience. Those elements make the
soul of this great work; which, while it captivates the heart, also
enthralls the imagination, — lifting us above the storms of life, its
sorrows, its losses, and its fret, till we rest at last on Nature's
bosom, children once more, and once more happy.
Most persons who have seen Jefferson as Rip would probably
name that achievement as essentially the most natural piece of
acting ever presented within their observation. In its effect it
is natural; in its method, in the process by which it is wrought,
it is absolutely artificial. In that method not forgetting the
soul within that method - will be found the secret of its power;
in the art with which genius transfigures and interprets actual
life: and in that, furthermore, dwells the secret of all good
acting. If you would produce the effect of nature in dramatic
art, you must not be natural; you must be artificial, but you
must seem to be natural. The same step, the same gesture, the
same tone of voice, the same force of facial expression that you
involuntarily use in the proceedings of actual, every-day life, will
not upon the stage prove adequate. They may indicate your
meaning, but they will not convey it. Their result will be
tame, narrow, and insufficient. Your step must be lengthened;
your tone must be elevated; your facial muscles must be allowed
a freer play; the sound with which you intend to produce the
## p. 16068 (#414) ##########################################
16068
WILLIAM WINTER
-
effect of a sigh must leave your lips as a sob. The actor who
is exactly natural in his demeanor and speech upon the stage -
who acts and speaks precisely as he would act and speak in a
room - wearies his audience, because he falls short of his object,
and is indefinite and commonplace. Jefferson, as Rip, has to
present, among other aspects of human nature, a temperament
that to some extent is swayed by an infirmity,- the appetite for
intoxicant liquor. That, in actual life, is offensive; but that, as
shown by Jefferson, when it reaches his auditors, reaches them
only as the token or suggestion of an amiable weakness; and
that weakness, and not the symptom of it, is the spring of the
whole character and action. The hiccough with which Rip looks
in at the window of the cottage where the offended Gretchen is
waiting for him, is not the obnoxious hiccough of a sot, but the
playful hiccough of an artist who is only suggesting a sot. The
effect is natural. The process is artificial. Jefferson constantly
addresses the imagination, and he uses imagination with which
to address it. In actual life the garments worn by Rip would
be soiled. In Jefferson's artistic scheme the studied shabbiness
and carefully selected tatters are scrupulously clean; and they
are made not only harmonious in color,- and thus so pleasing to
the eye that they attract no especial attention, but accordant
with the sweet drollery and listless, indolent, drifting spirit of
the character. No idea could easily be suggested more incongru-
ous with probability, more unnatural and fantastic, than the idea
of a tipsy vagabond encircled by a ring of Dutch ghosts, on the
top of a mountain, in the middle of the night; but when Jeffer-
son — by the deep feeling and affluent imagination with which
he fills the scene, and by the vigilant, firm, unerring, technical
skill with which he controls his forces and guides them to effect
— has made that idea a living fact, no spectator of the weird,
thrilling, pathetic picture ever thinks of it as unnatural. The
illusion is perfect, and it is perfectly maintained. All along its
line the character of Rip — the impossible hero of an impossible
experience - is so essentially unnatural that if it were imperson-
ated in the literal manner of nature it would produce the effect
of whirling extravagance. Jefferson, pouring his soul into an
ideal of which he is himself the creator,- an ideal which does
not exist either in Washington Irving's story, or Charles Burke's
play, or Dion Boucicault's adaptation of Burke, — and treating
that idea in a poetic spirit, as to every fibre, tone, hue, motion,
-
-
## p. 16069 (#415) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16069
and attitude, has made Rip as natural as if we had personally
participated in his aimless and wandering life. So potent, in-
deed, is the poetic art of the actor, that the dog Schneider, who
is never shown, possesses all the same a positive existence in
our thoughts. The principal truth denoted by Jefferson's acting,
therefore, is the necessity of clear perception of what is meant
by “nature. ” The heights are reached only when inspiration
is guided by intellectual purpose, and used with artistic skill.
Shakespeare, with his incomparable felicity, has crystallized this
principle into diamond light:-
< Over that art,
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
Which nature makes. ”
>
(All the following poems are from (Wanderers,' copyright 1888, by William
Winter, and published by Ticknor & Co. ; and are reprinted with the
approval of Mr. Winter. ]
A PLEDGE TO THE DEAD
F
READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, AT ALBANY,
N. Y. , JUNE 18TH, 1879
ROM the lily of love that uncloses
In the glow of a festival kiss,
On the wind that is heavy with roses,
And shrill with the bugles of bliss,
Let it float o'er the mystical ocean
That breaks on the kingdom of night -
Our oath of eternal devotion
To the heroes who died for the right!
They loved, as we love — yet they parted
From all that man's spirit can prize;
Left woman and child broken-hearted,
Staring up to the pitiless skies;
Left the tumult of youth, the rich guerdon
Hope promised to conquer from fate;
Gave all for the agonized burden
Of death, for the Flag and the State.
Where they roam on the slopes of the mountain
That only by angels is trod,
Where they muse by the crystalline fountain
That springs in the garden of God,
## p. 16070 (#416) ##########################################
16070
WILLIAM WINTER
Are they lost in unspeakable splendor ?
Do they never look back and regret ?
Ah, the valiant are constant and tender,
And Honor can never forget!
Divine in their pitying sadness,
They grieve for their comrades of earth:
They will hear us, and start into gladness,
And echo the notes of our mirth;
They will lift their white hands with a blessing
We shall know by the tear that it brings -
The rapture of friendship confessing,
With harps and the waving of wings.
In the grim and relentless upheaval
That blesses the world through a curse,
Still bringing the good out of evil —
The garland of peace on the hearse! -
They were shattered, consumed, and forsaken,
Like the shadows that fly from the dawn:
We may never know why they were taken,
But we always shall feel they are gone.
If the wind that sighs over our prairies
No longer is solemn with knells,
But lovely with flowers and fairies,
And sweet with the calm Sabbath bells;
If virtue, in cottage and palace,
Leads love to the bridal of pride,
'Tis because out of war's bitter chalice
Our heroes drank deeply — and died.
Ah, grander in doom-stricken glory
Than the greatest that linger behind,
They shall live in perpetual story,
Who saved the last hope of mankind !
For their cause was the cause of the races
That languished in slavery's night;
And the death that was pale on their faces
Has filled the whole world with its light!
To the clouds and the mountains we breathe it:
To the freedom of planet and star;
Let the tempests of ocean enwreathe it;
Let the winds of the night bear it far,–
## p. 16071 (#417) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16071
Our oath, that till manhood shall perish,
And honor and virtue are sped,
We are true to the cause that they cherish,
And eternally true to the dead!
EDWIN BOOTH
READ AT A FAREWELL FEAST TO Edwin Booth, AT DELMONICO's, N. Y. ,
JUNE 15TH, 1880
H"
is barque will fade, in mist and night,
Across the dim sea-line,
And coldly on our aching sight
The solemn stars will shine.
All, all in mournful silence, save
For ocean's distant roar,
Heard where the slow, regretful wave
Sobs on the lonely shore.
But oh, while, winged with love and prayer,
Our thoughts pursue his track,
What glorious sights the midnight air
Will proudly waft us back!
What golden words will flutter down
From many a peak of fame!
What glittering shapes of old renown
That cluster round his name!
O'er storied Denmark's haunted ground
Will darkly drift again,
Dream-like and vague, without a sound,
The spectre of the Dane;
And breaking hearts will be the wreath
For grief that knows no tear,
When shine on Cornwall's storm-swept heath
The blazing eyes of Lear.
Slow, 'mid the portents of the storm
And fate's avenging powers,
Will moody Richard's haggard form
Pace through the twilight hours;
And wildly hurtling o'er the sky,
The red star of Macbeth
Torn from the central arch on high-
Go down in dusky death!
## p. 16072 (#418) ##########################################
16072
WILLIAM WINTER
But — best of all! — will softly rise
His form of manly grace —
The noble brow, the honest eyes,
The sweetly patient face,
The loving heart, the stately mind
That, conquering every ill,
Through seas of trouble cast behind,
Was grandly steadfast still.
Though skies might gloom and tempest rave,
Though friends and hopes might fall,
His constant spirit, simply brave,
Would meet and suffer all;
Would calmly smile at fortune's frown,
Supreme o'er gain or loss:
And he the worthiest wears the crown
That gently bore the cross!
Be blithe and bright, thou jocund day
That golden England knows!
Bloom sweetly round the wanderer's way,
Thou royal English rose!
And, English hearts, (no need to tell
How truth itself endures ! )
This soul of manhood treasure well,
Our love commits to yours!
Farewell! nor mist nor flying cloud
Nor night can ever dim
The wreath of honors, pure and proud,
Our hearts have twined for him!
But bells of memory still shall chime,
And violets star the sod,
Till our last broken wave of time
Dies on the shores of God.
VIOLET
O
NE name I shall not forget -
Gentle name of Violet.
Many and strange the years have sped:
She who bore that name is dead;
Dead — and resting by the sea,
Where she gave her heart to me.
## p. 16073 (#419) ##########################################
WILLIAM WINTER
16073
Dead - and now the grasses wave,
And the dry leaves, o'er her grave,
Rustling in the autumn wind,
Like the sad thoughts in my mind.
She was light, and soon forgot;
Loved me well, and loved me not;
Changeful as the April sky,-
Kind or cruel, sad or shy;
Gray eyes, winsome, arch, and fair-
My youth's passion and despair.
Now through storms of many years,
Now through tender mist of tears,
Looking backward, I can see
She was always true to me:
Yet, with prisoned tears that burn,
Cold we parted, wayward, stern;
Spoke the quiet, farewell word,
Neither meant and neither heard;
Spoke- and parted in our pain,
Never more to meet again.
Sometimes underneath the moon,
On rose-laden nights of June,
When white clouds drift o'er the blue,
While the pale stars glimmer through,
And the honeysuckle throws
Fragrant challenge to the rose,
And the liberal pine-tree Alings
Perfume on the midnight's wings,-
Came, with thrills of hope and fear,
Mystic sense that she was near;
Came the thought: Through good and ill
She loves, and she remembers still!
But no word e'er came or went;
And when nine long years were spent,
## p. 16074 (#420) ##########################################
16074
WILLIAM WINTER
Something in my bosom said,
Very softly: She is dead!
Now, at sombre autumn eve,
Wandering where the woodlands grieve,
Or where wild winds whistle free,
On the hills that front the sea,
Cruel thoughts of love and loss
Nail my spirit to the cross.
Friends have fallen, youth is gone,
Fields are brown and skies are wan;
One"name I shall not forget,
Gentle name of Violet.
THE GOLDEN SILENCE
W***
THAT though I sing no other song ?
What though I speak no other word ?
Is silence shame? Is patience wrong?
At least one song of mine was heard:
One echo from the mountain air,
One ocean murmur, glad and free,
One sign that nothing grand or fair
In all this world was lost to me.
I will not wake the sleeping lyre;
I will not strain the chords of thought:
The sweetest fruit of all desire
Comes its own way, and comes unsought.
Though all the bards of earth were dead,
And all their music passed away,
What Nature wishes should be said
She'll find the rightful voice to say!
Her heart is in the shimmering leaf,
The drifting cloud, the lonely sky;
And all we know of bliss or grief
She speaks, in forms that cannot die.
The mountain peaks that shine afar,
The silent stars, the pathless sea,
Are living signs of all we are,
And types of all we hope to be.
## p. 16075 (#421) ##########################################
16075
THEODORE WINTHROP
(1828–1861)
Chuo
He figure of Theodore Winthrop was a heroic one in the open-
ing days of the American War of the Rebellion. He bore a
G historic name; his character was chivalric; his literary tal-
ent, just beginning to express itself, was brilliant; he died young
and bravely at the head of his column, fighting for what he deemed
the right. Here were all the elements for hero-making. Small won-
der that his books, posthumously published, were eagerly bought
and read. To read them now is to realize what an unusual gift in
him was quenched untimely. The work was
tentative, of promise rather than full per-
formance. But it is worth remembrance;
it calls for recognition.
Theodore Winthrop was born in New
Haven, September 22d, 1828; a direct de-
scendant of John Winthrop, early governor
of Connecticut. He was graduated from
Yale University when twenty years of age,
and was a notable student, winning prizes
and greatly admired of his fellows. From
graduation to the outbreaking of war -
more than a dozen years — his life was a
roving one, his activity varied. His health THEODORE WINTHROP
was delicate, and at first he traveled much
abroad; then entered an Eastern counting-house; went to Panama
in the employment of the Pacific Steamship Company; and later made
a tour of California and Oregon, extending it to Vancouver's Island
and Puget Sound, and visiting the Hudson's Bay Company's stations.
He was often ill, but the rough nomadic life seemed the tonic for
his restoration. Again he tried the counting-room, only to be off
some adventurous expedition. In spite of his uncertain
health, he was an athlete, skillful on horseback and in all out-door
sports.
In 1855 he studied law, and was admitted to the bar; trying St.
Louis first, then settling in New York. He threw himself with ardor
into the Fremont campaign, and was active in making speeches
among the Pennsylvania working-folk,- an occupation he liked far
soon
on
-
## p. 16076 (#422) ##########################################
16076
THEODORE WINTHROP
better than practicing his profession, for which he had little taste.
Thus the war found him unsettled, unproved: a man with a strong
instinct for action, and a love for unconventional and wild life; a keen
observer, who had seen much, and from his college days had been
fond of writing.
Here was an unusual equipment for a literary man. The war
seemed to his friends to be his opportunity: certainly he himself wel-
comed its call to deeds. As George William Curtis said in a sympa-
thetic biographical sketch, " Theodore Winthrop's life, like a fire long
smoldering, suddenly blazed up into a clear bright flame and van-
ished. ” On settling in New York, he had joined the crack Seventh
Regiment. In April 1861 he went with it to the front. General
Butler made him his military secretary and aide. At Big Bethel, on
June roth, in the flush of his manhood, he fell with his face to the
enemy, a beautiful young leader.
While in camp, Winthrop was contributing to the Atlantic Monthly
admirably graphic papers on his war experiences: he began to draw
public attention as a writer. He left a large amount of manuscript,
and his books appeared in rapid succession after his death: Cecil
Dreeme) in 1861; John Brent,' 'Edwin Brothertoft,' and (The Canoe
and the Saddle) in 1862; Life in the Open Air and Other Papers) in
1863. The two novels first named proved the most popular: Cecil
Dreeme' reached its seventeenth edition by 1864, John Brent' its
fourteenth. The latter is unquestionably his strongest work. Win-
throp has fine qualities as a story-maker. The light and shade in
human existence is dramatically rendered in his fiction. He gives
his readers plot and action in plenty; writing in crisp, idiomatic, vig-
orous English. In such a book as John Brent' there is an open-air
wholesomeness that is infectious. That tale of the Western plains,
with its heroic men and horses, its knightly rescue of woman in
distress, its thrilling ride for love and life, is one of the breeziest
imaginable. It is thoroughly American in tone and atmosphere; and
had the merit, in its day especially, of delineating Western scenes
and characters with sympathy and skill, at a time when the West
was almost virgin soil to literature. In Cecil Dreeme) the drama is
enacted in the city, and it is dark and gruesome, running into melo-
drama: the story seems less mature. Yet it has unquestionable power
and charm.
Winthrop is always the poet and idealist, interested in character on
its spiritual side, - this tendency being healthily blended with the
objective narrative interest of plot. One feels in reading his vital
stories that in his early death American literature suffered a genuine
loss. “The Life and Poems of Theodore Winthrop,' edited by his
sister, appeared in 1884.
## p. 16077 (#423) ##########################################
THEODORE WINTHROP
16077
A GALLOP OF THREE
From John Brent. Copyright 1862, by Ticknor & Fields
W*
E WERE off, we Three on our Gallop to save and to slay.
Pumps and Fulano took fire at once. They were ready
to burst into their top speed, and go off in a frenzy.
Steady, steady,” cried Brent. “Now we'll keep this long
easy lope for a while, and I'll tell you my plan. — They have
gone to the southward, — those two men. They could not get
away in any other direction. I have heard Murker say he knows
all the country between here and the Arkansaw. Thank Heaven!
so do I, foot by foot. ”
I recalled the sound of galloping hoofs I had heard in the
night to the southward.
"I heard them, then," said I, “in my watch after Fulano's
lariat was cut. The wind lulled, and there came a sound of
horses, and another sound, which I then thought a fevered fancy
of my own, a far-away scream of a woman.
Brent had been quite unimpassioned in his manner until now.
He groaned as I spoke of the scream.
“O Wade! O Richard! ” he said, "why did you not know the
voice? It was she. They have terrible hours the start. ”
.
He was silent a moment, looking sternly forward. Then he
began again; and as he spoke, his iron-gray edged on with a
looser rein.
“It is well you heard them: it makes their course unmistaka-
ble. We know we are on their track, Seven or eight full hours!
It is long odds of a start. But they are not mounted as we
are mounted. They did not ride as we shall ride. They had a
woman to carry, and their mules to drive. They will fear pur-
suit, and push on without stopping. But we shall catch them;
we shall catch them before night, so help us God! ”
You are aiming for the mountains ? ” I asked.
“For Luggernel Alley,” he said.
I remembered how, in our very first interview, a thousand
miles away at the Fulano mine, he had spoken of this spot. All
the conversation then, all the talk about my horse, came back
to me like a Delphic prophecy suddenly fulfilled. I made a good
omen of this remembrance.
“For Luggernel Alley,” said Brent. “Do you recollect my
pointing out a notch in the sierra, yesterday, when I said I
(c
## p. 16078 (#424) ##########################################
16078
THEODORE WINTHROP
>
would like to spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a woman
brave enough for this plains life ? »
He grew very white as he spoke, and again Pumps led off by
a neck, we ranging up instantly.
“They will make for the Luggernel Springs. The alley is
the only gate through the mountains towards the Arkansaw.
they can get by there, they are safe. They can strike off New
Mexico way; or keep on to the States out of the line of emigra-
tion or any Mormon pursuit. The Springs are the only water to
be had at this season, without digging, anywhere in that quarter.
They must go there. We are no farther from the spot than we
were at Bridger. We have been traveling along the base of the
triangle. We have only lost time. And now that we are fairly
under way, I think we might shake out another reef.
faster, friends- a little faster yet! ”
It was a vast desert level where we were riding. Here and
there a scanty tuft of grass appeared, to prove that Nature had
tried her benign experiment, and wafted seeds hither to let the
scene be verdant, if it would. Nature had failed. The land
refused any mantle over its brown desolation. The soil was dis-
integrated, igneous rock, fine and well beaten down as the most
thoroughly laid macadam.
Behind was the rolling region where the Great Trail passes;
before and far away, the faint blue of the sierra. Not a bird
sang in the hot noon; not a cricket chirped. No sound except
the beat of our horses' hoofs on the pavement. We rode side by
side, taking our strides together. It was a waiting race. The
horses traveled easily. They learned, as a horse with a self-
possessed rider will, that they were not to waste strength in
rushes. “Spend, but waste not,” — not a step, not a breath, in
that gallop for life! This must be our motto.
We three rode abreast over the sere brown plain on our gal-
lop to save and to slay.
Far - ah, how terribly dim and distant! - was the sierra, a
slowly lifting cloud. Slowly, slowly they lifted, those gracious
heights, while we sped over the harsh levels of the desert. Harsh
levels, abandoned or unvisited by verdancy. But better so: there
was no long herbage to check our great pace over the smooth
race-course; no thickets here to baffle us; no forests to mislead.
We galloped abreast, —Armstrong at the right. His weird,
gaunt white held his own with the best of us. No whip, no
## p. 16079 (#425) ##########################################
THEODORE WINTHROP
16079
.
spur, for that deathly creature. He went as if his master's pur-
pose were stirring him through and through. That stern intent
made his sinews steel, and put an agony of power into every
stride. The man never stirred, save sometimes to put a hand
to that bloody blanket bandage across his head and temple. He
had told his story, he had spoken his errand, he breathed not a
word; but with his lean, pallid face set hard, his gentle blue eyes
scourged of their kindliness and fixed upon those distant mount-
ains where his vengeance lay, he rode on like a relentless fate.
Next in the line I galloped. Oh, my glorious black! The
great killing pace seemed mere playful canter to him,- such as
one might ride beside a timid girl, thrilling with her first free
dash over a flowery common, or a golden beach between sea and
shore. But from time to time he surged a little forward with
his great shoulders, and gave a mighty writhe of his body, while
his hind legs came lifting his flanks under me, and telling of the
giant reserve of speed and power he kept easily controlled. Then
his ear would go back, and his large brown eye, with its purple-
black pupil, would look round at my bridle hand and then into
my eye, saying as well as words could have said it, « This is
mere sport, my friend and master. You do not know me. I have
stuff in me of which you do not dream. Say the word, and I
can double this, treble it. Say the word! let me show you how I
can spurn the earth. ” Then with the lightest love pressure on
the snaffle, I would say, "Not yet! not yet! Patience, my noble
! !
friend! Your time will come. ”
At the left rode Brent, our leader. He knew the region; he
made the plan; he had the hope; his was the ruling passion, -
stronger than brotherhood, than revenge. Love made him leader
of that galloping three. His iron-gray bent grandly, with white
mane flapping the air like a signal flag of reprieve. Eager hope
and kindling purpose made the rider's face more beautiful than
He seemed to behold Sidney's motto written on the golden
haze before him, “Viam aut inveniam aut faciam. ” I felt my
heart grow great when I looked at his calm features, and caught
his assuring smile,-a gay smile but for the dark, fateful resolve
beneath it. And when he launched some stirring word of cheer,
and shook another ten of seconds out of the gray's mile, even
Armstrong's countenance grew less deathly, as he turned to our
leader in silent response. Brent looked a fit chieftain for such
a wild charge over the desert waste; with his buckskin hunting-
»
ever.
## p. 16080 (#426) ##########################################
16080
THEODORE WINTHROP
shirt and leggins with flaring fringes, his otter cap and eagle's
plume, his bronze face with its close brown beard, his elate head,
and his seat like a centaur.
So we galloped three abreast, neck and neck, hoof with hoof,
steadily quickening our pace over the sere width of desert. We
must make the most of the levels. Rougher work, cruel obstacles
were before. All the wild, triumphant music I had ever heard
came and sang in my ears to the flinging cadence of the resonant
feet, tramping on hollow arches of the volcanic rock, over great
vacant chasms underneath. Sweet and soft around us melted
the hazy air of October; and its warm, flickering currents shook
like a veil of gauzy gold between us and the blue bloom of the
mountains far away, but nearing now and lifting step by step.
On we galloped — the avenger, the friend, the lover — on our
errand to save and to slay.
It came afternoon, as we rode on steadily. The country grew
rougher. The horses never flinched; but they sweated freely, and
foam from their nostrils flecked their shoulders. By-and-by, with
little pleasant admonitory puffs, a breeze drew down from the
glimmering frosty edges of the sierra and cooled us. Horses and
men' were cheered and freshened, and lifted anew to their work.
We had seen and heard no life on the desert. Now, in the
broken country, a coyote or two scuttled away as we passed.
Sometimes a lean gray. wolf would skulk out of a brake, canter
after us a little way, and then squat on his haunches, staring at
our strange speed. Flight and chase he could understand; but
ours was not flight for safety, or chase for food. Men are queer
mysteries to beasts. So our next companions found. Over the
edge of a slope, bending away to a valley of dry scanty pasture
at the left, a herd of antelopes appeared. They were close to
us, within easy revolver shot. They sprang into graceful flight,
some score of them, with tails up and black hoofs glancing. Pres-
ently, pausing for curiosity, they saw that we fled, not followed;
and they in turn became pursuers, careering after us for a mile
or more, until our stern business left their gamboling play far
behind.
We held steadily for that notch in the blue sierra. The
mountain lines grew sharper, the country where we traveled
rougher, every stride. We came upon a wide tract covered with
wild sage-bushes. These delayed and baffled us.
-
It was a pigmy
forest of trees, mature and complete, but no higher than the knee.
## p. 16081 (#427) ##########################################
THEODORE WINTHROP
16081
>
Every dwarfed, stunted, gnarled bush had the trunk, limbs, twigs,
and gray withered foliage, all in miniature, of some tree, hap-
less but sturdy, that has had a weather-beaten struggle for life
on a storm-threshed crag by the shore, or on a granite side of
a mountain, with short allowance of soil to eat and water
to drink. Myriads of square miles of that arid region have no
important vegetation except this wild sage or Artemisia, and a
meaner brother, not even good to burn,- the greasewood.
One may ride through the tearing thickets of a forest pri-
meval, as one may shoulder through a crowd of civilized barba-
rians at a spectacle. Our gallop over the top of this pigmy wood
was as difficult as to find passage over the heads of the same
crowd, tall men and short, men hatted with slouched hats, wash-
bowls, and stove-pipes. It was a rough scramble. It checked our
speed and chafed our horses. Sometimes we could find natural
pathways for a few rods. Then these strayed aside or closed up,
and we must plunge straight on. We lost time; moments we lost
more precious than if every one were marked by a drop in a
clepsydra, and each drop as it fell changed itself and tinkled in
the basin, a priceless pearl.
“It worries me, this delay," I said to Brent.
“They lost as much more time than we,” he said.
And he crowded on more desperately, as man rides for
dearer than life. as a lover rides for love.
We tore along, breaking through and over the sage-bushes,
each man where best he could. Fulano began to show me what
leaps were in him. I gave him his head. No bridle would
have held him. I kept my mastery by the voice, or rather by
the perfect identification of his will with mine. Our minds acted
together.
