soul pined for sympathy, pure and unalloyed. The three children
I have seen who were fairest in my eyes, and gave most promise
of the future, were Waldo [Emerson], Pickie, Hermann Clarke ; —
all nipped in the bud. Endless thought has this given me, and a
resolve to seek the realization of all hopes and plans elsewhere ;
which resolve will weigh with me as much as it can weigh before
the silver cord is finally loosed. Till then. Earth, our mother,
always finds strange, unexpected ways to draw us back to her
bosom, — to make us seek anew a nutriment which has never
failed to cause us frequent sickness."
Having somewhat regained her health and calmness at
Eieti, she journeyed thence, with her husband and chQd, by
Perugia to Florence, where they were welcomed and cheered
by the love and admiration of the little American colony, and
by the few British liberals residing there, — the Brownings
prominent among them. Here they spent the ensuing Winter,
and IMargaret wrote her survey of the grand movement for
Italian liberty and unity, which had miscarried for the
moment, but which was still cherished in millions of noble
hearts. With the ensuing Spring came urgent messages from
her native land, awaking, or rather strengthening, her natural
longing to greet once more the dear ones from whom she had
now been four years parted; and on the 17th of May, 1850,
they embarked in the bark Elizabeth, Captain Hasty, at Leg-
horn, for New York, which they hoped to reach within sixty
days at farthest.
Margaret's correspondence for the preceding month is dark-
ened with apprehensions and sinister foreljodings, which were
destined to be fearfully justified. First : Captain Hasty was
prostrated, when a few days on his voyage, by what proved
to be confluent small-pox, whereof he died, despite his wife's
tenderest care, and his body was consigned to the deep. Then
Angelo, Margaret's child, was attacked by the terrible disease,
and his life barely saved, after he had for days been utterly
190 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
blind, and his recovery seemed hopeless. So, after a week's
detention by head winds at Gibralter, they fared on, under
the mate's guidance, until, at noon of July 15, in a tliick fog,
with a southeast breeze, they reckoned themselves off the
Jersey coast, and headed northeast for the bay of New York,
whicli they expected to enter next morning. But the evening
brought a gale, which steadily increased to a tempest, before
which, though under close-reefed sails, they were driven with
a rapidity of which they were unconscious, until, about four
o'clock the next morning, the Elizabeth struck heavily on
Fire Island Beach, off the south coast of Long Island, and her
prow was driven harder and farther into the sand, while her
freight of marble broke through her keel, and her stern was
gradually hove around by the terrible waves, until she lay
broadside to their thundering sweep, her deck being careened
toward the land, the sea making a clear sweep over her at
every swell. The masts had been promptly cut away; but
the ship was already lost, and her inmates could only hope
to save their own lives. Making their way with great diffi-
culty to the forecastle, they remained there, amid the war of
elements, until 9 A. M., when, as the wreck was evidently
about to break up, they resolved to attempt the perilous pas-
sage to the desolate sand-hills which were plainly visible at a
distance of a few hundred feet ; and, venturing upon a plank,
Mrs. Hasty, aided by a seaman named Davis, reached the shore.
But Margaret and her husband refused to be saved separately,
or without their child ; and the crew were directed to save
themselves, which most of them did. StiU, some remained on
the wTeck, and were persuading the passengers to trust them-
selves to planks, when, at 3 p. m., a great sea struck the fore-
castle, carrying away the foremast, together with the deck
and all upon it. Two of the crew saved themselves by swim-
ming ; the steward, with little Angelo in his arms, both dead,
was washed ashore twenty minutes later; but of Margaret
and her husband nothing was evermore seen.
Just before setting out on this fateful voyage, she had -written
apprehensively to a friend at home : —
MARGARET FULLER. 191
" I shall embark more composedly in oiir merchant-ship ; pray-
ing fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at
sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid howling "waves ; or, if so,
that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish
may be brief."
So passed away the loftiest, bravest soul tliat has yet irra-
diated the form of an American woman.
IN MEMORY
OF THE
MARTYRS TO HUMAN LIBERTY,
WHO FELL
DURING THE SIEGE OF MAY AND JUNE, 1 849,
AS
DEFENDERS OF ROME;
STERNLY STRUGGLING
AGAINST OVERWHELMING NUMBERS, AGAINST AMPLE MUNITIONS,
AGAINST FATE :
THEIR HIGHEST HOPE THAT IN THEM, LIVING OR DEAD, THE
SACRED CAUSE SHOULD NOT BE DISHONORED :
THEIR PROUDEST WISH
THAT freedom's CHAMPIONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
MIGHT RECOGNIZE THEM AS BRETHREN,
NOBLY DYING
THAT SURVIVING MILLIONS MAY DULY ABHOR TYRANNY AND LOVE LIBERTY:
CLOSING THEIR EYES SERENELY,
IN THE GENEROUS FAITH THAT RIGHTS FOR ALL, DOMINION FOR NONE,
WILL SOON REVIVIFY THE EARTH BAPTIZED IN THEIR BLOOD.
STAY, HEEDLESS WANDERER !
DEFILE NOT WITH LISTLESS STEP THE ASHES OF HEROES !
BUT,
ON THE RELICS OF THESE MARTYRS, SWEAR A DEEPER AND STERNER
HATE TO EVERY FORM OF OPPRESSION :
HERE LEARN TO FEEL
A DEARER LOVE FOR ALL WHO STRIVE FOR LIBERTY :
HERE BREATHE A PRAYER
FOR THE SPEEDY TRIUMPH OF RIGHT OVER MIGHT, LIGHT OVER NIGHT ;
AND FOR Rome's fallen defenders,
THAT THE GOD OF THE OPPRESSED AND AFFLICTED MAY HAVE
THEM IN HIS HOLY KEEPING.
" They never fail who die
In a great cause ; the block may soak their gore ;
Their heads may sodden in the sun ; their limbs
Be strung to citj- gates and castle walls, —
But still their siiirit walks abroad."
Byron, Marino Faliero, Act II. Scene 2.
XXIII.
BEGGARS AND BORROWERS.
NEW YOEK is the metropolis of beggary. The wrecks
of incapacity, miseducation, prodigality, and profligacy
drift hither from either continent, and are finally stranded on
our shore. Has a pretentious family in Europe a member
who is felt as a burden or loathed as a disgrace ? money is
somehow scraped together to ship him off to New York ; tak-
ing good care that there be not enough to enable him to ship
himseK back again. Does a family collapse anywhere in the
interior or along the coast of our country, leaving a helpless
widow and fatherless children to struggle with difficulties
utterly unexpected and unprepared for ? though too proud to
work, or even beg, where they are known, they are ready
enough to try their fortune and hide their fall in this great
emporium, where they would gladly do — if they could get
it — the very work wliich they reject as degrading in the
home of their by-gone prosperity and consequence. Though
living is here most expensive, and only eminent skill or effi-
ciency can justify migration hither on the part of any but
single young men, yet mechanics and laborers of very mod-
erate ability, and even widows with small children, hie hither,
in reckless defiance of the fact that myriads have done so
before them, — at least nineteen-tAventieths of them only to
plunge thereby into deeper, more squalid, hopeless misery
than they had previously known. AVant is a hard master
anywhere ; but nowhere else are the sufferings, the woes, the
desperation, of utter need so trying as in a great city ; and
they are preeminently so in this city ; because the multi-
BEGGARS AND BORROWERS. 193
plicity of the destitute benumbs the heart of charity and
prechides attention to any one's wants, while each is ab-
sorbed in his own cares and efforts to such extent that he
knows nothing of the neighbors who may be starving to
death, with barely a brick wall between him and them.
The beggars of New York comprise but a small proportion
of its sufferers from want ; yet they are at once very numerous
and remarkably impudent. One who would accept a franc
in Paris, or a shilhng in London, with grateful acknowledg-
ments, considers himself ill-used and insulted if you offer
him less than a dollar in New York. With thousands, bes-
gary is a profession, whereof the rudiments were acquired in
the Old World ; but experience and observation have qualified
them to pursue it with veteran proficiency and success in the
New. Even our native beggars have a boldness of aspiration,
an audacity of conception, such as the magnificent proportions
of our lakes and valleys, our mountains and prairies, are
calculated to inspire. I doubt that an Asiatic or European
beggar ever frankly avowed his intent to beg the purchase-
money of a good farm, though some may have invested their
gains thus laudably ; but I have been solicited by more than
one American, who had visited this city from points hundreds
of miles distant, expressly and avowedly to beg the means of
buying a homestead. I wish I were certain that none of these
had more success with others than with me.
Begging for churches, for seminaries, for libraries, has been
one of our most crying nuisances. If there be two hundred
negro families living in a city, they will get up a Baptist,
a Methodist, and perhaps an Episcopal or Congregational
Church ; and, being generally poor, they will undertake to
build for each a meeting-house, and support a clergyman, —
in good part, of course, by begging, — often in distant cities.
A dozen boys attending a seminaiy will form a hbrary asso-
ciation, or debating club, and then levj on mankind in gen-
eral for the books they would like to possess. Thus, in addi-
tion to our resident mendicancy, New Yoi^k is made the
cruising-ground, the harvest-field, of the high-soaring beggary
13
194 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
of a whole continent ; while our princely merchants, at some
seasons, are waited upon by more solicitors of contributions
than purchasers of goods. Hence, our rich men generally
coiirt and secure a reputation for meanness, which may or
may not be deserved in a particular instance, but which, in
any case, is indispensable as a protection, like the shell of
a tortoise. Were they reputed benevolent and free-handed,
they would never be allowed time to attend to their business,
and could not enjoy an hour's peace in the bosom of their
respective families.
The chronic beggars are a bad lot ; but the systematic bor-
rowers are far worse. Wliat you give is gone, and soon for-
gotten, — there is the end of it. It is presumable that you
can spare, or you would have withheld it. But you lend (in
your greener days) with some expectation of being repaid ;
hence, disappointment and serious loss, — sometimes, even
disgrace, — because of your abused faith in human nature.
I presume no year passes wherein the solvent business men
of this city lose so little as Ten Millions of Dollars borrowed
of them, for a few hours or days, as a momentary accommoda-
tion, by neighbors and acquaintances, who would resent a
suggested doubt of its punctual repayment ; yet who never
do repay it. I am confident that good houses have been
reduced to bankruptcy, by these most irregular and improvi-
dent loans.
Worse still is the habit of borrowing and lending among
clerks and young mechanics. A part of these are provident,
thrifty, frugal, and so save money ; another, and much larger
class, prefer to " live as they go," and are constantly spending
in drink and other dissipation that portion of their earnings
which they should save. When I was a journeyman, I knew
several who earned more than I did, but who were always
behind with their board. Men of this class are continually
borrowing five dollars or ten dollars of their frugal acquaint-
ances to invest in a ball, a sleigh-ride, an excursion, a frolic ;
and a large proportion of these loans are never repaid. Mil-
lions of dollars, in the aggregate, are thus transferred from
BEGGARS AND BORROWERS. 195
the pockets of the frugal to those of the prodigal ; depriving
the former of means they are sure to need when they come
to furnish a house or undertake a business, and doing the lat-
ter no good, but rather confirming them in their evil ways.
Such lending should be systematically discountenanced and
refused.
I hate to say anything that seems calculated to steel others
against the prayers of the unfortunate and necessitous ; yet
an extensive, protracted experience has led me to the conclu-
sion that nine tenths of those who solicit loans of strangers
or casual acquaintances are thriftless vagabonds, who will
never be better off than at present, or scoundrels, who would
not pay if they were able. In hundreds of cases, I have l^een
importuned to lend from one dollar up to ten dollars, to help a
stranger who had come to the city on some errand or other, had
here fallen among thieves (who are far more abimdant here
than they ever were on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho),
been made drunk, and plundered of his last cent, and who
asked only enough to take him home, when the money would
be surely and promptly returned. Sometimes, I have lent
the sum required ; in other cases, I have refused it ; but I
cannot remember a single instance in which the promise to
repay was made good. I recollect a case wherein a capable,
intelligent New-England mechanic, on his way from an East-
em city to work two hundred miles up the Erie Railroad,
borrowed of me the means of saving his children from famine
on the way, promising to pay it out of his first month's
wages; which he took care never to do. Tliis case differs
from many others only in that the swindler was clearly of a
better class than that from which the great army of borrowers
is so steadily and bounteously recruited.
In one instance, a young man came with the usual request,
and was asked to state his case. " I am a clerk from New
Hampshire," he began, " and have been for three years em-
ployed in Georgia. At length, a severe sickness prostrated
me ; I lost my place ; my money was exhausted ; and here
am I, with my A\dfe, without a cent ; and I want to borrow
196 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
enough to take me luDme to my father's house, when I will
surely repay it." " Stranger," was the response, " you e\i-
dently cannot stay here, and I must help you get away ; but
why say anything about paying me ? You know, and /
know, you will never pay a cent." My visitor protested
and remonstrated ; but I convinced, if I did not convert, him.
"Don't you see," I rejoined, "that you cannot have been
three years a clerk in a leading mercantile house in Georgia
without making the acquaintance of merchants doing busi-
ness in this city ? Now, if you were a person likely to pay,
you would apply to, and obtain help from, those merchants
whom you know; not ask help of me, — an utter stranger."
He did not admit the force of my demonstration ; but of
course the sequel proved it correct.
I consider it all but an axiom, that he who asks a stranger
to lend him money will never pay it ; yet I have known an
exception. Once, when I was exceedingly poor and needy,
in a season of commercial revulsion or " panic," I opened a
letter from Utica, and found therein five dollars, which the
â– vvTiter asked me to receive in satisfaction of a loan of that
sum which I had made him — a needy stranger — on an oc-
casion which he recalled to my remembrance. Perplexed by
so unusual a message, and especially by receiving it at such
a time, when every one was seeking to borrow, — no one
condescending to pa-y, — I scanned the letter more closely,
and at length achieved a solution of the problem. The writer
was a patient in the State lunatic asylum.
A gushing youth once wrote me to this effect : —
" Dear Sir : Among your literary treasures, you have doubt-
less preserved several autographs of our country's late lamented
poet, Edgar A. Poe. If so, and you can spare one, please enclose
it to me, and receive the thanks of yours truly."
I promptly responded, as follows : —
" Dear Sir : Among my literary treasures, there happens to be
exactly one autograph of our countiy's late lamented poet, Edgar
A. Poe. It is his note of hand for fifty dollars, with my indorse-
BEGGARS AND BORROWERS. 197
ment across the back. It cost me exactly $50.75 (including pro-
test), and you may have it for half that amovmt. Yom-s, respect-
fully."
That autograph, I regret to say, remains on my hands, and
is still for sale at first cost, despite the lapse of time, and the
depreciation of our currency.
I once received a letter from an utter stranger, living two
hundred miles away, asking me to lend him a large sum on a
mortgage of his farm, and closing thus : —
" P. S. My religious views are radically antagonist to yoiu-s ;
but I know no member of my own church of whom I would so
readily, and with such confidence, ask such a favor, as of you."
This postscript impelled me, instead of dropping the letter
quietly into the waste-basket, as usual, and turning to the
next business in order, to answer him as follows : —
" Sir : I have neither the money you ask for, nor tlie inclina-
tion to lend it on the security you proffer. And yoiu- P. S.
prompts the suggestion that, whenever / shall be moved to seek
favors of the members of some other church, rather than of that to
which I have hitherto adhered, I shaD make haste to join that
other church."
— I trust I have here said nothing calculated to stay the
hand or chill the spirit of heaven-born Charity. The world
is full of needy, suffering ones, who richly deserve compas-
sion ; not to speak of the vagrants, who, though undeserving,
must not be allowed to starve or freeze. I was struck with
the response of a man last from St. Louis, who recently in-
sisted on being helped on to Boston, which he said was his
early home, and to whom I roughly made answer, — " You
need not pretend to me that the universe is bankrupt : I
know better, — know that a man of your natural abilities, if
he only behaved himself, need not be reduced to beggary."
" Well, sir," he quickly rejoined, " I don't pretend that I have
always done the right thing, — if I did, you would know bet-
ter, — all I say is, that I am hungiy and penniless, and that,
if I can only get back to Boston, I can there mako a living.
198 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
That 's my whole story." I felt that he had the better reason
on his side.
There must, there will, be heavy drafts made on the sym-
pathies and the means of all who can and will give, especially
during a hard, dull Winter or a " panic." Every prosperous
man should ask himself, " How much can I afford to give ? "
and should set apart from a tenth to a third of his income for
the relief of the needy and suffering. Then he should search
out the most effective channels through which to reach those
whose privations are greatest, and on whom private alms can
be wisely and usefully expended. There are thousands who
ought to go to the Almshouse at once, — who wiU. be more
easily supported there than elsewhere, — and it is no charity
. to squander your means on these. A great majority of the
destitute can be far better dealt with by associations than by
individuals ; and of good associations for philanthropic pur-
poses there is happily no lack in any great city. There re-
mains a scanty residuum of cases wherein money or food
must be given at once, by whomsoever happens to be nearest
to the sufferer ; but two thirds of those who beg from door to
door, or who write begging letters, are the very last persons
who ought to be given even a shinplaster dime. And, as a
general rule, the importunity of a beggar is in inverse ratio to
his deserving, or even to his need.
— "Then you condemn. borrowing and lending entirely?"
No, I do not. Many a man knows how to use, wisely and
beneficently, means that he does not, while others do, possess :
lending to such, under proper safeguards, is most commend-
able. Many a young farmer, who, by w^orking for others, has
earned one thousand dollars, and saved a good part of it, is
now prepared to work a farm of his own. He who lends
such a youth from one thousand to two thousand dollars,
wherewith to purchase a farm, taking a mortgage thereon for
the amount, and leaving to the young farmer his own well-
earned means wherewith to buy stock and seed, provisions
and implements, will often enable him to work his way into
a modest independence, surrounded and blessed by a wife and
BEGGARS AND BORROWERS. 199
children, — liimseK a useful member of society, and a true
pillar of the State, — when he must, but for that loan, have
remained years longer single and a hirehng. So, a young
mechanic may often be wisely and safely aided to establish
himself in business by a timely and well-secured loan ; but
this should never be accorded him till, by years of patient,
frugal industry, he has quahlied himseK for mastery, and
proved himself worthy of trust. (Of traders, there will always
be too many, though none should ever be able to borrow a
dollar.) But improvident borrowing and lending are among
our most prevalent and baneful errors ; and I would gladly
conduce to their reformation.
I hold that it may sometimes be a duty to lend ; and yet
I judge that at least nme of every ten loans to the needy
result in loss to the lender, with no substantial benefit to the
borrower. That the poor often suffer from poverty, I know ;
but oftener from lack of capacity, skill, management, efficiency,
than lack of money. Here is an empty-handed youth who
wants much, and must have it ; but, after the satisfaction of
his most urgent needs, he wants, above all things, ability to
earn money and take good care of it. He thinks his first
want is a loan ; but that is a great mistake. He is far more
certain to set resolutely to work without than with that pleas-
ant but baneful accommodation. Make up a square issue, —
" Work or starve ! " — and he is CLuite likely to choose work ;
while, provided he can borrow, he is more likely to dip into
some sort of speculation or traffic. That he thus almost in-
evitably fools away his borrowed money concerns only the
unwise lender ; that he is thereby confirmed in his aversion
to work, and squanders precious time that should fit him for
decided usefulness, is of wider and greater consequence. The
widow, the orphan, the cripple, the invalid, often need alms,
and should have them; but tO the innumerable hosts of
needy, would-be borrowers the best response is Nature's, —
" Koot, hog, or die ! "
XXIV.
DRAMATIC MEMORIES.
I KNOW not that the instinctive yearning of human beings
for dramatic representations, and the delight with which
these are witnessed, alike by cit and savage, may not be a
dictate of Man's innate and utter depravity, inspired by the
great author of evil ; yet I bear unhesitating testimony to its
existence. It is very nearly half a century since my father,
lying on a sick-bed, and supposed to be asleep, was intensely
amused, as I afterward heard him relate, by witnessing the
gambols of his three younger children, — all between eight
and three years old, — who rudely recast into a dramatic form
the nonsensical old song of " A frog he would a-wooing go,"
and enacted it — each personating one of the animals men-
tioned therein — for their own mutual delectation ; supposing
that no one else was cognizant of the performance. I have
no reason to suppose that one of them had ever heard of a
theatre or play prior to that miique eftbrt.
Four or five yeare later, after we had migrated to Vermont,
what was called an " exhibition " — that is, a play — was set
on foot in our Westhaven school district, prompted by the
master, and I was allotted a part therein. The drama was
entitled, I think, " The Fall of Bonaparte," and was intensely
saturated with detestation of the great but fallen Corsican,
who, I believe, was still living, though in reduced circum-
stances. I recollect that my part was that of either General
or Ca})tain Lescourt (both were in the play, and I have for-
gotten wliich was mine) ; I only recollect that it was as full
of execration of the destroyer of French liberty, the betrayer
DRAMATIC MEMORIES. 201
of the hopes of the untitled millions, as even / could wish to
utter. I recollect that we had several recitations, and that
the play nearly spoiled our studies for that Winter; but I
cannot be certain of the consummation. I believe our play