Then the pent-up fount of feeling Stirred its inmost deep-- Brimming o'er its frozen surface From its guarded keep, On my heart its drops descending, And for one glad moment lending Dreams of Joy's ecstatic blending, Blessed my charmed sleep.
Bright and brighter grew the vision With each gathering tear, Till the past was all before me In its radiance clear; And again we read at even-- Hoped, beneath the summer heaven, Hopes that had no bitter leaven, No disturbing fear.
All so real seemed each presence, That one word I spoke-- Only one of old endearment That dead silence broke.
But the angels who were keeping Stillest watch while I was sleeping, Left me o'er the embers weeping-- Fled when I awoke.
But, as ivy clings the greenest On abandoned walls; And as echo lingers sweetest In deserted halls:-- Thus, the sunlight that we borrow From the past to gild our sorrow, On the dark and dreaded morrow Like a blessing falls.
THOMAS F. MARSHALL
Thomas Francis Marshall, the famous Kentucky orator and advocate, was born at Frankfort, Kentucky, June 7, 1801. He was the son of Dr. Louis Marshall, a brother of the great chief justice, and sometime president of Washington College (Washington and Lee University). "Tom" Marshall, to give him the name by which he was known throughout the South and West, was educated by private tutors, studied law under John J.
Crittenden, and began the practice at Versailles, Kentucky. From 1832 to 1836 he was a member of the Kentucky legislature, and his speeches in that body, as well as in other places, brought him a great reputation as a brilliant and witty orator. The habit of drink was fastening itself upon him, however, and this retarded his progress in the world. Marshall was elected to Congress from the old Ashland district in 1840, and in that body he always bitterly opposed most measures proposed by Henry Clay, whom he afterwards eloquently eulogized. In 1841 his distinguished friend, Richard H. Menefee, the Kentucky orator, died, and Marshall delivered his celebrated eulogy upon him. This address, given before the Law Society of Transylvania University, was the greatest effort of his life. It has been pronounced the finest speech of its character yet made in America. Marshall served in the Mexican War with no great degree of gallantry; and in 1850 he opposed the third Kentucky Constitution, then in the making, through a paper which he edited and called the _Old Guard_. "Tom" Marshall joined many temperance societies, and delivered many temperance speeches, but he always violated his pledge and returned to the old paths of drink. He was the great wit of his day and generation in Kentucky, if not, indeed, in the whole country. His stories are related to-day by persons who think them of recent origin.
Marshall was counsel in many noted trials in the South and West, and his arguments to the jury were logical and eloquent. His speech in the famous Matt. Ward trial is, perhaps, his master effort before a jury. In 1856 Marshall removed to Chicago, but he shortly afterwards returned to Kentucky. In 1858-1859 he delivered lectures upon historical subjects in various cities of the United States. The Civil War failed to interest him at all, but he was broken in health at the time, and preparing himself for the long journey which was fast pressing upon him. "Tom"
Marshall died near Versailles, Kentucky, September 22, 1864. To-day he sleeps amid a clump of trees in a Blue Grass meadow near the little town of his triumphs and of his failures--Versailles.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Speeches and Writings of Thomas F. Marshall_, edited by W. L. Barre (Cincinnati, 1858); _Thomas F. Marshall_, by Charles Fennell (_The Green Bag_, Boston, July, 1907).
TEMPERANCE: AN ADDRESS
[From _Speeches and Writings of Hon. Thomas F. Marshall_, edited by W. L. Barre (Cincinnati, 1858)]
Mr. President, we of the "Total Abstinence and Vigilance Society," in our meetings at the other end of the city [Washington] are so much in the habit of "telling experiences," that I myself have somewhat fallen into it, and am guilty occasionally of the egotism of making some small confessions (as small as I can possibly make them). Mine, then, sir, was a different case. I had earned a most unenviable notoriety by excesses which, though bad enough, did not half reach the reputation they won for me. I never was an habitual drunkard. I was one of your spreeing gentry.
My sprees, however, began to crowd each other and my best friends feared that they would soon run together. Perhaps my long intervals of entire abstinence--perhaps something peculiar in my form, constitution, or complexion--may have prevented the physical indications, so usual, of that terrible disease, which, till temperance societies arose, was deemed incurable and resistless. Perhaps I had nourished the vanity to believe that nature had endowed me with a versatility which enabled me to throw down and take up at pleasure any pursuit, and I chose to sport with the gift. If so, I was brought to the very verge of a fearful punishment. Physicians tell us that intemperance at last becomes, of itself, not a habit voluntarily indulged, but a disease which its victim cannot resist. I had not become fully the subject of that fiendish thirst, that horrible yearning after the distillation "from the alembick of hell," which is said to scorch in the throat, and consume the vitals of the confirmed drunkard, with fires kindled for eternity. I did become alarmed, and for the first time, no matter from what cause, lest the demon's fangs were fastening upon me, and I was approaching that line which separates the man who frolics, and can quit, from the lost inebriate, whose appetite is disease, and whose will is dead. I joined the society on my own account, and felt that I must encounter the title of "reformed drunkard," annoying enough to me, I assure you. I judged, from the cruel publicity given through the press to my frolics, what I had to bear and brave. But I did brave it all; and I would have dared anything to break the chain which I at last discovered was riveting my soul, to unclasp the folds of that serpent-habit whose full embrace is death. Letters from people I never had heard of, newspaper paragraphs from Boston to New Orleans were mailed, and are still mailing to me, by which I am very distinctly, and in the most friendly and agreeable manner, apprised that I enjoyed all over the delectable reputation of a sot, with one foot in the grave, and understanding almost totally overthrown. I doubt not, sir, that the societies who have invited me to address them at different places in the Union, will expect to find me with an unhealed carbuncle on my nose, and my body of the graceful and manly shape and proportion of a demijohn. I have dared all these annoyances, all this celebrity. I have not shrunk from being a text for temperance preachers, and a case for the outpouring of the sympathies of people who have more philanthropy than politeness, more temperance than taste. I signed the pledge on my own account, sir, and my heart leaped to find that I was free. The chain has fallen from my freeborn limbs; not a link or fragment remains to tell I ever wore the badge of servitude.
JEFFERSON J. POLK
Jefferson J. Polk, an eccentric clergyman, physician, and writer, was born near Georgetown, Kentucky, March 10, 1802. He spent his young manhood as a printer on the _Georgetown Patriot_, and the _Kentucky Gazette_. In 1822 Polk joined the Lexington Temperance Society, and he continued steadfast in the cause until his death. He subsequently united with the Methodist church of Lexington, and married; but he continued to work as a journeyman-printer until 1826, when he removed to Danville, Kentucky, where he purchased and became editor of _The Olive Branch_, a weekly newspaper. This he conducted for several years, when he disposed of it in order to become an agent for the American Colonization Society. Polk held that emancipation with colonization in Liberia or elsewhere was the only proper and just solution of the slavery question. The awful Asiatic cholera reached Danville in 1833--as it did nearly a dozen other Kentucky towns--and Polk played his part in the battle which was waged against it. A short time later he became a Methodist circuit-rider, but, in 1839, he went to Lexington to study medicine at Transylvania Medical School. In the following year Dr. Polk removed to Perryville, Kentucky, some miles from Danville, and this was his future home. Here he practiced medicine and preached the Gospel for the next twenty years. In 1860 he supported John Bell of Tennessee for president, but, when Lincoln was elected, he became a strong Union man. The battle of Perryville (October 8, 1862), the greatest battle ever fought upon Kentucky soil, was waged before the good doctor's very door. He converted his house into a hospital, and himself acted as surgeon of a field hospital.
After the war he was postmaster of Perryville and claim agent for Union soldiers. At the age of sixty-five years, this eccentric old man published one of the literary curiosities of Kentucky literature, yet withal a work of real interest and much first-hand information. The little volume was entitled _Autobiography of Dr. J. J. Polk, to which is added his occasional writings and biographies of worthy men and women of Boyle County, Kentucky_ (Louisville, 1867). From the frontispiece portrait the author looks fiercely out at the reader, a real son of thunder. Besides the autobiography of Dr. Polk the volume contains sketches of men, women, and places, fables, proverbs, sermons, woman's rights, a ghost story, "love powders," reflections of an old man, biographies of a group of the doctor's parishioners--all crowded into the 254 pages of this book. Dr. Polk died at Perryville, Kentucky, May 23, 1881.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The chief authority for the facts of Dr. Polk's life is, of course, his _Autobiography_; _History of Kentucky_, by R.
H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882).
THE BATTLE OF THE BOARDS
[From _Autobiography of Dr. J. J. Polk_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1867)]
In the early settlement of Kentucky, when the Indians still roved through our dense forests, plundering and murdering the white inhabitants, three men left Harrod's Station to search for their horses that had strayed off. They pursued their trail through the rich pea-vine and cane, that everywhere abounded, for many miles.
Frequently on their route they saw signs that a party of Indians were in their vicinity, hence they took every step cautiously. Thus they traveled all day. Toward night they were many miles from home, but they continued their search until darkness and a cold rain that began to fall drove them to take shelter in an old deserted log cabin, thickly surrounded by cane and matted over with grape-vines. After they had gained this pleasant retreat they held a consultation, and agreed not to strike a fire, as the Indians, if any in the neighborhood, knew the location of the cabin, and, like themselves, might take shelter in it, and murder or expel the white intruders.
Finally, the three now in possession, concluded to ascend into the loft of the cabin, the floor of which was clap-boards, resting upon round poles. In their novel position they lay down quietly side by side, each man holding his trusty rifle in his arms. Thus arranged, they awaited the results of the night.
They had not been in their perilous position long when six well-armed Indians entered the cabin, placed their guns and other implements of warfare in one corner of the house, struck a light, and began to make the usual demonstrations of joy on such occasions. One of our heroes wished to know the number of the Indians--he was the middle man of the three, and was lying on his back--and, as hilarity and mirth "grew thick and fast" among the Indians, he attempted to turn over and get a peep at things below. His comrades caught him on each side to keep him from turning over, and, in the struggle, one of the poles broke, and with a tremendous crash the clap-boards and the three men fell in the midst of the Indians, who with a loud yell of terror fled from the house, leaving their guns, and never returned.
The three men who had thus made a miraculous escape from the savage foe, remained all night in quiet possession of the cabin, and in the morning returned to the station with their trophies. Whenever the three heroes met in after life they laughed over their strange deliverance, and what they called "The Battle of the Boards."
GEORGE D. PRENTICE
George Dennison Prentice, poet, editor, wit, and founder of the _Journal School of Female Poets_, was born at Preston, Connecticut, December 18, 1802. In the fall of 1820 Prentice entered the Sophomore class of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, where one of his instructors was Horace Mann, and among his classmates was Samuel G.
Howe. At college he was famous for his prodigious memory. Prentice was graduated from Brown in 1823, after which he taught school for some time. He next turned to the law, but this he also abandoned to enter upon his life work--journalism. In 1827 he became editor of a paper in New London, Connecticut, but in the following year he went to Hartford to take charge of the _New England Review_, which "was the Louisville _Journal_, born in Connecticut." In 1830 the Connecticut Whigs requested Prentice to journey to Kentucky and prepare a campaign life of Henry Clay. He finally decided to do this, naming John Greenleaf Whittier, the good Quaker poet, as his successor in the editorial chair of _The Review_, and setting out at once upon his long pilgrimage to Lexington. He dashed off his biography of the statesman in a few months, and it greatly pleased the Whigs of his State, but Prentice had decided to remain in Kentucky. He went to Louisville, and on November 24, 1830, the first issue of the _Louisville Journal_ appeared, and George D. Prentice had at last come into his very own.
His pungent paragraphs made the "Yankee schoolmaster" feared by editors in the remotest corners of the country, but more especially by Shadrach Penn, editor of the _Louisville Advertiser_, the Democratic organ, as the _Journal_ was the Whig organ. After a constant warfare of more than ten years, poor Penn capitulated, and removed to Missouri. Prentice found another foe worthy of his steel in John H.
Harney, editor of the Louisville _Daily Democrat_, but the battle of the wits between them was not as keen as it was between him and Penn.
Prentice survived both editors and wrote exquisite eulogies upon them!
He also had many personal encounters, which his biographer, Mr. John James Piatt, the Ohio poet, declines to dignify with the term of "duel." His pistol "brush" with Col Reuben T. Durrett, the Kentucky historical writer and collector, was, perhaps, his most serious affair. And the colonel lived to write a fine tribute to him, which was turning the tables upon him just a bit! Prentice's home in Louisville was the center of the city's literary life for many years.
His wife was a charming and cultured woman, in every way fitted to assist him. A volume of his witty paragraphs, called by the publishers, _Prenticeana_ (New York, 1859), attracted attention in London and Paris, and in all parts of the United States. Next to Whig politics, the _Journal_ was the literary newspaper of the country. All Western and Southern poets were welcomed to its columns, particularly were female poets "featured," and upon them all Prentice poured out indiscriminate praise, which may or may not have been good for them or for the public. At any rate, he never failed to send a kindly letter to each new "discovery," in which their work already submitted was extravagantly valued, and in which they were urged to flood the office with more of the same kind. His praise of Amelia B. Welby, the sentimental singer of the long ago, seems indefensible to-day. As a poet himself Prentice was a master of blank verse forms. Mr. Piatt put him next to Bryant among American poets in the handling of this difficult measure. _The Closing Year_, written in 1835, is undoubtedly his finest poem; and _At My Mother's Grave_ is usually set beside it.
Although his sons, wife, and most of his friends sympathized with the South in the war of Sections, Prentice was always an ardent advocate of the Union cause. He died near Louisville, on the banks of the Ohio river, January 22, 1870. Henry Watterson delivered an eulogy upon him, and snugly adjusted his mantle about his own shoulders.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Poems of George D. Prentice_, edited by John J.
Piatt (Cincinnati, 1878); _The Pioneer Press of Kentucky_, by W.
H. Perrin (Louisville, 1888).
THE CLOSING YEAR
[From _The Poems of George D. Prentice, edited with a Biographical Sketch_, by John J. Piatt (Cincinnati, 1878, 4th Edition)]
'Tis midnight's holy hour--and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep notes are swelling. 'Tis the knell Of the departed Year.
No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest, Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand-- Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with his aged locks--and breathe In mournful cadences, that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead Year, Gone from the earth forever.
'Tis a time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love, And, bending mournfully above the pale Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness.
The Year Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course, It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful, And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man, and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle-plain, where sword and spear and shield Flashed in the light of midday--and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their home In the dim land of dreams.
Remorseless Time!-- Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!--what power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity? On, still on He presses, and forever. The proud bird, The condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northern hurricane And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain-crag--but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink, Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles Spring, blazing, from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations; and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away, To darkle in the trackless void: yet Time, Time the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path, To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.
ON REVISITING BROWN UNIVERSITY
[From the same]
It is the noon of night. On this calm spot, Where passed my boyhood's years, I sit me down To wander through the dim world of the Past.
The Past! the silent Past! pale Memory kneels Beside her shadowy urn, and with a deep And voiceless sorrow weeps above the grave Of beautiful affections. Her lone harp Lies broken at her feet, and as the wind Goes o'er its moldering chords, a dirge-like sound Rises upon the air, and all again Is an unbreathing silence.