Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

r their berths-Little boys persecuting everybody with their newspapers and pamphlets-J

strip of existence. And at any rate it is quite enough for me

ave too much of it, and indeed, if I were obliged to choose amid t

ke a pretty Und

oisterous Triton of the sounding shell ... You

whether in modern mythology, or Hoffman

ors of the pride t

st important of all the elemental tri

rdingly a dark,

le work in the secret, and their works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because only there such marvels could be bred. You call them mean. They do not s

t is the most poetical, for he looked at the finest symbol. Gold, says one of our friends, is the hidden ligh

paid for y

gold, not in sh

at the water, the beautiful water. "

ke the air and

earth, this low-minded cr

uitful,-life. And its heart-be

nts in these times. I thought that Bacchic

the heads of kings, or the hieroglyphics of worship. But since I have learnt

d you have? It is the mother of Beauty, the

enough, I think, that it is the great artist,

once from the demesne of coarse utilities into that of picture. All trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water's side, or on the water. The s

ns for that

hly, everything connected with water must be like itself, forcible, but clear. That is why sea-slang is so poetical; there is a word for everything and every act, and a thing and an act for every

all this talk upon the other side. Well,

me for any reply, but a la

orget the wet, the chill and steamboat sme

nd beneath this wild sky and changeful lights, the waters presented kaleidoscopic varieties of hues, rich, but mournful. I admire these bluffs of red, crumbling earth. Here land and water meet under very different auspices from those of the rock-bound

t bright; yet we could see the shore and a

, and their blanketed forms, in listless groups or stealing along the bank, with a lounge and a stride so different

but of more ease, and larger accumulation. It wearied me, too, to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow doctrinal way on these free waters; but that will soon cease, there is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine. This change was to me, who am tired of the w

e and too rainy to go ashore. The beauty of the island, though seen under the most unfavorable ci

air, my thoughts have been dwelling on a story told when we were off Detroit, t

wledge, talents, and noble temper commanded, as he went onward in the world. P. was every way fitted to succeed; his aims were high, but not too high for his powers, suggested by an instinct of his own capacities, not by an ideal standard drawn from culture. Though steadfast in his course, it was not to overrun others

t parley in the hall-"We will dine together," he cri

ent, then said, "M

will have an opportunity of getting acquainted and can ente

her, and he was not prepared to see the calm, dignified P. with a woman on his arm, still handsome, indeed, but whose coarse and imperious expression showed as low habits of mind as her exaggerated dress

entlemen did, even then, and soon that she was actually excited by it. Before this, her manner had been brusque, if not contemptuous towards her new acquaintance; now it became, towards my mother especially, quite rude. Presently she took up some slight remark made by my mother, which, th

; she knew not what to do, tears rushed into her eyes. My father, no less distressed, yet unwilling to outra

d expression, not merely of patient wo, but of patient shame, which it would not have been thought possible for that, noble countenance to wear, "yet," said my father, "it became him. At other times he was handsome, but then beautif

oom. Half an hour had passed, in painful and wondering surmises, when a gentle knock was heard at the door, and P. entere

d silently pressed it, then

ed at the chance which had yoked him to such a woman, but yet more at the silent fortitude with which he bore it. Many blamed him for enduring it, apparently without efforts to check her; others answered that he had probably

thing in the look of P. at that trying moment to which none of these explanations offered a key. There was in it, he felt, a fortitu

or go, till he finds that which matches it in the pattern; he keeps on weaving, but chooses his shades, and my father found at last what he wanted to make out the pattern for himself. He met a lady who had been intimate with both himself and P. in early days,

gnified character, joined, towards those he loved, with a certain soft willingness which gives the desirable chivalry to a man. None was more clear of choice where his personal affect

s having an attachment, and, though I had never inquired on the subject, yet this reserve, where perfect openness had been supposed, and really, on my side, existed, seemed to me a kind of treachery. Then it is never pleasant to know that a heart, on which we have some claim, is to be given t

I, are you t

ilent, then continued with an impassive look of cold s

you. I need, however, the presence, not only of legal, but of respectable and friend

to refuse. I answered before I knew I was

it that, next morning, P. came and took us in a carriage to a distant church. We had just entered the porch when a cart, such as fruit and vegetables

displeased me the moment I looked upon her. Meanwhile the ceremony was going on

e Mrs. P. replied without any token of affection or

were civil to her for his sake. Curiosity was very much excited, but entirely baffled; no one, of

tastes were not at that time gross, but her character showed itself hard and material. She was fond of riding, and spent much time so. Her s

equent. I have often heard of them, and always that P. sat, as you describe him, his head bowed down and perfectly silent all through, whatever might be done or whoever b

after some minutes musing, for an hour

e lady. O, improbable. P. might e

might pierce those deep blue heavens; and when these over intellectual beings do swerve aside, it is to fall down a precipice, for their narrow pa

pper deck, I saw one of the great steamboats come majestically up. It was glowing with lights, looking many-eyed and sagacious; in its heavy motion it seemed a dowager queen, a

ike Bonaparte, she discharges her face of all expression when she catches the eye of impertinent curiosity fixed on her. But he who has gone to sleep in childish ease on her lap, or leaned an aching brow upon he

cutters for the steamboats. I had thought of such a position, from its mixture of profound solitude with service to t

o many trees a day, that the hamadryads had not time to make their plaints heard; the shepherd tended his sheep, and did no jobs or chores the while; the idyl had a chance to grow up, and modulate his oaten pipe. But now the poet must be at the wh

. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day, whose bivouac fires blacken the sweetest forest glades. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or defame. On the contrary, while I will not be so obliging as to confound ugliness with beauty, discord with harmony, and laud and be contented with all I meet, when it conflicts with my best desires and tastes, I trust by reverent faith to woo the might

ooks only at the spirit in which it is offered. Our visit was so far for a religious purpose that one of our party went to inquire the fate of some Unitarian tracts left among the woodcutters a year or two before. But the old Manitou, though, daunted like his children by the approach of the fire-shi

fire-ship. We returned with a rich booty, among which was the uva ursi, whose leaves the Indians smoke, with the kinni

nnick-kinnick, for almost all had tobacco written on their faces, their cheeks rounded with plugs, their eyes dull with its fumes. We reached Ch

go, J

ace and Buffalo. They are the two correspondent valves that open and shut all the

ransmission of produce is their office, and the people who live there are such as are suited for this; active, complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisi

real to me. All the books about the Indians, a paltry collection, truly, yet which furnished material for many thoughts. The most narrow-

ious, without the aid of such assertions, that he sometimes yields to the temptation of making out a story. They admitted, however, what from my feelings I was sure of, that he is true to the s

wilderness, than he can at the court of Victoria. He has, himself, no poetic force at description, but it is easy to make images from his hints. Yet we believe the Indian cannot be looked at truly except by a poetic eye. The Pawnees, no doubt, are such as he describes them, filthy in their hab

wild charm they carry with them, and the light they throw on a peculiar modification of life and mind. As it is, though the incidents have an air of originality and pertinence to the occasion, that gives us confidence that they have not been altered, the phraseology in which they were expressed has been entirely set aside,

ithful version of some among them. Yet with all these drawbacks we cannot doubt from internal evidence that they truly ascribe to the Indian a delicacy of sentiment and of fancy that justifie

nous arrangement, yet, with the exception of the Tour to the Prairies, they have a stereotype, second-hand air. They lack the breath, the glow, the charming minute traits of living presence. His scenery is only fit to be gla

t of books, yet faithful and quiet, and gi

of some value. All these books I read in anticipation of a canoe-voyage on Lake Superior as far as the Pictured Rocks, and, thou

prairie flowers. They were in their g

nd the flame-

ckapee;" and she told me, too, that its splendors had a useful side, for it w

timulated, whether sensuously by the optic nerve, unused to so much gold and crimson with such tender green, or symbolically through some meaning dimly seen in

with all around a limitless horizon,-to walk, and walk, and run, but never climb, oh! it was too dreary for any but a Hollander to bear. How the eye greeted th

only its varied coloring, which I found more admirable every day, and which gave it an air of mirage instead of the vastness of ocean. Then there was a grandeur in the

prairies, and the cattle winding slowly home to their homes in the "island groves"-peacefullest of sight

er a while I would ascend the roof of the house where we lived, and pass many hours, needing no sight but the moon reigning in the heavens, or starlight falling upon the lake, till all the lights were out in the island

enerally, low-lying, flaky clouds, of the softest

re, and it had a fair chance to be seen,

and moonlights on the levels of Chicago which C

those used elsewhere for transporting caravans of wild beasteses, loaded with every thing we might want, in case nobody would give it to us-for buying and selling were no longer to be counted on-with a pair of strong horses, able and willing to force their way through mud h

se dreams had been haunted by wishes for just such an one, and you may judge whether years of dullnes

flower and lupine, and plains whose soft expanse was continu

th their shado

lls and fluctu

eem to glide a

nny ri

va just in time to escape being drenched by a violent thunder shower, whose

cellent stamp, generous, intelligent, discreet, and seeking to win from life its true values. Such are much wanted, an

almost everything bore traces of his own handy work or that of his father. He is just such a teacher as is wanted in this region, familiar enough with the habits

happy hours in the woods that fringe the stream

e evening of an active day amid the quiet influences of country life. He showed us a bookcase filled with books about this country; these he had collected for years, and become so familiar with the localities tha

but round it are its barns and farm yard, with cattle and poultry. These, however, in the framework of wood, have a very picturesque and

seemed like a nest in the grass, so thoroughly were the buildings and all the objects of human care harmonized with what was na

heir national dress. In the wood grew, not only the flowers I had before seen, and wealth of tall, wild roses, but the splendid blue spiderwort, that ornament of our gardens. Beautiful children strayed there, who were soon to leave these civilized regions for some really wild and western place, a post in the buffalo country. Their no less beau

as if they would not have time to cross before the storm came on. However, they did get across, and we were a mile or two on our way before the violent shower obliged us to take refuge in a solitary house upon the prairie. In this country it is as pleasant to stop as to go on, to lose your way as to find it, for the variety in the population gives you a chance for f

e loves, brought into connection with their new splendors. Wherever there were traces of this tenderness of feeling, only too rare among Americans, other thi

he friendly track of wheels which tracked, not broke the grass. Our stations were not from town to town, but from grove to grove. These groves first floated like blue

fty, but only of fair proportions. Here they were large enough to form with their clear stems pillars for grand cathedral aisles. There was space enough for crim

or universal handbasin, and expectations that you would use and lend your "hankercher" for a towel. But this was the only night, thanks to the hospitality of private familie

he supper table,) but we yankees, born to rove, were altogether too much fatigued to stand upon trifles, and slept as sweetly as we would in the "bigly bower" of any baroness. But I think England sat up all night, wrapped in her blanket shawl, and with a neat lace cap upon her head; so that she would have looked perfectly the lady, if any one had come in; shuddering and listening. I know that she was very ill next day, in requital. She watched, as her parent country watches the seas, that nobody may do wrong in any case, and deserved to have met some interru