Various

“ I never shall forget the cheery joyousness of that little family scene at your fireside, the winning modesty and womanliness of your lost Rachel, and the serenity and peace that lay about your household. It was to me, fresh from the vices of Europe, like some charming Christian idyl, in whose atmosphere I felt myself not only an alien, but a profane intruder; for, at that very time, I was bound by one of those criminal liaisons to which so many strangers on the Continent are victims. Your household and your conversation prompted a hope and a struggle for better things. ”

“ Passing away from us in ripened perfection, we behold a being but little lower than the angels, heir of God and joint heir with Christ, crowned with glory and honor and immortality.
Come up, then, Jamie, my King, into the presence of the great congregation! There are poets here, and philosophers, wise men of the East who can speak of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. But fear them not, little Jamie! you are of more value, even to science, than many fishes. ”

“ And here Jamie comes out strongly in favor of democracy, universal suffrage, political equality, the Union and the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the rights of man. Uncontaminated by conventional rules, he recognizes the human being apart from his worldly state. He is as silent and abashed in the presence of the day-laborer, coarsely clad and rough of speech and manners, as in that of the accomplished man of the world, or the daintiest silken-robed lady. With simple gravity, and never a thought of wrong, he begs the poet, "Pease, Missa Poet, tie up my shoe." ”

“ Our dirty, torn old net is suddenly turned to a web of gold, and as we lift it from the water, heavy rills of molten metal seem to flow down its sides and collect in a glowing mass at the bottom. The truth is, the Jelly-Fishes, so sparkling and brilliant in the sunshine, have a still lovelier light of their own at night; they give out a greenish golden light, as brilliant as that of the brightest glow-worm, and on a calm summer night, at the spawning season, when they come to the surface in swarms, if you do but dip your hand into the water, it breaks into sparkling drops beneath your touch. ”

“ Those who prefer fancy to vigorous thought and imagination, the lovely and familiar in Nature to the sublime, sometimes rank me above him. Time has not evolved the genius which Miss Darry prophesied, yet I am as fully convinced that I occupy my true position and do my appropriate work in the world as though it had. Mrs. Leopold professes occasionally to me, with a smile, that her opinion is unaltered, that my weakness was only an additional proof of genius, but that her husband is a hero worth all the geniuses in the world. ”

“ Our people have risen to a new and mighty sense of our national life, and the thousands of Americans who are now returning from Europe say that the tide there has wholly turned in our favor, and Americans are too proud to boast of their country, and are quite safe in leaving her to speak for herself. But how are we recruiting the ranks of the nation from the fresh blood and spirits, the new impulses and passions of childhood? And how does our legion of juvenile infantry compare with the young legions of England, France, Germany, Russia, or Italy? ”

“ Say as I might to myself that her strong will had held me spellbound,—reason as I might that it was only because she had developed, made me, as it were, that this motherly, yearning, protecting love had been lavished upon me,—there was still the fact, that this rich, strong nature had given of its best treasure in answer to my passionate pleading, had wasted it on me.
"Frank Darry," I said, "why I do not entirely love what I completely reverence and admire I cannot tell. To live without you seems like drifting through life without aim or guide. ”

“ Kate Peyton glanced from lover to lover, and shuddered at Griffith. She was familiar with petty jealousy; she had even detected it pinching or coloring many a pretty face that tried very hard to hide it all the time. But that was nothing to what she saw now: hitherto she had but beheld the feeling of jealousy; but now she witnessed the livid passion of jealousy writhing in every lineament of a human face. ”

“ And thus, too, it seems providential, that the sin of pagan nations should take the form of infanticide. It is Satanic work, but God overrules it for good. Evil defeats itself, and hatred crowds the lists of love. From misery and wickedness, from stifled cities, over-full, from pagan lands, steeped centuries long in vice and crime, from East and West and North and South, over all the world, the innocent souls go up,—little lily-buds, swelling white and pure from earthly slime to bloom in heavenly splendor.
Jamie, Jamie, do you see birdie has put his head under his wing and gone to sleep? ”

“ A fresh, free, dauntless will should breathe through every page, and be the invigorating air of our juvenile literature, and be as essential to its strength as truth is to its light and beauty to its color. The great social, civil, and religious forces that move the nation should be brought to bear upon the young, not by learned essays or by ambitious philosophizing, but by living portraitures and taking life-sketches, stirring songs and ballads. ”

“ If we could have stood by when the world was a-making,—could have sniffed the escaping gases, as they volatilized through the air,—could have seen and heard the swash of the waves, when the whole world was, so to speak, in hot water,—could have watched the fiery tumult gradually soothing itself into shapely, stately palms and ferns, cold-blooded Pterodactyles, and gigantic, but gentle Megatheriums, till it was refined, at length, into sunshine and lilies and Robin Redbreasts,—we fancy we should have been intensely interested. But a human soul is a more mysterious thing than this round world. ”

“ Shakspeare might have blackened Othello's skin by toil, instead of nature, and the obstacles to a happy love would have been in no degree lessened."
I paused; yet not a word did Miss Darry utter. Her face was so pale and rigid that all my suspicion was confirmed; and I exclaimed, more vehemently than before,—
"Remember, you cannot avoid the fact that I, a mere blacksmith, am your lover; if rejected and despised, your lover still. I shall think of you daily. You will not come to me alone the companion of my studio, one of those delicate visions which flit through an artist's brain. ”

“ The destruction of the poor is his poverty. Little sickly, fretful, crying babies, heirs of worn nerves, fierce tempers, sad hearts, sordid tastes, half-tended or over-tended, fed on poison by the hand of love, nay, sucking poison from the breasts of love, trained to insubordination, abused by kindness, abused by cruelty,—that is the human nature from which largely we generalize, and no wonder the inference is total depravity. But human nature, distorted, defiled, degraded by centuries of misdealing, is scarcely human nature. ”

“ He puts before them the broad earth and the glorious heavens from the first, and He does not strike off a toy edition of Nature to come down to little eyes and ears. Children look upon the whole universe at once, and their first impressions store up truths that years may interpret, but cannot exhaust. Why not throw open the best minds, and their earth and heaven of earthly sense and starry wisdom, with equal generosity to the young, and put them into communication with the best writers and thinkers of the land? ”

“ If grown-up persons would or could be as frank as he,—if they had no more misgivings, concealments, self-distrust, self-thought than he,—they would doubtless be as interesting. Every separate human being is a separate phenomenon and mystery; and if he could only be unthinkingly himself, as Jamie is, that self would be as much more captivating as it is become great and subtle by growth and experience. ”

“ But there is a question to be settled which comes nearer home to each family, and which distances all others in magnitude and interest:—What shall we do with our children? how train and teach them in body and mind, by schools and books, by play and work, for that marvellous American life that is now opening to us its new and eventful chapter in the history of man? ”

“ As I have said, Miss Darry approved my picture, though only as a preliminary to better things, saying,—
"You must paint Chimborazo, or some of the mammoth California scenery, Sandy. The microscope, not the canvas, is the proper instrument by which to scrutinize the minute. Genius certainly need not forever be peeping at Nature through her key-holes, but can enter her open door and dwell amid the grandest scenes of the universe." ”

“ How wonderful it is, this instinct for play, and how worthy of our careful and serious study! It is the key to the whole philosophy of juvenile literature: for we take it for granted that books for children belong to the easy play, rather than to the hard work of life; and that they are an utter failure, if they do not win their way by their own charms. Here, in fact, we distinguish between juvenile literature and school-books. School-books are for children, indeed, but not for them alone, but for the teacher also, and they are to be as interesting as possible ”

“ The experience of our late war has shown us what women of a high class morally and intellectually can do in this capacity. Why should not this experience inaugurate a new and sacred calling for refined and educated women? Why should not NURSING become a vocation equal in dignity and in general esteem to the medical profession, of which it is the right hand? Why should our dearest hopes, in the hour of their greatest peril, be committed into the hands of Sairey Gamps, when the world has seen Florence Nightingales? ”

“ There is so fearful an amount of, and so decided a bent towards, wickedness in the world, that it seems as if nothing less than an inborn aptitude for wickedness can account for it; yet, in spite of all theories and probabilities, here is Jamie, right under my own eye, developing a far stronger tendency to love, kindness, sympathy, and all the innocent and benevolent qualities, than to their opposites. The wrong that he does do seems to be more from fun and frolic, from sheer exuberance of animal spirits and intensity of devotion to mirth, than anything else. ”

“ We do not claim for the American child any exemption from the common lot, nor make him out to be above or below the human nature to which he belongs, in common with the children of the Old World. He is a chip of the old block; and that old block is from the old trunk that has been growing for ages, is a great deal older than the father or mother, as old as mankind; and each new comer into the field bears with him some traces or remains of all the traits and dispositions and liabilities that have appeared in the ancestors and become the heritage of the race. ”

“ There is, however, a pretty picture on the other side, that Jamie thrusts his iconoclastic fists through quite as unconcernedly; and that is the dignity of human nature. The human being can be trained into a dignified person: that no one denies. Looking at some honored and honorable man bearing himself loftily through every crisis, and wearing his grandeur with an imperial grace, one may be pardoned for the mistake, but it is none the less a mistake, of reckoning the acquirement of an individual as the endowment of the race. ”

“ God forbid that we rush now upon this peril,—as from Charybdis to Scylla!
The true way is easy. Follow common sense. Seeking to avoid one peril, do not rush upon another. Consider how everything of worth or honor is bound up with the national security and the national faith; and that until these are fixed beyond change, agriculture, commerce, and industry of all kinds must suffer. Capital cannot stay where justice is denied. Emigration must avoid a land blasted by the spirit of caste. Cotton itself will refuse to grow until labor is assured its just reward. ”

“ When I see in a handsome book or magazine for children any adequate sketch of natural scenes and objects, I am grateful for it as a benefaction to children, and a help to them in their playful yearning to read that elder alphabet of God.
How much power there is in the elements of the beautiful that so abound in the universe, and what capacity in children for enjoying them, especially in our American children, may we not say! The constitution of Americans is in some respects delicate, and shows great susceptibility in early life, and capability of æsthetic culture. ”

“ Higginson has the great advantage over too many translators (into English, at least) of being not only a man of bright and vivid intelligence, but also a proper proficient in the use of his mother tongue, melodious in movement, elegant in manner, fortunate in phrase. Now that Hawthorne is dead, America has not perhaps a writer who is master of a more graceful prose. His style has that tempered and chaste vivacity, that firm lightness of step, that quickness at a turn, not interfering with continuity and momentum, which charms all whom style can charm. ”

“ Well, Sandy, my dear fellow, you are to obtain, it seems, what many a man of wealth and position will envy you. You must pardon me for saying that Miss Darry's choice is quite astonishing to her friends. If you possess the genius of Raphael, I shall still regard you as two very peculiar persons to come together; but I am in no mood to cavil at love. ”

“ After neglect or ignorance may blight fair promise, but no after wisdom can bring bloom for blight. There are many by-laws whose workings we do not understand; but the great, general law is so plain, that wayfaring folk, though fools, need not err therein. Every one sees the unbridled passions of the father or mother raging in the child. Gentleness is born of gentleness, insanity of insanity, truth of truth. ”

“ The boys will not want a certain chivalry in the schoolroom, play-ground, and parlor, and the girls will learn from instinct as well as discipline the delicacy that is their charm and shield. Nothing can be worse than to ply them with love-stories, or throw them into the false society that fosters morbid sentiments and impulses, and gives them the passions without the judgment and control of men and women. Kind Providence, in the gift of play, has mercifully averted this danger, and brought our children into a companionship that needs no precocious passion to give it charm. ”

“ The world finds room for kingdoms and empires and oligarchies; but undoubtedly man is born a democrat.
Is there only one Jamie here? Can one little urchin about as high as the table so fill a house with mirth and mischief, so daguerrotype himself in every corner, possess, while claiming nothing, so large a share of the household interest? For he somehow bubbles up everywhere. Not a mischance or a misplacement but can pretty surely be brought home to him. Is a glass broken? Jamie broke it. Is a door open that ought to be shut? Jamie opened it. Or shut that ought to be open? Jamie shut it. ”

“ It is easy for the individual to forgive. It is easy also for the Republic to be generous. But forgiveness of offences must not be a letter of license to crime; it must not be a recognition of an ancient tyranny, and it must not be a stupendous ingratitude. There is a familiar saying, with the salt of ages, which is addressed to us now:—"Be just before you are generous." Be just to all before you are generous to the few. Be just to the millions only half rescued from oppression, before you are generous to their cruel taskmasters. ”

“ We have only to look, and, lo! the mountains are slowly rising, the valleys scoop their levels, the sea heaves against its barriers, and the chaotic soul evolves itself from its nebulous, quivering light, from its plastic softness, into a world of repose, of use, of symmetry, and stability. This mysterious soul, when it first passed within our vision, was only not hidden within its mass of fleshly life, a seed of spirituality deep-sunk in a pulp of earthliness. ”

“ In the earlier days of New England, women, as a class, had far fewer opportunities for acquiring learning, yet were far better educated, physically and morally, than now. The high school did not exist; at the common school they learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, and practised spelling; while at home they did the work of the household. They were cheerful, bright, active, ever on the alert, able to do anything, from the harnessing and driving of a horse to the finest embroidery. The daughters of New England in those days looked the world in the face without a fear. They shunned no labor ”