WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.600 --> 00:00:04.240 Chapter five of In the Wilderness by Charles Dudley Warner. 2 00:00:04.839 --> 00:00:08.919 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter five 3 00:00:09.439 --> 00:00:13.080 a character study. There has been a lively inquiry after 4 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:17.000 the primeval man wanted a man who would satisfy the 5 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:19.519 conditions of the Miocene environment, and yet would be good 6 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:23.600 enough for an ancestor. We are not particular about our ancestors, 7 00:00:23.640 --> 00:00:26.160 if they are sufficiently remote, but we must have something 8 00:00:27.079 --> 00:00:30.120 failing to apprehend the primeval man. Science has sought the 9 00:00:30.120 --> 00:00:32.799 primitive man where he exists as a survival in present 10 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:36.799 savage races. He is at best only a mushroom growth 11 00:00:36.799 --> 00:00:39.880 of the recent period, came in probably with the general 12 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:43.479 raft of mammalian fauna. But he possesses yet some rudimentary 13 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:46.399 traits that may be studied. It is a good mental 14 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.799 exercise to try to fix the mind of the primitive man, 15 00:00:48.920 --> 00:00:51.240 divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his 16 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:54.759 struggle with the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on 17 00:00:54.799 --> 00:00:58.520 an orange, the ordinary occupation of the metaphysician. Take from 18 00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:02.759 it without eating it odor, color, weight, form, substance, and 19 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:05.159 peel thou let. The mind still dwell on it as 20 00:01:05.159 --> 00:01:09.239 an orange. The experiment is perfectly successful. Only at the 21 00:01:09.319 --> 00:01:12.480 end of it you haven't any mind. Better still, consider 22 00:01:12.519 --> 00:01:15.120 the telephone. Take away from it the metallic disk and 23 00:01:15.159 --> 00:01:18.519 the magnetized iron and the connecting wire, and then let 24 00:01:18.560 --> 00:01:21.439 the mind run abroad on the telephone. The mind won't 25 00:01:21.439 --> 00:01:24.200 come back. I have tried by this sort of process 26 00:01:24.239 --> 00:01:27.159 to get a conception of the primitive man. I let 27 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:29.920 the mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces, 28 00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:31.959 and sometimes of fancy, as he had dim image of 29 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.879 him stalking across the terrace epoch of the Quaternary period. 30 00:01:35.879 --> 00:01:39.239 But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results are 31 00:01:39.239 --> 00:01:41.599 obtained by studying the primitive man as he is left 32 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:43.920 here and there in our era, a witness of what 33 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.280 has been. And I find him most to my mind. 34 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:49.760 In the Adirontic system of what geologists call the Champlain epoch. 35 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:52.519 I suppose the primitive man is one who owes more 36 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:55.560 to nature than to the forces of civilization. What we 37 00:01:55.599 --> 00:01:58.319 seek in him are the primal and original traits, unmixed 38 00:01:58.319 --> 00:02:01.640 with the sophistications of society, and unimpaired by the refinements 39 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:05.400 of an artificial culture. He would retain the primitive instincts 40 00:02:05.560 --> 00:02:09.199 which are cultivated out of the ordinary commonplace. Man I 41 00:02:09.199 --> 00:02:12.639 should expect to find him by reason of an unrelinquished kinship, 42 00:02:12.759 --> 00:02:16.520 enjoying a special communion with nature, admitted to its mysteries, 43 00:02:16.840 --> 00:02:20.639 understanding its moods, and able to predict its vagaries. He 44 00:02:20.680 --> 00:02:22.439 would be a kind of test to us of what 45 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:26.400 we have lost by our gregarious acquisitions. On the one hand, 46 00:02:26.599 --> 00:02:28.879 there would be the sharpness of the senses, the keen 47 00:02:28.919 --> 00:02:32.280 instincts which the fox and beaver still possess, the ability 48 00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:34.800 to find one's way in the pathless forest, to follow 49 00:02:34.840 --> 00:02:37.719 a trail, to circumvent the wild linizens of the woods. 50 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:40.319 And on the other hand, there would be the philosophy 51 00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:43.400 of life, which the primitive man, with little external aid, 52 00:02:43.599 --> 00:02:47.479 would evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is our 53 00:02:47.560 --> 00:02:49.439 good fortune to know such a man, but it is 54 00:02:49.479 --> 00:02:52.479 difficult to present him to a scientific and caviling generation. 55 00:02:53.639 --> 00:02:56.520 He emigrated from somewhat limited conditions in Vermont at an 56 00:02:56.520 --> 00:02:59.960 early age, nearly half a century ago, and such freedom 57 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.919 the first natural development backward in the wilds of the Adirondacks. 58 00:03:03.719 --> 00:03:06.080 Sometimes it is a love of adventure and freedom that 59 00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:08.439 sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the 60 00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:11.879 lass Sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads 61 00:03:11.919 --> 00:03:14.080 them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap 62 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:16.360 to the sickle, and the society of bears to town 63 00:03:16.439 --> 00:03:20.120 meetings and Texas. I think that Old Mountain Phelps had 64 00:03:20.159 --> 00:03:22.639 merely the instincts of the primitive man, and never any 65 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:25.840 hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into which he plunged. 66 00:03:26.719 --> 00:03:28.759 Why should he want to slash away the forest and 67 00:03:28.800 --> 00:03:31.560 plow up the ancient mold when it is infinitely pleasanter 68 00:03:31.639 --> 00:03:34.159 to roam boat in the leafy solitudes, or sit upon 69 00:03:34.159 --> 00:03:36.280 a mossy log and listen to the chatter of birds 70 00:03:36.280 --> 00:03:39.360 and the stir of beasts. Alther not trout in the streams, 71 00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:42.599 Gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in the maples, honey 72 00:03:42.639 --> 00:03:45.879 in the hollow trees, fur on the sables, warmth in 73 00:03:45.919 --> 00:03:49.439 hickory logs, will not a few days planting and scratching 74 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:52.400 in the open yielded potatoes and rye. And if there 75 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:55.000 is steady or diet needed, then venison and bear is 76 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.479 the pigant expensive animal. If Old Phelps bowed to the 77 00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:01.039 prejudice or fashion of his aide. Since we come out 78 00:04:01.039 --> 00:04:03.560 of the terchary state of things and reared a family, 79 00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:05.800 built the frame house in a secluded nook by a 80 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:08.479 cold spring, planted about it some apple trees and a 81 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:11.759 rudimentary garden, and installed a group of flaming some flowers 82 00:04:11.759 --> 00:04:13.680 by the door. I am convinced that it was a 83 00:04:13.719 --> 00:04:16.439 concession that did not touch his radical character. That is 84 00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:18.959 to say, it did not impair his reluctance to split 85 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.399 oven wood. He was a true citizen of the wilderness. 86 00:04:22.959 --> 00:04:25.279 The rou would have liked him, as he liked Indians 87 00:04:25.279 --> 00:04:27.879 and woodchucks and a smell of pine forests. And if 88 00:04:27.879 --> 00:04:30.600 Old Phalpes had seen thereau, he would probably have said 89 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:33.160 to him, why on earthemester, I thoroughoutum hill have a 90 00:04:33.279 --> 00:04:36.360 cardon to your preachin you might be misled by the 91 00:04:36.360 --> 00:04:39.600 shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps given name Orson, into the 92 00:04:39.639 --> 00:04:41.759 notion that he was a mighty hunter with the fierce 93 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:44.839 spirit of the berserkers in his veins. Nothing could be 94 00:04:44.839 --> 00:04:47.959 farther from the truth that hersuit and grizzly sound of 95 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:50.800 Orson expresses only his entire affinity with the untamed and 96 00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:53.879 the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom 97 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:57.120 and wildness of the forest. Orson phalps has only those 98 00:04:57.160 --> 00:04:59.680 unconventional and humorous qualities of the bear which make the 99 00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:02.240 animal so beloved in literature, And one does not think 100 00:05:02.279 --> 00:05:04.240 of old Phelps so much as a lover of nature 101 00:05:04.439 --> 00:05:07.120 to use the sentimental slang of the period as a 102 00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:10.480 part of nature itself. His appearance at the time when 103 00:05:10.519 --> 00:05:12.600 as a guide he began to come into public notice, 104 00:05:12.600 --> 00:05:15.879 fostered this impression. A sturdy figure with long body and 105 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:18.839 short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut colored 106 00:05:18.839 --> 00:05:22.600 trousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head surmounted 107 00:05:22.600 --> 00:05:24.920 by a limp like brown felt hat, frayed away at 108 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.079 the top so that his yellowish hair grew out of 109 00:05:27.079 --> 00:05:29.480 it like some nameless fern out of a pot. His 110 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:32.319 tiny hair was long and tangled, matted, now many years 111 00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:35.240 past the possibility of being entered by a comb. His 112 00:05:35.319 --> 00:05:37.639 features were small and delicate, and set in the frame 113 00:05:37.680 --> 00:05:40.480 of a reddish beard, the razor having motorway clearing about 114 00:05:40.519 --> 00:05:43.279 sensitive mouth which was not seldom wreathed with the childlike 115 00:05:43.319 --> 00:05:46.680 and charming smile out of this rescute environment, looked the 116 00:05:46.720 --> 00:05:50.439 small gray eyes set near together, eyes keen to observe 117 00:05:50.839 --> 00:05:53.920 and quick true expressed change of thought, Eyes that made 118 00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:57.279 you believe instinct can grow into philosophical judgment. His feet 119 00:05:57.319 --> 00:06:00.199 and hands were of aristocratic smallness, although the latter were 120 00:06:00.240 --> 00:06:03.480 not worn away by ablutions. They assisted his toilet to 121 00:06:03.480 --> 00:06:05.160 give the impression that he was a man who had 122 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:07.079 just come out of the ground, a real sun of 123 00:06:07.120 --> 00:06:10.040 the soil, whose appearance was partially explained by a humorous 124 00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:13.839 relation to soap. Soap is a thing. He said that 125 00:06:13.959 --> 00:06:17.240 I hain't no kinder use for his clothes seemed to 126 00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:19.240 have been put on him once for all, like the 127 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:23.079 bark of a tree a long time ago. The observant 128 00:06:23.079 --> 00:06:25.279 stranger was sure to be puzzled. While the contrast of 129 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:29.360 this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness amounting 130 00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:32.480 to refinement and culture that shone through it all. What 131 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:35.360 communion had supplied the place of our artificial breeding to 132 00:06:35.399 --> 00:06:39.000 this man? Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting on 133 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:41.959 a log with a short pipe in his mouth. If 134 00:06:41.959 --> 00:06:44.040 ever man was formed to sit on the log, it 135 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:48.920 was Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative person. Walking 136 00:06:48.959 --> 00:06:51.360 on a country road or anywhere in the open was 137 00:06:51.399 --> 00:06:54.519 irksome to him. He had a shambling, loose jointed gait, 138 00:06:54.600 --> 00:06:57.639 not unlike that of the bear. His short legs bowed out, 139 00:06:57.759 --> 00:06:59.199 as if they had been more in the habit of 140 00:06:59.199 --> 00:07:02.720 climbing trees than of walking on land, if we may 141 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:05.279 use that expression. He was something like a sailor. But 142 00:07:05.319 --> 00:07:07.360 once in the rugged trail of the unmarked root of 143 00:07:07.399 --> 00:07:10.439 his native forest, he was a different person, and few 144 00:07:10.439 --> 00:07:13.600 pedestrians could compete with him. The vulgar estimate of his 145 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:16.879 contemporaries that reckoned Old Phelps lazy was simply a failure 146 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:19.759 to comprehend the conditions of his being. It is the 147 00:07:19.839 --> 00:07:22.879 unjustness of civilization that it sets up uniform and artificial 148 00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:26.560 standards for all persons. The primitive man suffers by them, 149 00:07:26.639 --> 00:07:29.519 much as the contemplative philosopher does when one happens to 150 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:33.000 arrive in this busy, fussy world. If the appearance of 151 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:37.040 old Phelps attracts attention, his voice, when first heard, invariably 152 00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:41.000 startles the listener. A small, high pitched, half querulous voice, 153 00:07:41.199 --> 00:07:44.000 it easily rises into the shrowest falsetto, and it has 154 00:07:44.040 --> 00:07:45.839 equality in it that makes it audible in all the 155 00:07:45.839 --> 00:07:49.040 tempests of the forest, or the roar of rapids, like 156 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:52.079 the piping of a bosn's whistle at sea in a gale. 157 00:07:52.199 --> 00:07:53.839 He has a way of letting it rise as his 158 00:07:53.879 --> 00:07:56.480 sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, 159 00:07:56.720 --> 00:07:58.839 or wishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, 160 00:07:59.160 --> 00:08:03.120 until it dominates everything heard in the depths of the woods, 161 00:08:03.319 --> 00:08:05.439 quivering aloft. It is felt to be as much a 162 00:08:05.439 --> 00:08:08.759 part of nature, an original force, as the northwest wind 163 00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:11.240 or the scream of the handhowk when he is pottering 164 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:13.360 about the camp fire trying to light his pipe with 165 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:15.240 a twig held in the flame, he is apt to 166 00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:19.000 begin some philosophical observation in a small, slow, stumbling voice, 167 00:08:19.079 --> 00:08:21.519 which seems about to end in defeat, but he puts 168 00:08:21.560 --> 00:08:24.360 on some unsuspected force, and the sentence ends in an 169 00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:28.360 insistent shriek. Horace Greeley had such a voice and could 170 00:08:28.399 --> 00:08:31.759 regulate it in the same manner. But Phelps's voice is 171 00:08:31.800 --> 00:08:34.720 not seldom plaintive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness 172 00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:38.519 of the woods themselves. When old mounton Phelps was discovered. 173 00:08:38.559 --> 00:08:41.679 He was, as the reader has already guessed, not understood 174 00:08:41.679 --> 00:08:45.919 by his contemporaries. His neighbors, farmers in the secluded valley, 175 00:08:46.120 --> 00:08:49.000 had many of them grown thrifty and prosperous, cultivating the 176 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:53.480 fertile meadows and vigorously attacking the timbered mountains. While Phelps, 177 00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:55.879 with not much more faculty of acquiring property than the 178 00:08:55.960 --> 00:08:58.240 rooming deer, had pursued the even tenor of the life 179 00:08:58.240 --> 00:09:00.679 in the forest on which he set out. They would 180 00:09:00.679 --> 00:09:02.879 have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned 181 00:09:02.879 --> 00:09:04.799 more of what makes the value of the Adirondacks than 182 00:09:04.840 --> 00:09:08.360 all of them put together. But it was true, this woodsman, 183 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:12.399 this trapper, this hunter, this fisherman, this sitter on a 184 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:15.159 log and philosopher, was the real proprietor of the region 185 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:17.879 over which he was ready to guide the stranger. It 186 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:19.559 is true that he had not a monopoly of his 187 00:09:19.639 --> 00:09:23.279 geography or topography, though his knowledge was superior in these respects. 188 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:25.840 There were other trappers and more deadly hunters, and as 189 00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:28.559 intrepid guides. But Old Phelps was the discoverer of the 190 00:09:28.559 --> 00:09:32.080 beauties and sublimities of the mountains, And when city strangers 191 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:34.960 broke into their region, he moanopolized the appreciation of these 192 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.039 delights and wonders of nature. I suppose that in all 193 00:09:38.039 --> 00:09:40.799 that country he alone had noticed the sunsets and observed 194 00:09:40.799 --> 00:09:43.679 the delightful processes of the seasons, taken pleasure in the 195 00:09:43.679 --> 00:09:46.480 woods for themselves, and clammed mountains solely for the sake 196 00:09:46.519 --> 00:09:49.919 of the prospect. He alone understood what was meant by scenery. 197 00:09:50.639 --> 00:09:52.519 In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not know 198 00:09:52.600 --> 00:09:54.840 that he was a poet and a philosopher, I daresay 199 00:09:54.840 --> 00:09:57.360 he appeared to be a slack provider, a rather shiftless 200 00:09:57.360 --> 00:09:59.840 trapper and fisherman, and his passionate love of the forest 201 00:09:59.840 --> 00:10:02.440 and the mountains, if it was noticed, was accounted to 202 00:10:02.480 --> 00:10:06.399 him for idleness. When the appreciative tourist arrived, Phelps was 203 00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:08.600 ready as a guide to open to him all the 204 00:10:08.600 --> 00:10:12.000 wonders of his possessions. He for the first time found 205 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:14.159 an outlet for his enthusiasm and a response to his 206 00:10:14.200 --> 00:10:17.320 own passion. It then became known what manner of man 207 00:10:17.360 --> 00:10:19.120 this was, who had grown up here in the companionship 208 00:10:19.159 --> 00:10:22.320 of forests, mountains and wild animals, that these scenes had 209 00:10:22.360 --> 00:10:25.320 highly developed in him the love of beauty, the aesthetic sense, 210 00:10:25.639 --> 00:10:29.639 delicacy of appreciation, refinement of feeling, and that in his 211 00:10:29.720 --> 00:10:33.960 solitary wanderings and musings the primitive man self taught had 212 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.720 evolved fro himself a philosophy and a system of things. 213 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:39.759 And it was a sufficient system, so long as it 214 00:10:39.799 --> 00:10:43.159 was not disturbed by external skepticism. When the outer world 215 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:44.960 came to him, perhaps he had about as much to 216 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:47.440 give it as to receive from it, probably more in 217 00:10:47.480 --> 00:10:50.000 his own estimation, for there was no conceit like that 218 00:10:50.039 --> 00:10:54.720 of isolation. Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer 219 00:10:54.759 --> 00:10:56.960 of Marcy, and caused the first trail to be cut 220 00:10:57.039 --> 00:10:59.360 to its summit so that others could enjoy the noble 221 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:02.240 views from its round and rocky top. To him, it 222 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:05.519 was in noble symmetry and beauty the chief mountain of 223 00:11:05.519 --> 00:11:08.480 the globe. To stand on. It gave him, as he said, 224 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:12.919 a failing of having apeistetness. He heard with impatience that 225 00:11:12.919 --> 00:11:15.399 Mount Washington was a thousand feet higher, and he had 226 00:11:15.399 --> 00:11:18.559 a childlike incredulity about the surpressing sublimity of the Alps. 227 00:11:19.240 --> 00:11:21.639 Praise of any other elevation. He seemed to consider a 228 00:11:21.639 --> 00:11:24.440 slight to Mount Marcy, and did not willingly hear it 229 00:11:24.879 --> 00:11:26.759 any more than a lover hears the laudation of the 230 00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:29.960 beauty of another woman than the one he loves. When 231 00:11:29.960 --> 00:11:32.519 he showed us scenery he loved, it made him melancholy 232 00:11:32.559 --> 00:11:34.840 to have a speak of scenery elsewhere that was finer. 233 00:11:35.600 --> 00:11:37.759 And yet there was this delicacy about him, that he 234 00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:40.240 never over praised what he brought us to see, any 235 00:11:40.279 --> 00:11:42.080 more than one would overpraise a friend of whom he 236 00:11:42.200 --> 00:11:45.279 was fond. I remember that, when, for the first time, 237 00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:47.919 after a trialsome journey through the forest, the splendors of 238 00:11:47.919 --> 00:11:51.080 the lower Ausable Pond broke upon our vision, that low 239 00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:54.600 lying silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it reflected 240 00:11:54.600 --> 00:11:57.000 in its bosom, he made no outward response to our 241 00:11:57.039 --> 00:12:00.320 burst of admiration. Only a quiet gleam of the eye 242 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:04.159 showed the pleasure our appreciation gave him. As someone said, 243 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:06.919 it was as if his friend had been admired, a 244 00:12:06.960 --> 00:12:09.240 friend about whom he was unwilling to say much himself, 245 00:12:09.519 --> 00:12:12.960 but well pleased to have others praise. Thus far, we 246 00:12:13.039 --> 00:12:15.840 have considered old Phelps as simply the product of the Adirondacks, 247 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.639 not so much a self made man, as the doubtful 248 00:12:18.679 --> 00:12:21.720 phrase has it, as a natural growth amid primal forces. 249 00:12:22.840 --> 00:12:26.120 But our study is interrupted by another influence, which complicates 250 00:12:26.159 --> 00:12:30.080 the problem but increases its interest. No scientific observer, so 251 00:12:30.159 --> 00:12:32.000 far as we know, has ever been able to watch 252 00:12:32.039 --> 00:12:34.799 the development of the primitive man played upon and fashioned 253 00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:39.639 by the hebdomadal iteration of Greeley's Weekly Tribune. Old Phelps 254 00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:42.759 educated by the Woods as a fascinating study educated by the 255 00:12:42.759 --> 00:12:46.480 Woods in the Tribune. He is a phenomenon. No one 256 00:12:46.519 --> 00:12:49.600 at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what this newspaper 257 00:12:49.720 --> 00:12:52.320 was to such a mountain valley as Keen. If it 258 00:12:52.399 --> 00:12:55.159 was not a providence, it was a bible. It was 259 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:57.679 no doubt owing to it that democrats became as scarce 260 00:12:57.720 --> 00:12:59.840 as moose in the ADIRONDACKX. But it does not have 261 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:03.159 its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that the 262 00:13:03.159 --> 00:13:06.000 most cultivated and best informed portion of the Earth's surface, 263 00:13:06.399 --> 00:13:09.360 the Western Reserve of Ohio, as free from conceit as 264 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:11.879 it is from a suspicion that it lacks anything, owes 265 00:13:11.879 --> 00:13:15.720 its pre eminence solely to this comprehensive journal it received 266 00:13:15.759 --> 00:13:18.279 from it everything except a collegian in the classical education, 267 00:13:18.759 --> 00:13:21.120 things not to be desired, since they interfere with the 268 00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:25.080 self manufacture of man. If Greek had been in this curriculum, 269 00:13:25.240 --> 00:13:28.639 its best known dictum would have been translated, make thyself. 270 00:13:29.519 --> 00:13:31.919 This journal carried to the community that fed on it 271 00:13:32.159 --> 00:13:34.440 not only a complete education in all departments of human 272 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:38.159 practice and theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfying assurance 273 00:13:38.240 --> 00:13:39.799 that there was nothing more to be gleaned in the 274 00:13:39.879 --> 00:13:43.639 universe worth the attention of man. This pineplate its readers 275 00:13:43.639 --> 00:13:50.080 in completeness politics, literature, arts, sciences, universal brotherhood and sisterhood. 276 00:13:50.799 --> 00:13:53.480 Nothing was omitted, neither of the poetry of Tennyson, nor 277 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:56.840 the philosophy of Margaret Fuller, neither the virtues of association 278 00:13:57.240 --> 00:14:00.639 nor of unbolted wheat. The laws of politically, economy and 279 00:14:00.759 --> 00:14:03.440 trade were laid down as positively and clearly as the 280 00:14:03.480 --> 00:14:05.879 best way to bake beans, and the saving truth that 281 00:14:05.879 --> 00:14:08.440 the millennium would come and come only when every foot 282 00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:11.159 of the earth was subsoiled. I do not say that 283 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:13.679 Orson Phelps was the product of nature and the Tribune, 284 00:14:13.919 --> 00:14:17.000 but he cannot be explained without considering these two factors. 285 00:14:17.399 --> 00:14:20.600 To him, Greeley was the Tribune, and the Tribune was Greeley. 286 00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:22.919 And yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as 287 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:26.159 something greater than his newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing 288 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:28.960 another journal equal to it in another part of the universe. 289 00:14:29.799 --> 00:14:32.600 At any rate, so completely did Phelps absorb this paper 290 00:14:32.600 --> 00:14:35.519 in this personality that he was popularly known as Greeley 291 00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:39.320 in the region where he lived. Perhaps a fancied resemblance 292 00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:41.360 of the two men in the popular mind had something 293 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:44.000 to do with this transfer of name. There is no 294 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:46.159 doubt that Horace Greeley owed his vast influence in the 295 00:14:46.159 --> 00:14:48.360 country to his genius, nor much doubt that he owed 296 00:14:48.440 --> 00:14:51.320 his popularity in the rural district to James Gordon Bennett. 297 00:14:51.559 --> 00:14:53.960 That is, to the personality of the man which the 298 00:14:54.080 --> 00:14:57.759 ingenious Bennett impressed upon the country. That he despised the 299 00:14:57.759 --> 00:15:00.919 conventionalities of society and was a slow and his toilet 300 00:15:01.159 --> 00:15:03.799 was firmly believed, and the belief indegged him to the 301 00:15:03.799 --> 00:15:06.799 hearts of the people. To them, the old white coat, 302 00:15:07.039 --> 00:15:10.000 an antique garment of unrenewed immortality, was as much a 303 00:15:10.039 --> 00:15:12.600 subject of vitolatry as the riding got grace to the 304 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:14.919 soldiers of the First Napoleon, who had seen it by 305 00:15:14.919 --> 00:15:17.440 the camp fires on the po and on the Boristhenes, 306 00:15:17.720 --> 00:15:19.519 and believed that he would come again in it to 307 00:15:19.559 --> 00:15:23.039 lead them against the enemies of France. The Greeley of 308 00:15:23.080 --> 00:15:25.639 the Popular Heart was clad, as Bennett said he was clad. 309 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:29.000 It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that he 310 00:15:29.039 --> 00:15:32.039 published in his newspaper the full bull of his fashionable tailor. 311 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:34.759 The fact that it was reseated may have excited the 312 00:15:34.759 --> 00:15:37.879 animosity of some of his contemporaries to show that he 313 00:15:37.919 --> 00:15:40.159 wore the best broadcloth, and that the folds of his 314 00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:42.960 trousers followed the city fashion of faulting outside his boots. 315 00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.399 If this revelation was believed, it made no sort of 316 00:15:46.440 --> 00:15:49.519 impression in the country. The rural readers were not to 317 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:52.360 be wheedled under their cherished conception of the personal appearance 318 00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:55.600 of the philosopher of the Tribune. That the Tribune taught 319 00:15:55.600 --> 00:15:57.399 old Phelps to be more Phelps than he would have 320 00:15:57.440 --> 00:15:59.960 been without it was part of the independence teaching method 321 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:03.720 of Greeley's paper. The subscribers were an army in which 322 00:16:03.720 --> 00:16:06.080 every man was a general, and I am not surprised 323 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:08.200 to find Old's felps lately arising to the audacity of 324 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:12.360 criticizing his exemplar in some recently published observations. My focus 325 00:16:12.440 --> 00:16:14.879 upon the philosophy of reading has laid down this definition. 326 00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:18.440 If I understand the necessity or use of reading, it 327 00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:23.000 is to reproduce again what has been said or proclaimed before. Hence, letters, characters, 328 00:16:23.039 --> 00:16:25.120 et cetera are arranged in all the perfection they can 329 00:16:25.159 --> 00:16:27.799 possibly be to show how certain language has been spoken 330 00:16:27.840 --> 00:16:30.879 by the original author. Now to reproduce by reading, the 331 00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:33.399 reading should be so perfectly like the original that no 332 00:16:33.399 --> 00:16:35.360 one standing out of sight could tell the reading from 333 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.600 the first time the language was spoken. This is illustrated 334 00:16:38.639 --> 00:16:41.519 by the highest authority at hand. I have heard as 335 00:16:41.559 --> 00:16:44.480 good readers read and as poor readers as almost anyone 336 00:16:44.519 --> 00:16:47.200 in this region. If I have not heard as many, 337 00:16:47.519 --> 00:16:49.360 I have had a chance to hear nearly the extreme 338 00:16:49.399 --> 00:16:52.240 in variety, or as really ought to have been a 339 00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:55.759 good reader, certainly, But few, if any, ever knew every 340 00:16:55.840 --> 00:16:58.200 word the English language at a glance more readily than 341 00:16:58.240 --> 00:17:00.639 he did, or do the meaning of every mark punctuation 342 00:17:00.759 --> 00:17:04.119 more clearly but he could not read proper But how 343 00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:06.839 do you know, says one, from the fact I heard 344 00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:08.960 him in the same lecture deliver or produced remarks in 345 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:11.240 his own particular way, that if they had been published 346 00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:14.079 properly in print, a proper reader would have reproduced them 347 00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:16.960 again the same way. In the midst of those remarks, 348 00:17:16.960 --> 00:17:19.440 mister Gullley took up a paper to reproduce by reading 349 00:17:19.480 --> 00:17:21.319 part of a speech that some one else had made, 350 00:17:21.720 --> 00:17:23.480 And his reading did not sound much more like the 351 00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:25.599 man that first read or made the speech, that the 352 00:17:25.599 --> 00:17:29.039 clatter of a mail factory sounds like a well delivered speech. Now, 353 00:17:29.039 --> 00:17:31.039 the fault was not because mister Greeley did not know 354 00:17:31.079 --> 00:17:32.599 how to read, as well as almost any man that 355 00:17:32.640 --> 00:17:34.720 ever lived, if not quite. But in his youth he 356 00:17:34.799 --> 00:17:37.000 learned to read wrong. And, as it is ten times 357 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:39.000 harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it, 358 00:17:39.119 --> 00:17:41.759 like thousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, 359 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.880 but carried it on through his whole life. Whether a 360 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:47.359 reader would be thanked for reproducing one of Horace Greeley's 361 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:49.200 lectures as he delivered it is a question that could 362 00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:51.240 not detain us here. But the teaching that he ought 363 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:54.799 to do so, I think would please mister Greeley. The 364 00:17:54.839 --> 00:17:58.000 first driblets of professional tourists and summer boarders who arrived 365 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:00.599 among the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago found Old 366 00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:03.480 Phelps the chief and best guide of the region. Those 367 00:18:03.519 --> 00:18:05.920 who were eager to throw off the usages of civilization 368 00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:09.000 and trampant camp in the wilderness could not but be 369 00:18:09.039 --> 00:18:12.440 well satisfied with the aboriginal appearance of this guide. And 370 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:14.720 when he led off into the woods axe in hand 371 00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:17.440 and a huge kinvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed 372 00:18:17.480 --> 00:18:20.680 to be following the wandering Jew. The contents of this 373 00:18:20.759 --> 00:18:24.279 sec were to furnished a modern industrial exhibition provisions cooked 374 00:18:24.279 --> 00:18:31.200 and raw blankets, maple sugar, tin ware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour, coffee, tea, 375 00:18:31.319 --> 00:18:34.759 et cetera. Phelps was the ideal guide. He knew every 376 00:18:34.759 --> 00:18:37.880 foot of the pathless forest. He knew all woodcraft, all 377 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:40.200 the signs of the weather, or what is the same thing, 378 00:18:40.440 --> 00:18:42.960 how to make a delphic prediction about it? He was 379 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:45.480 fisherman at hunter and had beune the karmarde of sportsmen 380 00:18:45.519 --> 00:18:48.799 at explorers, and his enthusiasm for the beauty and sublimity 381 00:18:48.799 --> 00:18:52.119 of the region and for its untamable wildness, amounted to 382 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:55.440 a passion. He loved his profession, and yet it very 383 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:57.880 soon appeared that he exercised it was reluctance for those 384 00:18:57.880 --> 00:19:01.599 who had neither ideality nor love for the woods. Their 385 00:19:01.640 --> 00:19:04.680 presence was a profanation amid the scenery he loved to 386 00:19:04.759 --> 00:19:07.000 guide into his private and secret haunts. A party that 387 00:19:07.079 --> 00:19:10.640 had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted him. It was 388 00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:12.759 a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men 389 00:19:12.759 --> 00:19:15.640 and gidey girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark 390 00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:18.839 of the expedition. And for their part, they did not 391 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:21.160 appreciate the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and 392 00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:25.039 a philosopher. They neither understood nor value to special knowledge 393 00:19:25.119 --> 00:19:28.559 and his shrude observations. They didn't even like his strill voice. 394 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:32.079 His quaint talk bored them. It was true that at 395 00:19:32.079 --> 00:19:34.680 this period Phelps had lost something of the activity of 396 00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:37.039 his youth, and the habit of contemplative setting on a 397 00:19:37.079 --> 00:19:39.880 log and talking increased with the infirmities induced by the 398 00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.799 hard life of the woodsman. Perhaps he would rather talk 399 00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:45.720 either about the woods life or the various problems of existence, 400 00:19:46.039 --> 00:19:48.519 that cut wood or busy himself in the drudgery of 401 00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:51.559