there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown.

[From Specimen Days and Collect, "Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier." Prose Works, p. 36.]

ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE

As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farmlane fenced by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copious weeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick'd stones at the fence bases irregular paths worn between, and horse and cow tracks — all characteristic accompaniments marking and scenting the neighborhood in their seasons - apple-tree blossoms in forward April — pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and in another the long flapping tassels of maize and so to the pond, the expansion of the creek, the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and such recesses and vistas.

[From Specimen Days and Collect, " Entering a Long Farm-Lane.” Works, p. 83.]

Prose

MANHATTAN FROM THE BAY

June 25. Returned to New York last night. Out to-day on the waters for a sail in the wide bay, southeast of Staten island a rough, tossing tide, and a free sight - the long stretch of Sandy Hook, the highlands of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward bound. We came up through the midst of all, in the full sun. I especially enjoy'd the last hour or two. A moderate sea-breeze had set in; yet over the city, and the waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing nothing, only adding to the beauty. From my point of view, as I write amid the soft breeze, with a sea-temperature, surely nothing on earth of its kind can go beyond this show. To the left the North river with its far vista- nearer, three or four warships, anchor'd peacefully

the Jersey side, the banks of Weehawken, the Palisades, and the gradually receding blue, lost in the distance to the right

the East river- the mast-hemm'd shores — the grand obelisklike towers of the bridge, one on either side, in haze, yet plainly defin'd, giant brothers twain, throwing free graceful interlinking loops high across the tumbled tumultuous current below — (the tide is just changing to its ebb) — the broad water-spread everywhere crowded—no, not crowded, but thick as stars in the sky with all sorts and sizes of sail and steam vessels, plying ferryboats, arriving and departing coasters, great ocean Dons, ironblack, modern, magnificent in size and power, fill'd with their incalculable value of human life and precious merchandise with here and there, above all, those daring, careening things of grace and wonder, those white and shaded swift-darting fish-birds, (I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can outvie them,) ever with their slanting spars, and fierce, pure, hawk-like beauty and motion - first-class New York sloop or schooner yachts, sailing, this fine day, the free sea in a good wind. And rising out of the midst, tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American, yet strangely oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its spires, its cloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre - the green of the trees, and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture well blended, as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of heaven above, and June haze on the surface below. [From Specimen Days and Collect, "Manhattan from the Bay." Prose Works, pp. 116, 117.]

HUMAN AND HEROIC NEW YORK

The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn — (will not the time hasten when the two shall be municipally united in one, and named Manhattan?) — what I may call the human interior and exterior of these great seething oceanic populations, as I get it in this visit, is to me best of all. After an absence of many years, (I went away at the outbreak of the secession war, and have never been back to stay since,) again I resume with curiosity the crowds, the streets I knew so well, Broadway, the ferries, the west side of the city, democratic Bowery — human appearances and manners as seen in all these, and along the

wharves, and in the perpetual travel of the horse-cars, or the crowded excursion steamers, or in Wall and Nassau streets by day — in the places of amusement at night — bubbling and whirling and moving like its own environment of waters - endless humanity in all phases - Brooklyn also taken in for the last three weeks. No need to specify minutely enough to say that (making all allowances for the shadows and side-streaks of a million-headed-city) the brief total of the impressions, the human qualities, of these vast cities, is to me comforting, even heroic, beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine physique, clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combination of reticence and self-possession, with good nature and friendliness-a prevailing range of according manners, taste and intellect, surely beyond any elsewhere upon earth- and a palpable outcropping of that personal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest future hold of this many-item'd Union are not only constantly visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average. To-day, I should say - defiant of cynics and pessimists, and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions an appreciative and perceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet of successful Democracy, and of the solution of that paradox, the eligibility of the free and fully developed individual with the paramount aggregate. In old age, lame and sick, pondering for years on many a doubt and danger for this republic of ours fully aware of all that can be said on the other side. I find in this visit to New York, and the daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, on the scale of the oceans and tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken the grandest physical habitat and surroundings of land and water the globe affords — namely, Manhattan island and Brooklyn, which the future shall join in one city-city of superb democracy, amid superb surroundings.

[From Specimen Days and Collect, "Human and Heroic New York." Prose Works, pp. 117, 118.]

AMERICA'S CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE

Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future destiny of that plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is the inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes-land of ten million virgin farms— to the eye at present wild and unproductive yet experts say that upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed the world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,) while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, the upper Yellowstone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the Prairies and Plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.

Indeed through the whole of this journey, with all its shows and varieties, what most impress'd me, and will longest remain with me, are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to my eyes, to all my senses the esthetic one most of all -they silently and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest sta

tistics are sublime.

[From Specimen Days and Collect, "America's Characteristic Landscape." Prose Works, p. 150.]

THE SILENT GENERAL

What a man he

Sept. 28, '79.So General Grant, after circumambiating the world, has arrived home again - landed in San Francisco yesterday, from the ship City of Tokio from Japan. is! what a history! what an illustration his life of the capacities of that American individuality common to us all. Cynical critics are wondering "what the people can see in Grant" to make such a hubbub about. They aver (and it is no doubt true) that he has hardly the average of our day's literary and scholastic culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd genius or conventional eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves how an average

western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides of circumstances, perhaps caprices, into a position of incredible military or civic responsibilities, (history has presented none more trying, no born monarch's, no mark more shining for attack or envy,) may steer his way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying the country and himself with credit year after year — command over a million armed men fight more than fifty heavy battles rule for eight years a land larger than all the kingdoms of Europe combined and then, retiring, quietly (with a cigar in his mouth) make the promenade of the whole world, through its courts and coteries, and kings and czars and mikados, and splendidest glitters and etiquettes, as phlegmatically as he ever walk'd the portico of a Missouri hotel after dinner. I say all this is what people like - and I am sure I like it. Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How these old Greeks, indeed, would have seized on him! A mere plain man no art, no poetry — only practical sense, ability to do, or try his best to do, what devolv'd upon him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer of Illinois general for the republic, in its terrific struggle with itself, in the war of attempted secession-President following, (a task of peace, more difficult than the war itself) heroic, as the authorities put it — and yet the greatest hero. gods, the destinies, seem to have concentrated upon him.

nothing The

[From Specimen Days and Collect, "The Silent General." Prose Works, PP. 153, 154.]