Is Death an Evil?

It is at most but the life of a cabbage; surely not worth a wish. When all our faculties have left, or are leaving us, one by one sight, hearing, memory — every avenue of pleasing sensation is closed, and athumy, debility, and malaise left in their places when friends of our youth are all gone, and a generation is risen around us whom we know not, is death an evil?

"When one by one our ties are torn,

And friend from friend is snatched forlorn,
When man is left alone to mourn,

Oh! then how sweet it is to die!

When trembling limbs refuse their weight,
And films slow gathering dim the sight,
When clouds obscure the mental light,

'Tis nature's kindest boon to die!"

I really think so. I have ever dreaded a doting old age ; and my health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter has made me hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy its temperature; but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through it with the dormouse, and only wake with him in spring, if ever. They say that Stark could walk about his room. I am told you walk well and firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I ride, however, daily. But reading is my delight. I should wish never to put pen to paper; and the more because of the treacherous practice some people have of publishing one's letters without leave. Lord Mansfield declared it a breach of trust, and punishable at law. I think it should be a penitentiary felony; yet you will have seen that they have drawn me out into the arena of the newspapers. Although I know it is too late for me to

buckle on the armor of youth, yet my indignation not permit me passively to receive the kick of an ass.

To turn to the news of the day, it seems that the c bals of Europe are going to eating one another again war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle o kite and snake. Whichever destroys the other leav destroyer the less for the world. This pugnacious h of mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of obstacles to too great multiplication provided in the m anism of the universe. The cocks of the hen-yard one another. Bears, bulls, rams, do the same. And horse, in his wild state, kills all the young males, u worn down with age and war, some vigorous youth 1 him, and takes to himself the harem of females. we shall prove how much happier for man the Qua policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than t of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the des tion by these maniacs of one part of the earth is the me of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our offi and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her the horns, and the Turk by the tail. God bless you, a give you health, strength, and good spirits, and as mu of life as you think worth having.

I h

From S. N. Randolph's "Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson," published Harper & Brothers.

(To his wife)

NEW YORK, Thursday, May 12, 1836

EAR LIDIAN, - Yesterday afternoon we attende

DEAR

Charles's 1 funeral. Mother and Elizabeth heard th

prayers, but did not go out. Mother is very well, and

1 His brother.

338

1

An Upper Chamber

bears her sorrow like one made to bear it and to comfort others. Elizabeth is well, and the strength and truth of her character appear under this bitter calamity. William and Susan are well and thoroughly kind to us, as they have been tenderly faithful to Charles. I have told mother I think it best, on every account, she should return immediately with me, and end her painful visit to New York, whither she came to spend a month of happiness in the new household of her son. It has been seven or eight mont is of much sickness, anxiety, and death. She will return with me and Elizabeth, and we take the boat tomorrow afternoon. Now, my dear wife, shall I find you in Boston or in Concord? Do what you think best. You may think it necessary to go home on Friday, to make ready and receive us, or perhaps you can send sufficient word and go with us on Saturday. It is not of much importance any way. Trifles all. Only I wish mother to sit down as gently and wontedly in her chamber in your house as if she had never been in any other.

. . . And so, Lidian, I can never bring you back my noble friend, who was my ornament, my wisdom, and my pride. A soul is gone, so costly and so rare that few persons were capable of knowing its price, and I shall have my sorrow to myself; for if I speak of him I shall be thought a fond exaggerator. He had the fourfold perfection of good sense, of genius, of grace, and of virtue as I have never seen them combined. I determined to live in Concord, as you know, because he was there; and now that the immense promise of his maturity is destroyed, I feel not only unfastened there and adrift, but a sort of shame at living at all. I am thankful, dear Lidian, that you have seen and known him to that degree you have. I should not have known how to forgive you an ignorance of him, had he been out of your sight. Thanks, thanks

for your kindest sympathy and appreciation of him.

Aald

you must be content henceforth with only a piece of husband; for the best of his strength lay in the soul anniwhich he must no more on earth take counsel. How n. A I saw through his eyes! I feel as if my own wer of the Yours affectionately, ives a dim.

WALD humor

The philosophy of compensation avails not to cc one who mourns his son dead in his beauty

(Ralph Waldo Emerson to Margaret Fuller)

WHEN

of the mech

d kill

1 the

CONCORD, January 30, 184

ntil,
ills

ne

WHEN, last Saturday night, Lidian said, "It is two years to-day," I only heard the bell-stroke again. I have had no experience, no progress, to put me into better intelligence with my calamity than when it was new. I read lately, in Drummond of Hawthornden, Ben Jonson's narrative to him of the death of his son, who died of the plague in London. Ben Jonson was at the time in the country, and saw the boy in a vision; "of a manly shape, and of that growth, he thinks, he shall be at the resurrecmy beautiful tion." That same preternatural maturity did statue assume the day after death; and so it often comes to me, to tax the world with frivolity. But the inarticulateness of the Supreme Power how can we insatiate hearers, perceivers, and thinkers ever reconcile ourselves unto? It deals all too lightly with us low-levelled and weaponed Does the Power labor as men do with the impossibility of perfect application, that always the hurt is of one kind and the compensation of another? My divine temple, which all angels seemed to love to build, and which was shattered in a night, I can never rebuild: and

men.

Patience and Patience

be the facility of entertainment from thought, or friendship, oth affairs an amends? Rather it seems like a cup of her mnus or of Momus. Yet the nature of things, against all and tearances and specialties whatever, assures us of eterbeen benefit. But these affirmations are tacit and secular; think oken, they have a hollow and canting sound. And diately all our being, dear friend, is ever more adjourned. whith nce, and patience, and patience! I will try, since new husk it, to copy my rude dirges to my darling, and send monti to you.

nmortal away from me"

(James Russell Lowell to Charles F. Briggs)

MY

ELMWOOD, Nov. 25, 1853

DEAR OLD FRIEND,—Your letter came while I was sadly sealing up and filing away my old letters, for I feel now for the first time old, and as if I had a past-something, I mean, quite alien to my present life, and from which I am now exiled. How beautiful that past was and how I cannot see it clearly yet for my tears I need not tell you. I can only hope and pray that the sweet influences of thirteen years spent with one like her may be seen and felt in my daily life henceforth. At present I only feel that there is a chamber whose name is Peace, and which opens towards the sunrising, and that I am not in it. I keep repeating to myself "by and by," "by and by," till that trivial phrase has acquired an intense meaning. I know very well that this sunset-glow, even of a life like hers, will fade by degrees; that the brisk, busy day will return with its bills and notes and beef and beer, intrusive, distracting — but in the meantime I pray. I do abhor sentimentality from the bottom of my soul, and cannot wear my grief upon my sleeves, but yet I look