Did you hear of the _______?

Did you hear of the _______? by Scott Norsworthy

A shared 5-gram in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" and Herman Melville's "The Lightning-Rod Man"

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Remaking OREGON, HO! in prose and dialogue

Remaking "Oregon, Ho!" in prose and dialogue by Scott Norsworthy

DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). Number 9.

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"whether of" this or that

July 27th.—We have had the pleasure of marching to-day 22 miles over a baked white clay surface, accompanied under the broiling sun by a breeze which very gently enveloped us, as in a secondary atmosphere—with dust which gave to all a semblance, not strictly defined, whether of millers or hodmen.  --August 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Photo Credit: Claudia's Page

...he addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem.... --Moby-Dick

 So, through long previous generations, whether of births or thoughts, Fate strikes the present man.  --Pierre

... the lasting bar to real amelioration, whether of individuals or of the world.  --The Confidence-Man

Upon my word

I. F. "Well done! But I can make more of it; did you not hear the sequel?"

C. "Upon my word I have not; it is rather soon [1857/9: "what can you mean?"]."
--April 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army p288

F.—"Hillo! what are you about? Writing in tune with the merry cotton-wood leaves? You will have to frankly confess you have invented a new style."

C.—"Upon my word I was becoming as curious as yourself; a first unfortunate line set the jingle agoing, and I could not stop it...." 
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Image Credit: Leslieville History

Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam.  --Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

"Thou art a man of God, sir, I believe."
"I? I? I? upon my word, Mr. Glendinning!"  --Pierre, or, The Ambiguities

"I think he is a little deranged," said I, sadly. 

"Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel-like, them forgers.

--Bartleby the Scrivener

"I see, I see. But of course you read Tacitus in order to aid you in understanding human nature—as if truth was ever got at by libel. My young friend, if to know human nature is your object, drop Tacitus and go north to the cemeteries of Auburn and Greenwood."

"Upon my word, I—I—"  --The Confidence-Man

Exotics in and out of genial soil

 

I. F. — Bah! Better continue your catalogue raisonneé of newspapers. What immense sheet is that?

The Weekly Louisville Journal; an excellent farmer's paper. Prentice has a characteristic quality which now needs a name—better than repartee writer. But, heaven and earth! he is the best abuser too of his time—an exotic in a genial soil." 

--Sept. 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

There he sits, a strange exotic, transplanted from the delectable alcoves of the old manorial mansion, to take root in this niggard soil. No more do the sweet purple airs of the hills round about the green fields of Saddle Meadows come revivingly wafted to his cheek. Like a flower he feels the change; his bloom is gone from his cheek; his cheek is wilted and pale.  --Melivlle's Pierre - 1852

So George Dennison Prentice is really a transplanted Yankee, Connecticut-born but now thriving in the genial southern soil of Kentucky. Interesting that Melville similarly equates "genial" with "southern":

But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge, experience — were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but unknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him.
--The Confidence-Man - 1857

But already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New-England roots into the hot soil of my Southern soul.  --Melville's 1850 revew-essay Hawthorne and His Mosses

"... this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, where the lively quarry bounds before you through leafy glades." --Melville, Mardi  - 1849

One person whom Prentice had abused in print was Herman Melville's older brother Gansevoort. Herman's younger brother Allan told him so in October 1844, as Hershel Parker reports:

The opposition have of course made their attacks upon him [Gansevoort Melville] & some of them are very severe. Prentiss the witty editor of the Louisville Journal was right down upon him.  --Herman Melville: A Biography V1.314

But what ’s the theme? The theme was bent—
Be sure, in no dry argument—
On the Picturesque, what ’tis—its essence,
Fibre and root, bud, efflorescence,
Congenial soil, and where at best....  

--Herman Melville, At the Hostelry

"George D. Prentice was a Connecticut Yankee, by birth, but in his brilliant career he was a Southerner by residence and characteristics. Born in 1802, a graduate of Brown University in 1823, a New England editor until 1830, he began to build the monument of his fame in the latter year at Louisville, Kentucky, where for over thirty years he edited the Louisville Journal, and made it conspicuous for its wit. He wrote some beautiful poetry, but his forte was repartee. The pungency of this prince of paragraphers has never been surpassed. There has never been a journalist who could dash off more felicitous rejoinders than George D. Prentice. A strong Whig, he loved the South and the Union with about equal devotion. The last decade of his life was saddened by the conflict between the North and the South, and also by his own increasing weakness for strong drink. He lives in the admiration of those who remember his sallies of wit, but permanent literature will soon pass him by, forgetful, perhaps, of his very name. Some of his poems, however, are replete with lofty sentiment, elegantly expressed. Mr. Prentice died in 1870."

--Frank Gilbert, American Literature

delightful realities

Image Credit: The Nature Conservancy

"Ah! not long, bright Sweet Water, did we refrain thy tempting embrace: Thou wert a Lethe to the desert behind; all illusion faded from the delightful realities of thy bath." 

--August 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border;
and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

"Come, this little episode of fictitious estrangement will but enhance the delightful reality."  --Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man 

Dollars, damn!

Look how Herman Melville likes to alliterate the "d" in dollars: with damn and Devil; with diplomas; with derived and ditties:

Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. --Herman Melville, 1851 letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Never mind, sir, never mind, sir; though rogues sometimes be gentlemanly; gentlemen that are gentlemen never go abroad without their diplomas. Their diplomas are their friends; and their only friends are their dollars; you have a purse-full of friends."  --Melville's Pierre, 1852

Now, the dollars derived from his ditties, these Pierre had always invested in cigars; so that the puffs which indirectly brought him his dollars were again returned, but as perfumed puffs; perfumed with the sweet leaf of Havanna.  --Pierre

Compare the examples above to this, the revised book version of the prairie dialogue that originally appeared in the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, without any reference to dollars, dealing, or dens:

Let us have a fling at the world,—the poor dollar-dealing sinners, cooped up in their great dens—" --Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Woo hoo!

Elsewhere in the original magazine version our Captain of U. S. Dragoons has been thinking of dollars--and in connection with writing and publishing, as the following passage shows:

" What is written, may always chance to be printed, if not read: how charming then to the busy denizens of the world, whose very brains have received an artificial mould, to read such incident! Now if I could only introduce the word 'dollar,' — good heavens! it was never heard here before! 

--July 1852, Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Don't think Melville only ever speaks of plural dollars:

 And who will refuse, what Turk or Dyak even, his own little dollar for sweet charity's sake?  --The Confidence-Man

Or that our Captain of U. S. Dragoons only employs the singular dollar:

Imaginary Friend. — You are wandering again. What could have caused that strange circle in the grass there? — it is forty feet across, and, sure enough, it is of the rank sun-flower.

"Why, my friend, if you were imaginative you could people it with the fairies which have been frightened from the continent by the clink of gold, and have here found refuge—pretty far too from the sound of dollars."  -- June 1851 installment and Scenes and Adventures

For further consideration of that passage on dollar-dealers which appears only in the book version, see previous Dragooned posts on

• dollar-dealing sinners as the Duyckincks
• Den Koopman
• Flings at the World

What I said before, that was all introduction . . .

Chief Coacoochee or Wild Cat
from Joshua R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida (1858).

From the September 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

"Then, of course, we marched back to the river bank; and lay down in our cloaks, supperless. But this is all introduction; I have tired you before the day is begun!" 

F. "'No, it is not very late; I was rather amused at your account of those spoiled Seminoles. . . ."

"F." in the dialogue above stands for Frank, the Captain's imaginary friend. (Altered in the 1857 book version to Friend.) From August 1852 through the end of the series in August 1853, these obviously invented prairie dialogues are typographically represented as conversations between "C." and "F."

The example below is from the start of a new chapter in Melville's The Confidence-Man renewing dialogue between, as we eventually learn, "Frank Goodman" and "Charlie Noble." Uh, that would be F. and C. As in the 1852 example above, the C. character is the one now telling the story, the one who speaks of what came before (here, a whole chapter and more) as merely an elaborate "introduction":

"Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus far said was but the introduction, the judge, who, like you, was a great smoker, would insist upon all the company taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one himself, rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice, say— 'Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John Moredock;'. . . .

The reference by Frank #1 to "spoiled Seminoles" I take to be deeply ironic, the flip-side of Melville's featured charity, the "Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles."

For more on the Seminole wars in The Confidence-Man, check out the Melville chapter "Writing and Silence" in Removals by Lucy Maddox.

high pressure engines

J. C. Hoadley Portable Steam Engine
Vintage Machinery / Photo: Glenn Duspiva

We have been all day on the verges of these perennial showers, which the cold, cloud, attracting and condensing mountain tops send forth from their basis as ceaseless streams through the far plains. Thus nature, as with a low pressure engine, carries on its vast schemes; the surplus steam from the hot valleys giving motion to its rivers.
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853

Revised and corrected in the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army. Note the change from low to high pressure:

We have been all day on the verges of these perennial showers, which the cold cloud-attracting and condensing mountain-tops send forth from their bases, as ceaseless streams through the far plains. Thus Nature, as with a high-pressure engine, carries on its vast scheme; the surplus steam from the hot valleys giving motion to its rivers.

Herman Melville:

His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back his head, and gave vent to a long, gasping, rasping sort of taunting cry, intolerable as that of a high-pressure engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent satisfaction hobbled away. --The Confidence-Man

Herman Melville's sister Catherine (Kate) married John Chipman Hoadley on September 15, 1853. Hoadley had been active in Pittsfield since 1848; in partnership with Gordon McKay he operated a machine shop and foundry with "an extensive reputation for steam engines" (Springfield Republican, 22 January 1852).

McKay and Hoadley sold their Pittsfield shop in February 1852 and relocated to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Real and unreal

Here again we find not only the same language but also--and more amazingly--the same context: more writing about writing, a metafictional debate with an imaginary critic of the narrative in progress.

I read to him my day’s experiences.  He listened impatiently; and at last broke out—

“You are incorrigible!  Do you call that abstraction, the real?”   

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857)

... a reply must in civility be made to a certain voice which methinks I hear, that, in view of past chapters, and more particularly the last, where certain antics appear, exclaims: "How unreal all this is!"  --The Confidence-Man (1857)

Did I say "metafictional"? Maurice S. Lee's word "metacritical" is good, too--maybe better since we're talking about ongoing criticism and criticism of criticism in supposed non-fiction, a military memoir.

--Maurice S. Lee on Skepticism and The Confidence-Man, from The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville

"... The Confidence-Man with its metacritical asides purposefully punctures verisimilitude."

Scenes Beyond the Western Border
Southern Literary Messenger 19 (August 1853)

innocence before tyrants

Well, I mean that fanatics, hypocrites, and malicious gossips generally rule society : sometimes under the cloak of religion, sometimes as envious, presumptuous censors, they intimidate the true and innocent, who resist not, nor despise, — but slavishly cower before their unblushing falsehood....

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 355)

The imputation of tyranny is no great stretch from "intimidate" and "slavishly cower." In the book version, the synoptic Table of Contents describes this section as "Tyranny of Society and Fashion."

Like an icicle-dagger, Goneril at once stabbed and froze; so at least they said; and when she saw frankness and innocence tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell, according to the same authority, inly she chewed her blue clay, and you could mark that she chuckled.  (The Confidence-man)

bears again

John W. Shroeder on bears and bear symbolism in The Confidence-Man:

“Nevertheless, Mocmohoc did, upon a time, with such fine art and pleasing carriage win their confidence, that he brought them all together to a feast of bear’s meat, and there, by strategm, ended them.” ... [quoting from chapter 26 of The Confidence-Man]

... The ill-fated feast of bear’s meat has it symbolic implications. The agent of the Black Rapids Coal Company confesses that his stock has recently undergone a slight devaluation. This depression of the stock he assigns to “the growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears.”
…. “Scoundrelly bears!"  [quoting from chapter 9]

When we make the proper allowance for the speaker, it becomes evident that the bear is the distrustful man; the man who has no confidence in the false, bright side of things; the only man in Melville’s universe who has a sporting chance against snakes, Indians, and confidence-men.

The Missouri bachelor was “somewhat ursine in aspect”; he sported “a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bearskin.”  He growled at the man with the plate like “Bruin in a hollow trunk.” [chapter 21]

The confidence-man, as we know, finally took in this bear, just as he [in the guise of Mocmohoc] took in the Wrights and the Weavers....

-- Sources and Symbols for Melville’s Confidence-Man, PMLA, LXVI [1951]: 377-8)

 Cub, a Tragedy in Three Acts

In crossing the Platte this morning, the grizzly bear cub came on the scene in his final act.

It will be remembered by the patient and attentive future reader of this dry and methodical narrative, that its first appearance on any stage, was in "high" tragedy—that the first act embraced an unusual amount of sanguinary incident—that an innocent brother, (or sister,) being ruthlessly slain, and the baffled lady-mother left (unceremoniously) full of towering and demonstrative rage,— the imprisoned hero himself sank overwhelmed,—or in a well-acted counterfeit of death, (and was borne off, remember, on a "real" horse). That in the next act, (and three acts shall do for the tragedy of my bear,—originally they had but one,—but that was at the sacrifice of a goat,) he came to life in a manner that might very well have been criticized as an overdone piece of stage-effect,—but that in fact, the spectators were much moved, and gave full credit to the dangerous passion of his howl.

To-day, then,—for I scorn anachronism— was performed the final act. The stage (wagon) was on "real water." Enraged at his wrongs, his losses, and his galling chain, the "robustious beast" acted in a ridiculous and unbearable manner; aye, ''tore his passion to tatters, to very rags,"—splinters; the stage (wagon) could not hold him: and finally in despair, he "imitated humanity so abominably," as to throw himself headlong, and so drown—or hang himself: (the author cannot decide which—even after a post mortem examination;—and so leaves the decision of this important point to the commentators).

My tragedy is all true,—and if not quite serious, has, as is proper, its moral;—but rather, as I have alluded to the primitive tragedy, let that "future reader" here imagine the entry of Chorus, and their song to Freedom! That dumb beasts prefer death to slavery! Liberty lost, they can die without the excitement of the world's applause, or hopes of a grateful posterity! (It is not possible, I think, that the cub could have known that I would immortalize him.)

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger 19 (March 1853) page 159 and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1857) page 390.

For more on the mock tragedy of the bear cub, see the previous posts about high tragedies and about the goat and about the New York Herald review of Pierre and about the Literary World review of Pierre.

And the one about his howl.

down on the philosophy of Human Destiny

Look to the right and you will see links to monthly installments of the magazine series Scenes Beyond the Western Border.  Taken together the series forms part two of the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army.  Many fine previous commentators (Hamilton Gardner, Otis E Young) on the book did not know about earlier printings of the same material in newspapers and magazines including the Southern Literary Messenger.  The late date of the book mostly reflects the difficulties Lt. Colonel Cooke had with getting the thing published.  Seeing the magazine installments month-by-month more precisely and usefully situates the writing, especially the freewheeling prairie dialogues between the narrator and his imaginary friend, in 1851-1853.

Besides all the verbal and thematic correspondences shown relentlessly on this blog, the chronology of publication dates matches up surprisingly well to known milestones and moods of Herman Melville during the same period.

The series begins in June 1851, with the narrator sounding cocky and confident like Melville did, about to wrap up Moby-Dick.  Looking to make a friend of one ideal reader, the "Captain of U. S. Dragoons" even talks like Melville to Hawthorne, promising to do all the work of socializing.  Early on, the chatty survey of books and ideas covers the subjects discussed by Melville and Hawthorne, who named some in his journal entry for August 2, 1851:

“time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters.”  (quoted in Hershel Parker's biography, V2.8)

Or in another view, the early installments of Scenes Beyond the Western Border effectively flesh out "A Week on a Work-Bench in a Barn," the book Melville and Hawthorne reportedly planned after Thoreau, to memorialize their conversations.

The mood shifts in December 1851, as the imaginary friend starts to sound less like idealized Hawthorne and more like Melville's critical friend Evert Duyckinck:

 ... as your old fashioned friend, I feel interested in your surface wanderings; but let your double-refined poetry and romance go 'to the D—.'" (Scenes Beyond the Western Border)

The amazingly self-aware critique of poetry and romance continues for the rest of the series.  References to motherhood and nursing infants occur only after the birth of Melville's son Stanwix in October 1851.  The bizarre and inappropriate if not inexplicable rant on foreign books and international copyright in September 1852 follows Melville's discouraging correspondence in March-April 1852 with Richard Bentley, his London publisher.  Bentley had based his low estimation of Pierre on copyright concerns and lousy sales of previous works.  Copyright provided editorial grist for New York newspapers, as Parker shows in columns that must have caught Melville's attention (Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative 402-7).  The Harpers and New York Times promoted Dickens over American authors while Greeley and the Tribune defended them and promoted international copyright.

In September 1852, the Captain of U. S. Dragoons (ostensibly writing in July 1845) seems oddly, personally immersed in these New York newspaper wars of spring 1852, complaining bitterly about "cockney condescension" abroad and "foreign-fashion loving public taste" at home:

And then the infernal trash—much of it from the stews of Paris and London—utterly undersells us, to the almost total suppression of native labour; and to the robbery too of the best foreign authors, whose works would command a copyright.

So much for the fourth of July,—and a dry one!  (September 1852) 

The March 1853 episode of the grizzly bear cub, presented as a mock tragedy, wittily twists negative reviews of Melville's Pierre.  In August 1853, the concluding number, in dialogue between the narrator and his imaginary friend, (named Frank since August 1852) incorporates key terms deployed by Evert and George Duyckinck in their review of Pierre for the New York Literary World.

OK, I said all that to say this, on the subject of Human Destiny in Scenes Beyond the Western Border.  Now then, the matter of 1843 is concluded in January 1852.  After two months off, the series resumes in April 1852 with a new subject, the matter of the 1845 dragoon expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

Having of necessity dropped the source material in Cooke's 1843 Santa Fe Journal, the writer or ghostwriter confronting new matter of 1845 needed new sources.  He found the first one in
Oregon, Ho!, first printed over the signature of "St George" in the Washington National Intelligencer, July 15, 1845. 

Examining the revisions to Oregon, Ho! in April 1852, we find the writer now cynically regarding the Oregon emigrants as "unconscious workers of National Human Destiny."  Our narrating Captain of U. S. Dragoons views westward expansion as a second fall, a comparison that Melville saved for Clarel.

They scorn all royal paper claims to this virgin world of ours! The best diplomatists of us all, they would conquer the land as easily as, — Adam lost Paradise.
(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, April 1852; and  Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

 Whatever happen in the end, 
Be sure 'twill yield to one and all
New confirmation of the fall
Of Adam. Sequel may ensue,
Indeed, whose germs one now may view:
Myriads playing pygmy parts-- 
Debased into equality:
In glut of all material arts
A civic barbarism may be:
Man disennobled--brutalized
By popular science--Atheized 
Into a smatterer " (Clarel 4.21)

The fixation with Human Destiny persists into the June 1852 number--possibly indicating a cluster of 1852 installments, April-May-June, apparently composed and submitted together.  In late January and February 1852, Orville Dewey had repeated his Lowell lectures on the Problem of Human Destiny at the Church of the Messiah in New York City.  Melville wrote a dig at Human Destiny lecturers into book 17 of Pierre, then the Captain of U.S. Dragoons railed at "demagogues and infidels" who wowed crowds with "licentious speculations on human destiny":

C.  "But even science is at fault—philosophy at a discount. The public mind is occupied with the theorism of demagogues and infidels, who, abandoning themselves to licentious speculations on human destiny, attract multitudes of fanatical followers, whose minds they bewilder, and whose morals they debase." (June 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

The celebrated Rev. Orville Dewey, a demagogue and infidel?

What's more, a licentious infidel. Debasing the masses with marketable science or "philosophy at a discount."

Who talks like that?  Melville's Ungar the self-exiled soldier, for one, denouncing "popular science" in the lines from Clarel quoted above.  Also Babbalanja in Mardi, musing on the popularity of theorists.  And Ahab, contemplating the whale's head that has voicelessly witnessed enough to "make an infidel of Abraham."

And Melville as Pierre's biographer who disparages "infidel levities" and "infidel-minded" knaves.

Curiously, another bit from one of Dewey's Manhattan lectures on Human Destiny also made its way into the same June 1852 installment with the denunciation of Human Destiny demagogues.  As reported in the New York Daily Tribune for Thursday, February 5, 1852, Dewey's third NYC lecture at the Church of the Messiah considered laughter as a unique feature of "human organization, regarded in its connection with the formation of character and the development of mind":

Another important element in his training to higher ends is the faculty of laughter.  The animals are not endowed with this power, unless the grinning of monkeys is an exception.  This is not merely an expression of the sense of the ludicrous.  Laughter is the symbol of a contented mind, of a genial fellowship, of a comfortable sense of satisfaction, and tends to unite the scattered elements of society in a common feeling of fraternity.  Its influence on health is not to be overlooked.  An explosion of laughter is an excellent aid to digestion.  Superior to old wine, or old cheese, or other celebrated peptic persuaders.

In the June 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border, one of the prairie dialogues makes use of Dewey's theme, as follows:

C.   "....Strange, that laughter, man's lowest attribute, is distinctive; while the smile, which seems borrowed from Heaven, and which can confer rapturous joy, if not happiness, is shared, I think, in a slight degree by brutes."   

(Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger, June 1852); and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Melville took up the same theme in The Confidence-Man, riffing ironically on what Orville Dewey had said in praise of laughter, in those widely beloved Lowell lectures on Human Destiny:

Humor is, in fact, so blessed a thing, that even in the least virtuous product of the human mind, if there can be found but nine good jokes, some philosophers are clement enough to affirm that those nine good jokes should redeem all the wicked thoughts, though plenty as the populace of Sodom. At any rate, this same humor has something, there is no telling what, of beneficence in it, it is such a catholicon and charm—nearly all men agreeing in relishing it, though they may agree in little else—and in its way it undeniably does such a deal of familiar good in the world, that no wonder it is almost a proverb, that a man of humor, a man capable of a good loud laugh—seem how he may in other things—can hardly be a heartless scamp."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the other, pointing to the figure of a pale pauper-boy on the deck below, whose pitiableness was touched, as it were, with ludicrousness by a pair of monstrous boots, apparently some mason's discarded ones, cracked with drouth, half eaten by lime, and curled up about the toe like a bassoon. "Look—ha, ha, ha!"

"I see," said the other, with what seemed quiet appreciation, but of a kind expressing an eye to the grotesque, without blindness to what in this case accompanied it, "I see; and the way in which it moves you, Charlie, comes in very apropos to point the proverb I was speaking of. Indeed, had you intended this effect, it could not have been more so. For who that heard that laugh, but would as naturally argue from it a sound heart as sound lungs? True, it is said that a man may smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain; but it is not said that a man may laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and be one, is it, Charlie?"

"Ha, ha, ha!—no no, no no."

I assure you

I. F.— That's right! pepper them well; a lucky shot! that fellow will pay us for our fright. I assure you I did not breathe! --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

***

I. F. "A forfeit! Mathematics are infernal.'"

"— I assure you (it is a secret of mine) that nothing else known among men can cope with feminine logic; but that is magical; the d—l can as well resist holy water."  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, December 1851; and, revised, in Scenes and Adventures in the Army

* * *

My romance I assure you is no dish water nor its model borrowed from the Circulating Library. It is something new I assure you, & original if nothing more. But I can give you no adequate idea, of it. You must see it for yourself. -- Only forbear to prejudge it. -- It opens like a true narrative -- like Omoo for example, on ship board -- & the romance & poetry of the thing thence grow continually, till it becomes a story wild enough I assure you & with a meaning too. --Letter to John Murray, March 25 1848 - Melville's Correspondence.

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.  -- Moby-Dick

—so one may wake up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in the lurch a ninny. --The Confidence-Man

days marked with a white stone

"...whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day..." Moby-Dick (1851)

Oct. 7.—Mark this day with a white stone! After travelling sixty or seventy miles off the road—encamping each night on the river in comparatively good grass, and with driftwood fuel too, I this morning, as guide, took a course for the crossing of the Pawnee Fork, and struck it to a degree! ....This has been a true October day—delightful and magnificent October!

 Scenes Beyond the Western Border, January 1852

Scenes and Adventures in the Army

"... you desire to hear of Colonel John Moredock. Well, a day in my boyhood is marked with a white stone—the day I saw the colonel's rifle, powder-horn attached, hanging in a cabin on the West bank of the Wabash river."  The Confidence-Man (1857)

what imagination essays, led by hope

In dialogue!  Besides the similar vocabulary, observe, too, the passionately gloomy theme (incineration of ideals born of hope) and, say cadence.

I. F. This profoundly silent Desert—like a world without life—awes and stills the senses: but the soul is excited to speculations on the origin, the history—if it have one—and the destiny of these boundless wastes.

C. Or surrounds itself with the airy creations of fantasy,—or, mournfully wanders back among the dim traces of joys and sorrows gone. I address not then, the shallow or hurried worldling; but the friendly one, who in the calm intervals from worldly cares, grants me the aid of a quiet and thoughtful,—and if it may be,—a poetic mood!

Ay de Mi! Our life is a sad struggle;—our material nature with its base cravings,—its cares for animal comforts, and all the ills of the flesh, preys upon and tethers the soul, which yearns for the Beautiful, the Noble, the Exalted ;—essays to soar in that sphere, whose types are the bright stars of Heaven! Or, clings to that electric chain of Love which binds humanity—and is the olden Time drew down angels!

I. F. Ay! it is a fire that consumes; and sometimes burns to ashes the hearts and hopes of proud men, and leaves but wrecks, mournfully floating upon the dull currents of life.

C. And welcome then, the rapids and the final plunge! Yes: the struggle is ever, and leads us sorrowing to the dark portals which shut out the life beyond. There may this holy fire from Heaven find more happy sympathy. Here, amid ages of pain, it grants us but moments of felicity.

Methinks, amid those stars so refulgent with celestial light, studding the bright blue ether of this moonless summer night, a seraphic Intelligence is hovering with a pale but friendly smile, to rekindle the wasted torch of Hope!

Fond traitor! constant friend—blind guide— beautiful Hope! that leadest us wandering ever,—heartless, but living still.

Yes! Time, the inexorable,—Time the physician and the conqueror,—Time the hopeful, rolls on, dragging us at his chariot wheels, wounded, suffering, unpitied,—but living still!

Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852;
 and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Above, C. and I. F. (who later becomes plain "F" for Frank) as talking travelers anticipate Charlie and Frank in the second half of The Confidence-Man.  But the conversation below is from the first half of Melville's 1857 book (chapter 13, "The man with the traveling cap, etc."), before Frank Goodman (the Cosmopolitan) shows up.

At intervals they slowly quaffed several glasses in silence and thoughtfulness. At last the merchant's expressive face flushed, his eye moistly beamed, his lips trembled with an imaginative and feminine sensibility. Without sending a single fume to his head, the wine seemed to shoot to his heart, and begin soothsaying there. "Ah," he cried, pushing his glass from him, "ah, wine is good, and confidence is good; but can wine or confidence percolate down through all the stony strata of hard considerations, and drop warmly and ruddily into the cold cave of truth? Truth will not be comforted. Led by dear charity, lured by sweet hope, fond fancy essays this feat; but in vain; mere dreams and ideals, they explode in your hand, leaving nought but the scorching behind!"

     "Why, why, why !" in amaze, at the burst; "bless me, if In vino Veritas be a true saying, then, for all the fine confidence you professed with me, just now, distrust, deep distrust, underlies it; and ten thousand strong, like the Irish Rebellion, breaks out in you now. That wine, good wine, should do it! Upon my soul," half seriously, half humorously, securing the bottle, "you shall drink no more of it. Wine was meant to gladden the heart, not grieve it; to heighten confidence, not depress it."

presto!

Well I had almost forgotten about "Oregon, Ho!" the 1845 newspaper sketch by "St George" that kickstarts the April 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."  In that April 1852 number, the new matter of the 1845 dragoon expedition to the Rocky Mountains begins with an extensive rewrite of "Oregon, Ho!"

"Oregon, Ho!" is an early progress report in the form of a letter to the editor, originally published in the editorial correspondence of the Washington National Intelligencer, July 15, 1845 and signed, "ST. GEORGE."

"Oregon, Ho!" was reprinted in Littell's Living Age (August 23, 1845): 356-358.

Two early re-printings of "Oregon, Ho!" appeared (with significant deletions of original material) in New York newspapers:

New York Commercial Advertiser, July 18, 1845  (accessible at GenealogyBank)
New York Spectator, July 23, 1845  (GenealogyBank)

In "Oregon, Ho!" St George showily introduces the story of a prairie wedding with this anti-romantic warning:

But there was a wedding last night!  That damsel takes things coolly as they come.  She is a fine girl for a new country.  Beware, ye Suckers [corrected to "seekers" in Littell’s Living Age], after the romantic!  Cry not Eureka! and straightway with bold imagination found a love story with intricate plot of a maid of the mountain, who was wooed and won by a bold horseman of the prairie desert, and, scorning silken dalliance and trifling forms, yielded her hand, possibly, over the arching neck of prancing steed; for ruthlessly I shall wave my wand of truth, and, presto!  the fabric will vanish.
(Oregon, Ho!)

None of this introduction was used in the 1852 revision.  Hmm, wonder if Melville ever had any use for that magic word presto?

Presto! the castle rose; but alas, the roof was hardly on, when the Yankee's patron, having speculated beyond his means, broke all to pieces, and was absolutely unable to pay one "plug" of tobacco in the pound. His failure involved the carpenter, who sailed away from his creditors in the very next ship that touched at the harbour. (Omoo)

 The gash being made, a metamorphosis took place, transcending any related by Ovid. For, presto! the shirt was a coat!—a strange-looking coat, to be sure; of a Quakerish amplitude about the skirts; with an infirm, tumble-down collar; and a clumsy fulness about the wristbands; and white, yea, white as a shroud.  (White-Jacket)

And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it.  (Moby-Dick, chapter 31)

That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around his chest and neck.  (Moby-Dick, chapter 93)

thus; in creeps my soft-handed gentlemen; and hey, presto! how comes on the soft cash?"  (Confidence-Man)

Stock-still I stand,

   And him I see

Prying, peeping

   From Beech-Tree;

Crickling, crackling

   Gleefully!

But, affrighted

   By wee sound,

Presto! Vanish—

   Whither Bound? 

(From "The Chipmunk," as printed in Melville's Tales Poems and Other Writings, ed. John Bryant, 556)