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."

like the moon around the sun

New NASA video shows the

"cosmic pirouette of Earth and our moon"

which naturally reminds me of
the unforgettable cosmic fairy dance in May 1853 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

Methinks I see a "high hall," whose lights might shame the day; the many white-robed fair,—the far-reaching couples, floating in that fairy dance,—revolving, like the moon around the sun, in circling circles.

But that dance of moon earth and sun has to be animated, maybe not so satisfyingly as in the prose-poetry of our wandering dragoon, on the prairie.

early uncut version of Mah-za-pa-mee

 

Text below is from the Illinois Monthly Magazine, July 1831 pages 458-463. Unsigned, but reprinted from the St. Louis Beacon where the story originally had appeared on February 17, 1831 over the pseudonym "Borderer."

Printed again, after significant deletions in revision, in the August 1835 Military and Naval Magazine of the United States, over the signature P. S. G. C.  Later interpolated as Chapter 10 in the July 1842 installment of Scenes and Adventures in the Army in the Southern Literary Messenger, and yet again in the 1857 book version, Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

MAH-ZA-PA-MEE.

In the spring and summer of 1814, the following incidents of Indian history occurred, in great part to the personal knowledge of Mr Manuel Lisa and persons in his employ. The chief merit of the narrative, will I fear be its strict adherence to facts. I disclaim any attempt to color by exaggeration; but am fully aware that an abler pen than mine, might fail in justice to descriptions I may attempt.  And it is a well known truth, that many scenes occur that are beyond the power of man to paint with the effect of the original. The story, then, may interest those, who, studying man in all climes and situations, may learn from it, that upon him the slightest causes produce the greatest effects, and the same, alike in the forest and his state of greatest improvement; that red or white, wild or tame, alike fallible, he plunges into war from inadequate motives. But chiefly will the story of my heroine, which shall be strictly true, illustrate the physical study of the noble biped. 

The Punca Indians are a reduced band; their warriors amount to no more than one hundred and fifty. Invariably friendly to whites, they are noted for bravery and swiftness of foot. Their village is at the mouth of the L’eau-qui-coure (Lucocore) which empties into the Missouri more than a thousand miles from its mouth. In the spring of '14 a calumet party of about twenty Grand Pawnees paid them a visit in their village; the two tribes being on as good terms as Indians ever are. These are generally called by whites begging parties, but with a desire to make the best always of human nature, I would ascribe to them less degrading motives: for though custom decrees that presents be made on such occasions, all alike give and receive. The visitors were smoked as usual, feasted on fat dogs; and then they danced and counted their coups. What a simple but powerful incentive to virtue (Indian virtue!) is this custom! How innocently is ambition thus sated! The time is night; brilliant fires burn around; the stately chiefs are seated in all the cross-legged dignity of Turkish Pachas; the animating music of the song peels forth; the exhilarated braves dance with emulous ardor and activity; for a moment they cease; one of them recounts a coup, sticks an arrow in the ground and tells the actor of a greater feat to take it as his own: the dance is renewed with increased animation; till at length the arrow is removed by a dancer who relates his superior adventure; his form seems to swell, his eye glistens with pleasure; the arrow is laid at the feet of the chief. Long they continue, but with endless novelty; till finally the chief distributes the simple honors, thus adding his sanction to the merit of the prize. Fashion decides that modesty is not wanting in this self-praise, but it also requires, and has the most powerful means to enforce, that the recital be the strictest truth. Thus does the red man of our forest closely imitate the noblest customs of Greece in the day of her virtue and renown! 

Thus were the visiters treated; but a faithless return was made to confiding hospitality. A young brave of their number discovered there was a difficulty in the family of the principal chief, Shu-da-gah-ha; a jealousy between his wives; and struck with the appearance of the favorite one, Mah-za-pa-mee—for she was a pretty woman—he determined to improve a temporary advantage, and engage in an adventure. His affection, and ambition too, became engaged in the suit, and he warmly urged it. His good looks and eloquence combined to pursuade her that nothing could equal the Pawnees and the way they lived; he told her they killed more buffalo, planted more corn and pumpkins, and had more scalp dances than any others: that they stole more horses too, and the squaws never walked. How could she resist so happy a picture? She did not; but consented to fly with him to this promised paradise. His arrangements were easily made, and the next night, like Paris, the beau ideal of beaux, he escaped, in triumph with this modern Helena. Mah-za-pa-mee took with her, her infant son, and, guided by her lover, soon arrived at the Village of the Grand Pawnees on the Rio de la Plata, Anglice, Big Platte. 

On discovering the flight, the chief was quite outrageous; it was too late to pursue; they had taken the best horses; but the sacrifice of the remaining Pawnees—until then perfectly ignorant of the proceeding—could well appease his ire; and though innocent, they had paid with their lives the forfeit of the indiscretion, but for the influence of Manuel Lisa. They were dismissed without presents and with dishonor. But Shu-da-gah-ha had more pride or policy than Menelaus, and war did not immediately result. 

Not long after this affair, a small party of Dahcotahs* probably to prove the truth of Hobbes‘ theory of their nature, by carrying on a war “whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” directed their footsteps to the village of the Grand Pawnees; and here, unlike the chivalrick Greeks, (if between comparison and antithesis they do not detain the narrative,) they prowled about, undiscovered, until at length they killed and scalped a son-in-law of that very distinguished chief Car-ra-ku-wah-wah-ho, whom the Whites called Long Hair. This was done in darkness, but very near the village. A trail cannot be followed at night; but very early the following morning, eighty braves pursued as fast as their chargers could carry them. During the night the Sioux had not been idle; an Indian a-foot can travel as far in twenty-four hours as another on horseback. The next morning the sun rose on them fifty miles from the Pawnee village. The Pawnees perceived from the trail, that their enemies were but five or six in number, which induced them to continue in untiring pursuit for three days. The Sioux in their flight passed by the Punca village, simply because it was the nearest way to their homes. The Pawnees, from the first, suspected them to be Puncas, conscious of the late injury they had received at their hands; but on finding the trail led directly to their village, doubt yielded to certainty in their minds, and they continued the pursuit; not to attack the Puncas, but in the hope, if failing to overtake the party, to out off some straggler at a respectful distance from the village. Accordingly when arrived within two miles of it on the fourth day, they were delighted to discover two young Punca hunters; they instantly engaged in hot pursuit. But the ground was much broken, and the young Puncas were determined the reputation of their tribe for swiftness of foot should not suffer on this occasion; so they ran like heroes, for their lives were at stake. The Pawnees did not dream of their escaping; nor did they—which was more important—perceive how near they were approaching the village; so warmly were their imaginations engaged in the idea of the two scalps that were careering before them. But the Puncas did escape; and soon did they make it known: for never, till then, was Heaven’s conclave saluted with such horrid discord. The braves all yelled like devils; each squaw howled for ten; and wolf dogs! were ten to their one and gave distinguished proof of the power of their lungs. The luckless urchin that disturbs a nest of hornets, is not more warmly assailed, or sooner put to his heels, than were the panic struck Pawnees by this nest of fiery Puncas. Those that could not lay hands on horses, pursued scarce the less swiftly on foot. Away they went! Now Pawnee do thy best! What a sight for a sportsman of the turf or chase! Away! away! They are out of sight—a hill top is gained—the game is in full view— the shrill war-cry is heard—sweet music to the Punca—to the Pawnee the jarring signal of his doom. Noble feats of horsemanship were that day performed by the best of riders; but most of the horses were run down and abandoned, and Punca and Pawnee ran on foot. The latter threw away their guns, and strewed the ground with cumbrous finery; and to this the many were indebted for their safety. But the description shall be shorter than the chase. The Puncas ceased at night twenty miles from their village; had taken six scalps, and captured many horses and guns. 

Thus we see the two tribes fairly in a war originating in Mah-za-pa-mee; for she caused the mistake which caused the war. 

But to return to our heroine and the Pawnee village. In due time the foremost of the scattered messengers of misfortune arrived; it was in the night. Mah-za-pa-mee had a faithful friend in an old squaw, who hastened with the first news of the disaster, to warn her of her danger; for then no one could doubt the fate that was in store for her; she and her son would be sacrificed to Pawnee revenge. The old woman furnished her with mocasins and dried meat; and she immediately left the village, taking with her her son. 

This was late in June; and she determined to strike for the nearest waters of the L’eau-qui-coure, expecting to meet her band, who usually followed up that river on their way to make a summer hunt for buffalo. Her meat soon gave out, and roots were her only resource; she was without any means of striking fire. Thus she travelled, carrying on her back her son, who was two years old; enduring the scorching heat of the prairie by day, and chilled by its cold dews at night. Thus simply are her circumstances told; but her sufferings, I need not attempt.

She reached the L’eau-qui-coure and found that her whole band had passed many days before! She could not hope to overtake them. For days she searched the trail and camps expecting to find something deserted, or cached, that would serve for food, but all failed. She then determined to follow down the river, and if able to reach her village, she would find there green corn and pumpkins, which she knew was planted before it was deserted for the hunting season. More than an hundred miles were before her; she was starved and burthened; alternately scorched and chilled, and ever assailed by the maddening musquito. She lived, or rather existed, on small fish caught in the shallow streams, which of course were eaten raw. Reader! if you are a lady, imagine yourself in this situation.

Late in August, Mah-za-pa-mee arrived in the vicinity of her village on the Missouri; what must then have been her feelings to discover from a distance, the village occupied by hostile Indians, before whom the last vestige of vegetation was fast disappearing? She hid herself—but yielded to despair. She and her son were found the next day by a man of Mr. Lisa’s company. He was one of a small party left by that gentleman in charge of a store house some distance below; provisions having become scarce, they had come up the five? expecting the Puncas had returned with meat. Her appearance, and that of her child, when found, is stated to have been emaciated, wretched, and even horrible beyond description. And, indeed, if there were room for it, who would not doubt the possibility of their existing so long? 

In no other situation does poor human nature show so much weakness, is so much degraded, as when assailed by starvation. Hunger! nought but thou can reduce proud, gifted, noble man to the level of the wretched beast. Thou shakest his reason from its pedestal! Thou makest him yield all to revolting appetite! But no more; Mah-za-pa-mee would probably have terminated an existence, when worth preserving, rather than meet her husband, humbled and a petitioner; but now suffering worse than death, the loathsome picture of disease, true to the singular nature of her species, clinging the more closely to life, she seeks to offer herself before her injured lord—for a mouthful of food! Mah-za-pa-mee at length joined her tribe and sought to throw herself at the feet of her husband. Pity is allied to affection; and much was she to be pitied; but chiefly was she to depend upon her child—that inseparable link of union—for forgiveness. It was that which succeeded; for surely the chief, Shu da-gah-ha, did not believe her, that the Pawnee threw “squaw medicine (love medicine) on her;’’ that “he bewitched her.” She was forgiven, grew apace in flesh and favor, and has since been, as well as her son, healthy and happy.

---
[footnote:] *Dahcotahs is the name for the many bands of Sioux taken collectively.

Update on Mah-za-pa-mee

The Indian romance of Mah-za-pa-mee first appeared in the St Louis Beacon.

Knew that already, but here's what I somehow missed before now, an early reprint in a "western" literary journal edited by James Hall.

As shown in the 3rd edition of Henry R. Wagner's The Plains and the Rockies, revised by Charles L. Camp, Mah-za-pa-mee was reprinted from the St Louis Beacon in the July 1831 issue of the Illinois Monthly Magazine.

From The Plains and the Rockies

When Dale Morgan examined the files of the St. Louis Beacon (in Lib. Cong., and St. Louis Publ. Lib.) he found the Cooke story on Hugh Glass, essentially corresponding to Chapters 19 and 20 of this book [Scenes and Adventures in the Army], in the Beacon for Dec. 2 and 9, 1830, and entitled "Some incidents in the life of Hugh Glass, a hunter of the Missouri River," signed "Borderer", and dated "Missouri River, Nov. 1830." Other articles written evidently by Cooke, and corresponding to Chapters 8 and 10 of his book, appear under the titles : "A tale of the Rocky Mountains" ("Sha-wa-now"), and "Mah-za-pa-mee"; Beacon Jan. 13, and Feb, 17, 1831. The latter was reprinted in the Illinois Monthly Magazine July 1831, pp. 456-463 and again, in part, in the Military and Naval Magazine (quoted in the National Intelligencer, Oct. 8, 1835). Cooke's marriage at St. Louis was noted in the Beacon at this time, (Morgan). This material was again published, in the Southern Literary Messenger, together with nearly all the rest of what eventually became the book.

air spirits

Brett Zimmerman on spirit beings in Melville’s Mardi (1849):

Taji believes, then, that the cosmos is a vast hierarchy of both physical existents and metaphysical essences (referred to in the book as “shades,” “spirits,” “seraphs,” “angels,” and “archangels”). …The vision Babbalanja reports, in chapter 188, is very much like the otherworldly imaginings of Taji: 

'These,' breathed my guide, ‘are spirits in their essences; sad, even in undevelopment.  With these, all space is peopled;—all the air is vital with intelligence, which seeks embodiment.’

Herman Melville: Stargazer pp40-41

UPDATE:  More of the same, in Pierre (1852):

Ah, thou rash boy! are there no couriers in the air to warn thee away from these emperilings, and point thee to those Cretan labyrinths, to which thy life's cord is leading thee? Where now are the high beneficences? Whither fled the sweet angels that are alledged guardians to man?

From Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

 Ah!  it was enough to freeze into palpable shape the ministering spirits of the air.
(September 1851)

The air, methinks, is fanned by seraphic spirits on their winged errands of Peace!
(January 1852)

 C.—Then, every senti[m]ent of my soul has ears, in which air spirits supernaturally whisper distracting, sonorous thoughts:— in darkness, with long unrest, it verges madness...
(March 1853)

A gentle air rustles the grass or leaves; the running waters too, give music: and then, they seem the voices of gentle spirits, which may in this hour of calm and loveliness awake to Eden memories.  (August 1853)

Melville's "Western spirit" in Israel Potter and elsewhere

 
Melville on Ethan Allen:

"He was frank, bluff, companionable as a pagan, convivial, a Roman, hearty as a harvest. His spirit was essentially Western; and herein is his peculiar Americanism; for the Western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be) the true American one." 
Israel Potter; first published 1854-1855 in Putnam's Magazine.  In installments, like "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," 1851-1853.

Joyce Sparer Adler has thoughtfully explained what Melville meant by "the Western spirit":

"In the context of the whole Ethan Allen section this spirit is a combination of love of freedom, courage in the face of adversity, humor, bold exercise of freedom of speech, readiness to try what has not yet been done, willingness to depart from old values and theologies, and practice of just principles."  War in Melville's Imagination, p84

Let's look for signs of Melville's "Western spirit" in the 1851-1853 series "Scenes Beyond the Western Border."

Whoops, there's one right there in the title: Beyond the Western Border.  If it was a snake....

He was frank...

"Frank as a bear hunter!" (September 1851)

companionable as a Pagan

"... the race of hermits is extinct, and man requires companionship" (June 1851)

 After significant revisions to the May 1853 installment, Frank becomes "my companion." Yow!

 hearty as a harvest

 "I like a man hearty in everything..." (September 1851)

Now guided by Joyce Adler's language, here we find one single sentence combining "love of freedom" and "bold exercise of freedom of speech" and "willingness to depart from old values and theologies":

"And it is this free desert air alone, that emboldens me in the search, to question the dogmas which society holds so precious."  (June 1852) 

Dogmas!

And how many of Adler's terms for Melville's theme of the "Western spirit" are likewise conveniently compressed in the splendid passage below, from August 1852?

Ah! my good friend, let this wild mountain air have fair play; let us with the desert's freedom joyously flout convention and opinion—upstart usurpers—let us make mocking sport of the prosaic solemnity of ignorant prejudice;—let us shoot popguns at least, against the solid bulwarks where folly and selfishness sit enthroned!

readiness to try what has not yet been done?

"Well give me another trial for something new on my subject." (September 1851)

ballrooms are bright

"Whether it be trivial
or something that Dante said...."  

It's one of my favorite sequences, the cosmic Fairy Dance:

O, seductive combination of the graces, the brilliancy, the joys of loveliest life!—that givest grace to loveliness, poetry to motion, and gala gloss to all surroundings—that charmest by music, that expandest all hearts, and exaltest all souls to the power of love—the thronged, the gay, the glittering ball! 

O, soft viol, and tinkling guitar—last echo of old romance!—to this solitude you can bring bright memories! Methinks I see a "high hall," whose lights might shame the day; the many white-robed fair,-the far-reaching couples, floating in that fairy dance,—revolving, like the moon around the sun, in circling circles. 

The rosy summer dawn is lovely, and sweetly the birds sing in its praise;—but lo! the sun appears, and gives a magic brilliancy to all,—scattering diamonds and pearls upon the dewy green;—so, always to such pleasant scene, the smile of one, must give the light of enchantment!  

If it be not there,—or if it be clouded, no winter twilight more dismal then, than that glaring ball-room mockery. 

-- Scenes Beyond the Western Border, May 1853 Southern Literary Messenger 313: and

Scenes and Adventures in the Army, 409-410

"Often whalemen have found themselves cruising nigh that burning mountain when all aglow with a ballroom blaze."  -- The Encantadas