Category: 1860s

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1860s Essay

American Animals Part II: The Buffalo

American Animals Part II: The Buffalo

By Jacob Abbott
Annotations by Josh BEnjamin
George Catlin. Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie. Oil on canvas, c. 1882-83, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

We gave two weeks since an article on the Beaver, his habits, &c. The second in the series is a sketch of the Buffalo. The article is long, but very interesting:

The buffalo, or bison, is a sort of wild bull, with a monstrous, shaggy head and ferocious aspect. They are gregarious animals, that is, they live and feed together in immense herds. Almost all animals that feed on grass and herbage are gregarious, while beasts of prey are generally solitary in their habits. It is necessary for them to be so, for in order to succeed in their hunting, they must prowl alone, or watch in ambush, patiently and in silence, for their prey. There are some exceptions, as in the case of wolves, for example, which usually hunt together in packs. There is a reason for this exception, too, for the wolves live generally by killing and devouring animals larger than themselves, and so are obliged to combine their strength in order to overpower their prey.

The buffalos are gregarious by habit in order that they may the better defend themselves from their enemies; and so abundant is the food furnished for them by the luxuriant grass of the prairies, and so boundless is the extent of the plains over which they roam, that the herds increase to an almost incredible extent. Travellers sometimes find the whole region black with them in every direction as far as they can see. In one case that is described, the country was covered with a herd, or an aggregation of herds, so vast that the party journeying were six days in passing through them. The aspect which they presented with five, ten, and sometimes twenty thousand in sight at a time, spreading in every direction over the plains, some bellowing, some fighting, others advancing defiantly toward their supposed foes, and tearing up the soil with their hoofs and horns—the earth trembling under their tramp, and the air filled with a prolonged and portentous murmur, presented to the view of the traveller a really appalling spectacle.

The bellowing of a large herd is sometimes heard at a distance of two miles!

Of course the frosts and snows coming down from the Arctic regions in winter bind up arid cover large tracts of land which in summer are clothed with luxuriant herbage. The grazing animals, accordingly, move northward to great distances as the season changes.

Miner Kilbourne Kellogg. Buffalo, Gulf of Nicomedia. Pencil on paper, n.d., Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

The country being intersected by rivers and streams in every part, would seem to interpose great difficulties in the way of the passage of the animals to and fro. The herd, on approaching a river, if it is fordable, descend the bank in a massive column, and wade or swim across. If the descent of the bank is not already gradual, it soon becomes so by the trampling of so many heavy hoofs, the most daring, of course, impelled partly by their courage, and partly by the pressure from behind, going down first and breaking the way.

If there are calves in the herd, and the bank remains so steep that they dare not go down, their mothers always wait with them upon the margin in great apparent distress, and make every effort to encourage them to go down. Sometimes it is said that the calves contrive to get upon the backs of the cows, and are conveyed in that way across the stream.

It not unfrequently happens that the landing proves not to be good when the animals arrive on the further side, so that instead of a hard beach by which to ascend to the level of the plain, they find themselves sinking into quicksands or mire. The scene which is witnessed in a case like this, presents sometimes, it is said, an aspect almost awful. The older and stronger beasts are perhaps able, after long-continued and desperate struggles, in which they trample down and climb over the others in their excitement and terror, to regain their footing and clamber up the bank; but often many are unable to extricate themselves, and perish miserably—their bodies being borne away by the current down the stream.

The case is still worse sometimes when the river is frozen, and the herd is consequently compelled to cross upon the ice. The animals have no means of judging of the strength of the ice except by taking the opinion of the leaders, who go down cautiously, and step in a timid, hesitating manner upon the margin of it, and then if it gives no sign of weakness under the weight of a single tread, they conclude it to be strong, and proceed. But it may be strong enough to bear one, while far too weak to sustain the weight of a hundred.

Still the whole herd follow on, and perhaps when the head of the column has advanced toward the middle of the stream, some cracking sound, or other token of weakness, gives the alarm. The leaders stop, the others press on, the ice becomes immensely overloaded, and presently goes down with a great crash, carrying hundreds into the water. Then ensues a scene of struggling, and commotion, and terror impossible to describe. Animals of every age and size are writhing and plunging in the water, vainly trying to climb up upon cakes of ice, or to force their way through the floating fragments to the shore—bellowing all the time with terror. Some at last gain the bank, but others are swept away in great numbers beneath the unbroken ice below, and drowned.

In making their journeys the buffalos move in columns, those behind keeping in the track of those before, and in this way they make trails which soon become well worn; and being pretty wide, on account of the columns being formed with several animals abreast, they look like wagon roads. These roads extend, in some places, for hundreds of miles across the country. When they are once made, they are followed year after year by successive herds. In this respect the habits of the buffalo correspond with those of domestic cows in the pastures of New England, who lay out paths on the hillsides and in the woods, and continue to use them, when they are once worn, for many years.

The buffalo, as may readily be supposed, was a great resource to the Indians. His flesh furnished him with an abundant supply of excellent food. His skin served for cloth, and, when cut into thongs, for cords. His horns were made into vessels and implements of various kinds. Some tribes also made boats of his hide by stretching it, when green, over a frame made of a suitable form for the purpose intended. This, of course, was a very clumsy sort of craft, but being made without any seam, was perfectly water-tight and very serviceable.

George Catlin. Dying Buffalo—no. 17. Lithograph, n.d., Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

The buffalo has many enemies, but the greatest of all is civilized man. So long as the vast herds were attacked only by bears, packs of wolves, and Indians armed simply with spears and arrows, they were able to hold their ground. The bulls of the herd, with their prodigious strength, and the formidable weapons with which nature has provided them in their horns, would maintain terrible conflicts with any of these foes, and would often come off victorious from the fight. But when the white man came, mounted upon a horse and armed with a rifle, no choice was left to him but to abandon the field; and in proportion as the tide of emigration moves toward the west, the buffalo retires before it; and will probably in time entirely disappear.

The frontiers, however, of his old dominion are drawn in very slowly and reluctantly, so that even the steamboat sometimes overtakes him. Cases have occurred in which steamboats, in feeling their way up some of the western branches of the Mississippi and Missouri, have come upon a herd of buffalos crossing the stream, and the poor beasts, in the midst of their amazement at the spectacle, have been shot by the rifles of the passengers from the deck.

There is one case mentioned in which a steamboat passed so near a buffalo swimming in the water that a passenger on board, who had learned the use of the lasso in South America, threw a rope, with a slip noose at the end, through the air and caught him by the horns. The crew then pulled the poor beast alongside of the steamer, and, getting slings under him, hoisted him on board and butchered him for his beef.

George Catlin. Buffalo Bulls in a Wallow. Oil on canvas, c. 1837-39, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick
Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Abbott, JAcob. “American Animals.” Youth’s companion 35, No. 24 (June 1861): 100.
Contexts

Youth’s Companion excerpted this selection from Jacob Abbott’s longer work, American History Volume I: Aboriginal America, published in 1860 as an illustrated book with ten chapters: “Types of Life in America,” “Face of the Country,” “Remarkable Plants,” “Remarkable Animals,” “The Indian Races,” “The Indian Family,” “Mechanic Arts,” “Indian Legends and Tales,” “Constitution and Character of the Indian Mind,” and “The Coming of the Europeans.” Abbott intended his series to be a complete overview of American history that began with the geography, flora and fauna, and indigenous people as indicative of the “earliest periods” of the country. Several more volumes followed, titled Discovery of America, The Southern Colonies, The Northern Colonies, Wars of the Colonies, Revolt of the Colonies, War of the Revolution, and Washington.

Abbott’s introduction reads:

“IT is the design of this work to narrate, in a clear, simple, and intelligible manner, the leading events connected with the history of our country, from the earliest periods, down, as nearly as practicable, to the present time. The several volumes will be illustrated with all necessary maps and with numerous engravings, and the work is intended to comprise, in a distinct and connected narrative, all that it is essential for the general reader to understand in respect to the subject of it, while for those who have time for more extended studies, it may serve as an introduction to other and more copious sources of information.

The author hopes also that the work may be found useful to the young, in awakening in their minds an interest in the history of their country, and a desire for further instruction in respect to it. While it is doubtless true that such a subject can be really grasped only by minds in some degree mature, still the author believes that many young persons, especially such as are intelligent and thoughtful in disposition and character, may derive both entertainment and instruction from a perusal of these pages.”

Mistakenly called buffalo, the American Bison once roamed across North America in large numbers. Though we may never know how many bison were alive at their peak, experts believe they once numbered between 30 and 75 million. By 1800, the herds east of the Mississippi were killed off. By 1838, many herds in the northern and southern portions of the Great Plains were destroyed. There were only 300 wild bison by the turn of the 20th century. In 1894, Congress passed a law making it illegal to hunt bison in Yellowstone National Park. Twenty-one bison were purchased in 1902 to rebuild the Yellowstone herd. In 2019, the Yellowstone herd numbered nearly 5,000, and there were nearly 40,000 bison across North America.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary

aggregation: A whole composed of many individuals; a mass formed by the union of distinct particles; a gathering, assemblage, collection.

gregarious: Of classes or species of animals: Living in flocks or communities, given to association with others of the same species.

herbage: Herbs collectively; herbaceous growth or vegetation; usually applied to grass and other low-growing plants covering a large extent of ground, esp. as used for pasture.

prodigious: That causes wonder or amazement; marvelous, astonishing. Also in an unfavorable sense: appalling.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

The National Park Service has information on bison conservation, as does Bison Range Restoration, which is in the process of transitioning oversight of the National Bison Range from U.S. Fish and Wildlife to resource managers from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CKST). The National Wildlife Federation is also involved in ongoing efforts to return bison to tribal lands.

There are several works of fiction regarding the Native American connection to the American Bison:

  • Buffalo Dreams by Kim Doner links the traditional connection to buffalo to the present day.
  • Buffalo Song by Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) is a buffalo history: how they came to be, why they were almost killed off, and how Great Plains Natives still see them as sacred.

Categories
1860s Essay

American Animals Part I: The Beaver

American Animals Part I: The Beaver

By Jacob Abbott
Annotations by Josh Benjamin
Original engraving by H.W. Herrick from American History Volume I: Aboriginal America by Jacob Abbott.

We propose to give a short series of articles upon the habits of some of the animals found in America, as the buffalo, the eagle, the alligator, &c. These sketches are taken from Abbott’s “Aboriginal America.” We give this week

THE BEAVER.

One of the most remarkable of the animals found in America is the beaver. Species nearly resembling the American beaver formerly existed in the old world, but they have long been nearly or quite extinct. The class of animals to which the beaver belongs is common all over the world, namely, the class of Rodentia, which means gnawing animals. The beaver is the greatest gnawer of them all.

His cutting teeth are broad and flat, and are brought to so sharp and hard an edge that the Indians were accustomed to set them in handles and use them for cutting instruments before they obtained iron and steel from the Europeans. It is said that by means of these teeth the beavers can cut off a stem in the woods as big as a walking stick at a single bite. By more continued efforts they can fell trees of very considerable size, not greater, however, than eight or ten inches in diameter, though one trapper in the service of a fur company says he has seen trunks eighteen inches in diameter cut through by them.

The beaver has acquired a very extensive fame among mankind, the foundation of which is two-fold. First, the exceeding softness and richness of his fur, which made his skin very valuable as clothing to the native tribes before Europeans came to the country, and which have since caused it to be still more highly valued by civilized nations all over the world; and secondly, his distinguished reputation as a builder. Both these characters of the animal result from the same cause, namely this, that he is intended to live in a very cold climate, that is, a climate which is very cold for half the year, and to get his living from the roots of plants growing under water, which, during the cold season, is covered with ice from one to three feet thick. To meet these exigencies he is provided with an extremely thick and soft fur to protect him in his winter excursions upon the land, and with certain very remarkable building instincts, by which he is enabled at all times, however cold the weather and however thick the ice, to procure access to the water.

The first object of the beaver in his engineering operations, is to keep the water deep in the stream that he inhabits, in order to prevent its freezing to the bottom. To effect this he forms a company, and the whole band proceed to build a dam. They gnaw down trees and bushes and drag them into the stream at the place which they have chosen for the dam, and pack them together in a close and impenetrable mass ten or twelve feet wide at the bottom, and diminishing gradually to the top. As they proceed they fill up all the interstices of the work with stones, gravel, mud, turf, roots, and everything else that they can bring. Of course a great deal of their work is washed away by the current while they are building, but by means of their indomitable perseverance, they finally succeed, and a massive and permanent obstruction to the stream is created. In process of time the trunks and stems of trees which they have introduced into their work decay, and the whole settles and consolidates into a permanent bank, which endures sometimes for centuries. Of course, so long as the pond is occupied the dam needs constant watching and frequent repairs, but this work the company always attend to in the most prompt and systematic manner.

In laying the materials of which the dam is composed the beavers go continually to and fro over their work, trampling down the soft substances with their paws, and patting them with their broad tails. This patting motion of their tails, which they make instinctively when they walk about upon the ground, gave rise to the story that the beaver uses his tail as a trowel. This, though it is not literally and exactly true, is, after all, not far from the truth, for the effect of the patting is analogous to that produced by the trowel of the mason in laying stones in mortar.

John James Audubon. American Beaver. Illustration, 1844, Digital Public Library of America.

Besides the dam, the beaver builds what may be called houses on the bank, where he can live during the winter sheltered from the cold, and protected from the wolves and similar wild animals that would otherwise prey upon him. These houses are built of logs of wood formed from the trunks of trees, which the beavers gnaw down in the adjoining forests, and then cut to proper lengths for their purpose. They dig in the ground to get good foundations, arid then build up walls four or five feet high, much in the same way as they construct the dams. They then lay other trunks of trees across from one wall to the other, and cover the roof thus formed with stones, bushes, moss, mud, and other similar materials, and smooth the whole over at last with their paws and their tail, so as to make a sort of mound of their work, with a hollow in the centre. The whole structure is so solid, and all its parts so closely compacted together, that the wolverines and wild cats cannot get in. It is very difficult even for men to break through such a solid mass.

From these habitations subterranean passages run in various directions — some opening into the pond under the ice, so as to afford the inhabitants free access and egress to the water at all times, and others lead to holes and caverns which the animals make as places of retreat from their enemies when they are alarmed, and perhaps for warmth in times of extreme cold.

It is a very curious circumstance that the beavers do all their work in the night, and thus no person can watch them at their operations except at a great disadvantage. In the day time they keep very quiet. Their motive, probably, in thus arranging their time, as far as action prompted by such animal instincts may be said to have a motive, is doubtless to avoid attracting the attention of their enemies.

The beavers were once very numerous throughout the whole northern portion of the territory now occupied by the United States. In all the settled parts of the country, however, they have nearly or entirely disappeared; and so valuable are their skins, and so closely do the hunters and trappers follow up the work of taking them, that it will not be many years, if the present state of things continues, before the whole race will be completely exterminated.

Abbott, jacob. “American Animals.” Youth’s companion 35, no. 22 (June 1861): 92.
Contexts

Youth’s Companion excerpted this selection from Jacob Abbott’s longer work, American History Volume I: Aboriginal America, published in 1860 as an illustrated book with ten chapters: “Types of Life in America,” “Face of the Country,” “Remarkable Plants,” “Remarkable Animals,” “The Indian Races,” “The Indian Family,” “Mechanic Arts,” “Indian Legends and Tales,” “Constitution and Character of the Indian Mind,” and “The Coming of the Europeans.” Abbott intended his series to be a complete overview of American history that began with the geography, flora and fauna, and indigenous people as indicative of the “earliest periods” of the country. Several more volumes followed, titled Discovery of America, The Southern Colonies, The Northern Colonies, Wars of the Colonies, Revolt of the Colonies, War of the Revolution, and Washington.

Abbott’s introduction reads:

“IT is the design of this work to narrate, in a clear, simple, and intelligible manner, the leading events connected with the history of our country, from the earliest periods, down, as nearly as practicable, to the present time. The several volumes will be illustrated with all necessary maps and with numerous engravings, and the work is intended to comprise, in a distinct and connected narrative, all that it is essential for the general reader to understand in respect to the subject of it, while for those who have time for more extended studies, it may serve as an introduction to other and more copious sources of information.

The author hopes also that the work may be found useful to the young, in awakening in their minds an interest in the history of their country, and a desire for further instruction in respect to it. While it is doubtless true that such a subject can be really grasped only by minds in some degree mature, still the author believes that many young persons, especially such as are intelligent and thoughtful in disposition and character, may derive both entertainment and instruction from a perusal of these pages.”

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

exigency: What is needed or required; a thing wanted or demanded; a requirement, a necessity.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Once declining in number due to the fur trade, American beavers are gaining attention for their effects on the environments in which they live and what we can learn from them about ecosystem management.

Categories
1860s 1880s Poem

Three Bugs

Painting of insects and flowers, 17th century. Jan van Kessel the Elder. Public domain.

Three Bugs

By Alice Cary
Annotations by Karen L. Kilcup
Painting of insects and flowers, 17th century, Jan van Kessel the Elder. Public domain.
Insects and flowers by Jan van Kessel the Elder, 17th century. Public domain.
 Three little bugs in a basket,
 And hardly room for two!
 And one was yellow, and one was black,
 And one like me, or you.[1]
 The space was small, no doubt, for all;
 But what should three bugs do?
  
 Three little bugs in a basket,
 And hardly crumbs for two;
 And all were selfish in their hearts,
 The same as I or you;
 So the strong ones said, “We will eat the bread,
 And that is what we’ll do.”
  
 Three little bugs in a basket,
 And the beds but two would hold;
 So they all three fell to quarreling—
 And two of the bugs got under the rugs,
 And one was out in the cold!
  
 So he that was left in the basket,
 Without a crumb to chew,
 Or a thread to wrap himself withal,
 When the wind across him blew,
 Pulled one of the rugs from one of the bugs,
 And so the quarrel grew!
  
 And so there was war in the basket,
 Ah, pity, ’tis true, ’tis true!
 But he that was frozen and starved at last,
 A strength from his weakness drew,
 And pulled the rugs from both of the bugs,
 And killed and ate them, too!
  
 Now, when bugs live in a basket,
 Though more than it well can hold,
 It seems to me they had better agree—
 The white, and the black, and the gold—
 And share what comes of the beds and the crumbs, 
 And leave no bug in the cold!
Cary, Alice. “Three Bugs.” First published in The Children’s Hour: A Magazine for the Little Ones (September 1868): 101-2. This version from The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), 168-69.

[1] Cary’s bug-narrator assumes that both she and her readers are white.

Contexts

Cary published her poem during a troubling period in the United States. “Three Bugs” first appeared only three years after the Civil War ended, but it reappeared into at least the 1920s. In 1922, Course of Study for United States Indian Schools recommended it as an appropriate text for first-graders. Teacher training schools in the 1910s and 1920s also recommended it as a reading for various primary grades. A 1925 book for Dallas Public Schools includes it as a recitation piece about “peace among neighbors.” What’s remarkable here is how Cary artfully conveys to both children and adults the grim consequences of failing to share resources. The poem indirectly argues for environmental justice.

Resources for Further Study

“Environmental Justice / Environmental Racism.” Energy Justice Network. This site has numerous links to sources on EJ, climate justice, environmental racism and classism, and EJ law and policy.

Kilcup, Karen L. Stronger, Truer, Bolder: American Children’s Writing, Nature, and the Environment. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2021.

Skelton, Renee, and Vernice Miller. “The Environmental Justice Movement.” NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). 17 March 2016.

Pedagogy

“Analyzing Environmental Justice.” Learning for Justice. Grade levels 6-8, 9-12.  This site includes questions, activities, vocabulary, and much more.

“Social Justice, Environmental Justice, and the Elementary Child.” Montessori Services. This site offers general advice for lessons, with a focus on “hope and empowerment.”

“Environmental Justice Toolkit.” With project ideas for grades K-12, this site contains numerous concrete examples and provides links to some major community resources.

Contemporary Connections

Numerous contemporary organizations—local, regional, and national—are confronting the challenges of achieving environmental justice. For example, North Carolina, the home state for The Envious Lobster and the birthplace of the U.S. environmental justice movement, has the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, the North Carolina Conservation Network, and the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective, to name only a few. The issues these organizations address range from water contamination by coal ash and factory farming to food deserts and forest destruction.

Categories
1860s

Miss Katy-did and Miss Cricket

Miss Katy-did and Miss Cricket

By Harriet Beecher Stowe
Annotations by karen kilcup
Original Queer Little People illustration of insects at a party.
By H.L. Stephens, Harry Fenn, and A.R. Waud. Public domain.

Miss Katy-did sat on the branch of a flowering Azalia, in her best suit of fine green and silver, with wings of point-lace from Mother Nature’s finest web. [1]

Miss Katy was in the very highest possible spirits, because her gallant cousin, Colonel Katy-did, had looked in to make her a morning visit. It was a fine morning, too, which goes for as much among the Katy-dids as among men and women. It was, in fact, a morning that Miss Katy thought must have been made on purpose for her to enjoy herself in. There had been a patter of rain the night before, which had kept the leaves awake talking to each other till nearly morning; but by dawn the small winds had blown brisk little puffs, and whisked the heavens clear and bright with their tiny wings, as you have seen Susan clear away the cobwebs in your mamma’s parlor; and so now there were only left a thousand blinking, burning water-drops, hanging like convex mirrors [2] at the end of each leaf, and Miss Katy admired herself in each one.

“Certainly I am a pretty creature,” she said to herself; and when the gallant Colonel said something about being dazzled by her beauty, she only tossed her head and took it as quite a matter of course.

“The fact is, my dear Colonel,” she said, “I am thinking of giving a party, and you must help me to make out the lists.”

“My dear, you make me the happiest of Katy-dids.”

Now,” said Miss Katy-did, drawing an azalia-leaf towards her, “let us see–whom shall we have? The Fireflies, of course; everybody wants them, they are so brilliant,–a little unsteady, to be sure, but quite in the higher circles.”[3]

“Yes, we must have the Fireflies,” echoed the Colonel.

“Well, then,–and the Butterflies and the Moths. Now, there’s a trouble. There’s such an everlasting tribe of those Moths; and if you invite dull people they’re always sure all to come, every one of them. Still, if you have the Butterflies, you can’t leave out the Moths.” [4]

“Old Mrs. Moth has been laid up lately with a gastric fever, and that may keep two or three of the Misses Moth at home,” said the Colonel.

“What ever could give the old lady such a turn?” said Miss Katy. “I thought she never was sick.”

“I suspect it’s high living. I understand she and her family ate up a whole ermine cape last month, and it disagreed with them.”

“For my part, I can’t conceive how the Moths can live as they do,” said Miss Katy with a face of disgust. Why, I could no more eat worsted and fur, as they do—-.”

“That is quite evident from the fairy-like delicacy of your appearance,” said the Colonel. “One can see that nothing so gross and material has ever entered into your system.”

Photo of Katydid, Courtesy U of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2013
Katydid. Courtesy the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2013.

“I’m sure,” said Miss Katy, “mamma says she doesn’t know what does keep me alive; half a dewdrop and a little bit of the nicest part of a rose-leaf, I assure you, often last me for a day. But we are forgetting our list. Let’s see,–the Fireflies, Butterflies, Moths. The Bees must come, I suppose.”

“The Bees are a worthy family,” said the Colonel.

“Worthy enough, but dreadfully hum-drum,” said Miss Katy. “They never talk about anything but honey and housekeeping; still, they are a class of people one cannot neglect.”

“Well, then, there are the Bumble-Bees.” [3]

“Oh, I doat on them! General Bumble is one of the most dashing, brilliant fellows of the day.”

“I think he is shockingly corpulent,” said Colonel Katy-did, not at all pleased to hear him praised;–“don’t you?”

“I don’t know but he is a little stout,” said Miss Katy; “but so distinguished and elegant in his manners,–something quite martial and breezy about him.”

“Well, if you invite the Bumble-Bees, you must have the Hornets.” [4]

“Those spiteful Hornets,–I detest them!”

“Nevertheless, dear Miss Katy, one does not like to offend the Hornets.”

“No, one can’t. There are those five Misses Hornet,–dreadful old maids!–as full of spite as they can live. You may be sure they will every one come, and be looking about to make spiteful remarks. Put down the Hornets, though.”

“How about the Mosquitos?” said the Colonel.

“Those horrid Mosquitos,–they are dreadfully plebeian! Can’t one cut them?” [6]

“Well, dear Miss Katy,” said the Colonel, “if you ask my candid opinion as a friend, I should say not. There’s young Mosquito, who graduated last year, has gone into literature, and is connected with some of our leading papers, and they say he carries the sharpest pen of all the writers. It won’t do to offend him.”

“And so I suppose we must have his old aunts, and all six of his sisters, and all his dreadfully common relations.”

“It is a pity,” said the Colonel, “but one must pay one’s tax to society.”

Joris Hoefnagel, A Cricket Surrounded by Insects, c.1575/1580.
Courtesy National Gallery of Art.

Just at this moment the conference was interrupted by a visitor, Miss Keziah Cricket, who came in with her work-bag on her arm to ask a subscription for a poor family of Ants who had just had their house hoed up in clearing the garden-walks.

“How stupid of them!” said Katy, “not to know any better than to put their house in the garden-walk; that’s just like those Ants!”[7]

“Well, they are in great trouble; all their stores destroyed, and their father killed,–quite cut in two by a hoe.”

“How very shocking! I don’t like to hear such disagreeable things,–it affects my nerves terribly. Well, I’m sure I haven’t anything to give. Mamma said yesterday she was sure she did n’t know how our bills were to be paid,–and there’s my green satin with point-lace yet to come home.” And Miss Katy-did shrugged her shoulders and affected to be very busy with Colonel Katy-did, in just the way that young ladies sometimes do when they wish to signify to visitors that they had better leave.

Little Miss Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped briskly off, without giving herself even time to be offended. “Poor extravagant little thing!” she said to herself, “it was hardly worth while to ask her.”

Black and white print of insects. Courtesy New York Public Library.
Insects print. Courtesy New York Public Library.

Pray, shall you invite the Crickets?” said Colonel Katy-did. [8]

“Who? I? Why, Colonel, what a question! Invite the Crickets? Of what can you be thinking?”

“And shall you not ask the Locusts, or the Grasshoppers?”

“Certainly. The Locusts, of course,–a very old and distinguished family; and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be asked. But we must draw a line somewhere,–and the Crickets! why, it’s shocking even to think of!”

“I thought they were nice, respectable people.”

“O, perfectly nice and respectable,–very good people, in fact, so far as that goes. But then you must see the difficulty.”

“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”

“Why, their color, to be sure. Don’t you see?”

“Oh!” said the Colonel. “That’s it, is it? Excuse me, but I have been living in France, where these distinctions are wholly unknown, and I have not yet got myself in the train of fashionable ideas here.” [9]

“Well, then, let me teach you,” said Miss Katy. “You know we republicans go for no distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we found our rank upon color, because that is clearly a thing that none has any hand in but our Maker. You see?”

“Yes; but who decides what color shall be the reigning color”?

Butterflies and Other Insects #224. Jan van Kessel the elder (1626-1670).
Public domain.

“I’m surprised to hear the question! The only true color–the only proper one–is our color, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is the precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction. But then we are liberal;–we associate with the Moths, who are gray; with the Butterflies, who are blue-and-gold-colored; with the Grasshoppers, yellow and brown;–and society would become dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered that the Crickets are black as jet. The fact is, that a class to be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the Crickets were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as everybody knows, they are often a great deal cleverer than we are. They have a vast talent for music and dancing; they are very quick at learning, and would be getting to the very top of the ladder if we once allowed them to climb. But their being black is a convenience,–because, as long as we are green and they black, we have a superiority that can never be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”

“O yes, I see exactly,” said the Colonel.

“Now that Keziah Cricket, who just came in here, is quite a musician, and her old father plays the violin beautifully;–by the way, we might engage him for our orchestra.”

And so Miss Katy’s ball came off, and the performers kept it up from sun-down till daybreak, so that it seemed as if every leaf in the forest were alive. The Katy-dids, and the Mosquitos, and the Locusts, and a full orchestra of Crickets made the air perfectly vibrate, insomuch that old Parson Too-Whit, who was preaching a Thursday evening lecture to a very small audience, announced to his hearers that he should certainly write a discourse against dancing for the next weekly occasion. [10]

The good Doctor was even with his word in the matter, and gave out some very sonorous discourses, [11] without in the least stopping the round of gayeties kept up by these dissipated Katy-dids, which ran on, night after night, till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic, which occurred somewhere about the first of September. [12]

Nineteenth-century engraving of Jack Frost as Union army general
Nineteenth-century image of Jack Frost as a Union Army Civil War general.
Public domain.

Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad shower of last year’s leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however, avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a nice little cottage that had been built in the wood that summer. [13]

There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when the storm howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the Crickets on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to papa as he came in from the snowy path, or mamma as she sat at her work-basket. [14]

“Cheep, cheep, cheep!” little Freddy would say. “Mamma, who is it say ‘cheep’?”

“Dear Freddy, it’s our own dear little cricket, who loves us and comes to sing to us when the snow is on the ground.”

So when poor Miss Katy-did’s satin and lace were all swept away, the warm home-talents of the Crickets made for them a welcome refuge.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Miss Katy-Did and Miss Cricket.” First published in Our Young Folks 2, no. 5 (May 1866): 286-93.  Collected in Stowe’s single-author volume Queer Little People (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869), 39-47.

[1] Katydid: A type of large green American grasshopper. Azalia: Stowe references the flowering azalea, a type of rhododendron. Point-lace: a very fine lace made using only a needle and thread (OED).

[2] Convex Mirror: A mirror that curves “outward like the exterior of a sphere.”

[3] Fireflies blink intermittently for courtship purposes and can fly very high.

[4] Butterflies and moths belong to the same insect family; clothes moths’ larvae feed on wool, fur, and feathers.

[5] Bees are “champion pollinators,” and according to the U.S. Forest Service, there are “over 4000 species of native bees.” Bumblebees are “common native bees and important pollinators in most areas of North America.” Hornets, a type of stinging wasp, are also important pollinators.

[6] Stowe envisages mosquitos as society newspaper critics; she also jokes about their numerousness. Plebeian: “one of the common people”; ordinary, with the implication of crudeness.

[7] Katy’s visitor is named after the biblical Kezia, Job’s second daughter. She is associated with beauty and (indirectly) equality, because Job gave his daughters an inheritance equal to that which he gave his sons.

Ants are “social insects that are great lovers of nectar”–like many that Stowe mentions, they are important pollinators. They often gather around gardens and paths.

[8] Stowe probably references the black field cricket, an American species, rather than the house cricket, which was introduced from Europe. The reference below to crickets’ musical ability mirrors the “musical ability of the male.”

[9] France was known for its relative openness to racial difference. The country had abolished slavery in 1794, the earliest nation to do so, but Napoleon reinstated that horror in France’s colonies. The French antislavery movement finally succeeded in 1848. In “Collective Degradation,” historian Geroge M. Frederickson comments that “Post-1848 France did not have a domestic color line for the simple reason that no significant black population had been allowed to develop there” (11). See also Krishan Kumar, “English and French National Identity,” esp. 422.

[10] Opposition to dancing in the U.S. began with the Puritans, who believed it promoted sinfulness; in the nineteenth century, some traditional ministers continued condemning the practice.

[11] Sonorous: loud and impressive. Discourse: a formal talk; here, suggesting a sermon.

[12] Jack Frost: the personification of winter, which Stowe signifies by the first date of a hard frost in her native New England. The figure, also associated with Old Man Winter, appeared widely in American literature and popular media.

[13] Stowe is probably referencing Charles Dickens’s novella, A Cricket on the Hearth, which he published for Christmas 1845. This love story features a cricket that protects the family. Contemporary companies sell brass hearth crickets as emblems of good fortune.

[14] Here the story’s focus changes from the insects to the human family that live with the Cricket family; “little Freddy” is the son.

Contexts

Many of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s contemporaries credited her most famous work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), with propelling the abolitionist movement and helping end slavery. That bestselling novel, which sold thousands of copies on its first day and more than 300,000 during its first year in print, has long been controversial, particularly among African Americans, for its racist depiction of its hero. In 1949, James Baldwin published an essay titled “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” attacking the book, and in 2016, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison critiqued how the book romanticized and sanitized slavery. Scholars have shown how Uncle Tom’s Cabin retold the real-life story of Josiah Henson, a formerly enslaved African American who escaped to Canada and lived to the age of 93. More recent scholars such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. have urged that we rethink our views on the novel.

Like most nineteenth-century American writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stowe wrote for children; this writing is unfamiliar to most readers. The appearance of “Miss Katy-did and Miss Cricket” in Our Young Folks reveals her importance to American parents and children. Published only a year after the Civil War had ended, the story uses insects to teach both natural history and moral values. Stowe anthropomorphizes the insects, attributing to them characteristics that mirror how humans see them: thus, the Mosquitos are “sharp,” the Moths eat furs and wool; the Bees are “corpulent,” and the Hornets are “spiteful.” Miss Katy-did’s conversation with Colonel Katy-did exposes how arbitrary American social and racial hierarchies were. Here the author sharply criticizes those who consider themselves “republicans” and yet are more interested in fashion and associating with the “right” members of society than in fostering an egalitarian ethos. Those people included Northern abolitionists. Queer Little People, the book in which Stowe collected “Miss-Katy-did,” contains several stories that focus on animal welfare, including “Aunt Esther’s Rules.”

Stowe’s contemporaries eagerly shared information about insects—pests, pollinators, and beneficial insects generally. Bees were especially important, and they figured regularly in nineteenth-century American children’s literature.

Resources for Further Study
  • On Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

Brock, Jared. “The Story of Josiah Henson, the Real Inspiration for ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Smithsonian, May 16, 2018.

Brown, Lois. “African American Responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. Stephen Railton and the University of Virginia.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. “‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the Art of Persuasion: How Harriet Beecher Stowe Helped Precipitate the Civil War.” New Yorker, June 6, 2011.

Henson, Josiah. The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Boston: Arthur D. Phelps, 1849. Documenting the American South. UNC-Chapel Hill, 2001.

Jay, Gregory S. Introduction. White Writers, Race Matters: Fictions of Racial Liberalism from Stowe to Stockett. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Morrison, Toni. “Romancing Slavery.” In The Origin of Others (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. Chapter 1.

Radsken, Jill. “Slavery’s Chilling Shadow.” The Harvard Gazette, March 3, 2016.

Thompson, Cheryl. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site and Creolization: The Material and Visual Culture of Archival Memory.” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 12, no. 3 (June 2019): 304-19.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Reconsidered: A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Hollis Robbins, and Margo Jefferson, Moderated by Thelma Golden. New York Public Library, November 29, 2006. Transcript. Audio.

“Why African Americans Loathe ‘Uncle Tom.’” In Character, NPR, July 30, 2008.

Winks, Robin. “The Making of a Fugitive Slave Narrative: Josiah Henson and Uncle Tom: A Case Study.” In The Slave’s Narrative, ed. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 112-46. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

  • On Stowe and children’s writing:

Fielder, Brigitte Nicole. “Animal Humanism: Race, Species, and Affective Kinship in Nineteenth-Century Abolitionism.” American Quarterly 65, no. 3 (September 2013): 487-514.

Ginsberg, Lesley. “ ‘I Am Your Slave for Love’: Race, Sentimentality, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Fiction for Children.” In Enterprising Youth: Social Values and Acculturation in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature, ed. Monika Elbert, 97-113. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Kilcup, Karen L. Stronger, Truer, Bolder: American Children’s Writing, Nature, and the Environment. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021. Chapter 3.Uncle Tom as Children’s Book. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. Stephen Railton and the University of Virginia.

Pedagogy

“Teacher Resources,” Celebrating Wildflowers, U.S. Forest Service [this page links to information on pollinators]

Biography of Stowe from the National Women’s History Museum

Biography of Stowe from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut (lots of information on this site!)

Biography of Stowe from the University of Pennsylvania digital library

“Connect the Past to the Present.” Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Hartford, Connecticut.

“Harriet Beecher Stowe | Author and Abolitionist.” PBS Learning Media, NHPBS. [Grades 3-7, 13+. Lesson Plan.]

“Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin | The Abolitionists.” PBS Learning Media, NHPBS. [Grades 8-12. Video]

Stowe’s Ohio home and the Underground Railroad

Stowe’s Maine home and Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Stowe’s publications in the Atlantic Monthly (links), including one on Sojourner Truth

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” American Experience. PBS, January 8, 2013.

Perrin, Dr. Tom. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Popular Culture: Web Sites.” Houghton Memorial Library, Huntingdon College, 2012.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Told to Children. Kid Zone! National Center on Improving Literacy.

Contemporary Connections

Holly L. Derr comments that “Orange Is the New Black”s Crazy Eyes and Miley Cyrus’s VMA Performance recall the Harriet Beecher Stowe classic, even if their creators didn’t intend to.”

Derr, Holly L. “The Pervading Influence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Pop Culture.” The Atlantic, September 4, 2013.

Eaton, Dr. Alan T. “Beneficial Insects in New Hampshire Farms & Gardens.” UNH Cooperative Extension Service, April 2017.

“The Legend of the Hearth Cricket.” Victorian History. Victorian Trading Co. August 24, 2014.

Categories
1860s Poem

The Sandpiper

(Artist) James McNeill Whistler

The Sandpiper

By Celia Thaxter
Annotations by Celia Hawley
James McNeill Whistler. The Angry Sea. Oil on wood panel, c. 1883-84, National
Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C.
Across the lonely beach we flit,
  One little sandpiper and I,
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
  The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
  The wild wind raves, the tide rides high,
As up and down the beach we flit,
  One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds
  Scud, black and swift, across the sky:
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
  Stand out the white light-houses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
  I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,
  One little sandpiper and I.
John James Audubon. Plate 344: Long-legged Sandpiper. Audubon.org.
I watch him as he skims along,
  Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,
  Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong,
  He scans me with a fearless eye;
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
  The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where will you be tonight,
  When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My drift-wood fire will burn so bright!
  To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth 
  The tempest rushes through the sky;
For are we not God's children both,
  Thou, little sandpiper, and I?
Childe Hassam. The South Ledges, Appledore. Oil on canvas, 1913, Smithsonian
American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Thaxter, celia.”The SAndpiper.” Our Young Folks: An Illustrated magazine for boys and girls 1, No. 2 (February 1865): 84-85.
Contexts

The Shoals Marine Laboratory has a brief biography of Celia Thaxter, who lived on the New England coast, where she kept an extensive garden that Shoals Marine Lab founder Dr. John M. Kingsbury reconstructed. The final image is by Childe Hassam, who was a close friend of Thaxter.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

close-reefed: To reef closely, to take in all the reefs of (a sail or ship). [reef: A section of a sail, frequently each of three or four bands or strips, which can be taken in or rolled up to reduce the area exposed to the wind.]

scud: To run or move briskly or hurriedly; To sail or move swiftly on the water. Now chiefly (and in technical nautical use exclusively), to run before a gale with little or no sail; Of clouds, foam, etc.: To be driven by the wind.

stanch (staunch): Of a person: Standing firm and true to one’s principles or purpose, not to be turned aside, determined.

wroth: Stirred to wrath; moved or exasperated to ire or indignation; very angry or indignant; wrathful, incensed, irate.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections
Categories
1860s Short Story

My Friend Tippoo

My Friend Tippoo

By P. W.
Annotations by Jessica Abell
Image from Youths Casket and Playmate. 1860.

Daily experience teaches us that no reputation is at once so precarious and so mean as that of a bully. It may be all fine among a certain class of boys, for instance, to be able to “whip” any one else of your size. But just as soon as a stouter lad turns up, who is able to whip you,[1] why you become a nobody at once.

Now a good-hearted lad, even if he happen to be a young Sampson,[2] will not fight, under any circumstances, if he can possibly avoid it; and then only to punish the wrong and sustain the right, without the least desire to be known as a fighter.

Boys often make a great mistake in putting a companion down as cowardly, simply because he is too much of a man to fight, or because he give in to a smaller boy rather than have any difficulty. In truth the weakest, when the real hour of trial comes, are the strongest. A fable tells us that a lion, having caught a mouse in his paw, was moved by the earnest entreaties of the little fellow, to let him go without harm. A short time afterwards the mouse found his generous benefactor struggling in a huge net, in which he had become entangled. He at once set at work and gnawed off a sufficient number of meshes to allow the lion to escape; a beautiful illustration of the fact that the most insignificant creature in the world may often prove most useful to us.

I must tell you a story of two dogs, Tippoo and Boxer. They were neighbors of mine in early life, and I was personally acquainted with both animals. Tippoo, a beautiful Newfoundland dog, was my bosom friend, and I loved him. Always peaceful and harmless, he came at last to be the village pet.

Boxer, on the other hand, was a huge bull-dog, and Tippoo’s most relentless and cruel enemy, for which reason I hated him, and might sought his blood, but being of tender years I thought it possible that he might take a fancy to me, and me up at once. He was an ugly fellow, was Boxer, and vicious. I am privileged to annex his portrait, so that you will be enabled to judge for yourselves. Observe the ferocity of his bead-like eyes, and the aggressive protrusion of his gladiatorial chest. In justice to the dead, (for I am happy to anticipate the announcement of the offensive brute’s demise,) I feel bound to call your attention to a somewhat humorous expression of countenance, which has been faithfully preserved by the artist, and which I can honestly assert to be the only redeeming characteristic I remember to have noticed in the creature’s repulsive appearance.

Image from Youths Casket and Playmate. 1860.

But Tippoo, as I have said, was a very different kind of a quadruped. I believe him to have been the most perfect gentleman that ever stood on four legs, just as I believe Boxer to have been the most Consummate ruffian that ever was lifted, by the agency of hemp-cord, from any number of those locomotive support. Tippoo was nearly as tall as myself. I could just look over his glossy back when I had my arms around his neck. He wore a full suit of black and white, particularly snowy at the bosom. He was as strong as a lion, yet as as gentle as a lamb. Next to playing with me, (which I am proud to believe was his favorite pastime,) he delighted in nothing so much as the exercise of carrying in his mouth a favorite cat, attached to the household of which he was so conspicuous a member, to the bottom of a steep lawn; then releasing and running a race with her to the top. The cat was generally the winner, and always seemed to enjoy the triumph immensely. To this day I believe that Tippoo made a point of running slowly on purpose so as gallantly to concede victory to the weaker vessel!

Tippoo belonged to the country gentleman who resided opposite my father’s house. In my opinion, as well as that of a majority of my playmates, Tippoo was the greatest favorite in the village, up to the advent of Boxer, who came among us unexpectedly, on a visit to Tippoo’s master in the train of a sporting lawyer. As soon as that subversive brute, (Boxer–not the sporting lawyer,) has made his appearance, we all felt that good government would be deposed in favor of Might over Right. So we all clenched out little fists in secret, and waited for the turn of events.

Tippoo had not chance against Boxer. What is the use of a well-dressed gentleman, let him be every so strong or skilful [sic], descending from his carriage to do battle with a scavenger armed with mid and a shovel? He sedulously avoided Boxer, who, on his side, lost no opportunity for hunting out and persecuting Tippoo. In short Tippoo was losing character dreadfully. He neglected his food, kept his kennel, and was pronounced by his master a coward of the meanest kind. Did I forget my old friend’s good qualities, because he would not make a brute of himself? Not a bit of it! I loved Tippoo better than ever.

One day the masters of the two dogs stood on the lawn already alluded to, in amicable converse with my father, to whom I am indebted for the details of this instructive story. Boxer stood between his master’s legs, which, like his own, were bandy. I have a keen recollection of those legs–master’s and dog’s–and I remember that the while six were modelled [sic] upon the same pattern, which was one extremely distasteful to my feelings.

“Holloa!” said my father, “here comes Tippoo! We shall soon see how quickly he will sneak away when he discovers Boxer. Dreadful coward that big dog of yours, Matthews, to be sure.”

“Well, he used not to be so,” said Tippoo’s master, reluctantly, “but I confess that since Wilkins has been here with his Boxer, the overgrown cur has made me ashamed of him.”

“No occasion for that,” said the bull-dog’s master; “better dogs than Tip have run at the sight of my Boxer. Tippoo had best make himself scarce or my dog will murder him.”

Boxer certainly showed playful indications of a desire to attempt that experiment, by picking up his ears, and starting off at a brisk trot in the direction of Tippoo, who however, to the astonishment of the spectators, made no movement towards recovering the shelter of easily accessible kennel. On the contrary, he seemed to wait for his aggressor’s attack.

“Tippoo’s mad, clearly,” said Wilkins.

“Looks like it,” Mr. Matthews assented. “He isn’t acting like a dog his senses.”

“Getting very near the water though, for a mad dog,” observed my father.

And, in truth, to get near the water, was the main object of Tippoo, than whom a more thoroughly sane dog did not exist at the epoch of canine history. But his time had come.

There was a deep dyke running at the bottom of the lawn, fed from the reservoir of a neighboring mill, and which had been greatly swollen by recent rains. Tippoo, keeping his large full eyes carefully fixed upon his approaching foe, sidled in a coquettish, serpentine manner towards the brink of this artificial stream.

Then the bully flew at and pinned him. Tippoo crouched on the grass prostrate, submitting to the dastardly outrage without a growl.

“Call him off, Wilkins,” said Tip’s master in excited tone. “The purest Newfoundland in the country! I wouldn’t have him injured for a hundred dollars!”

“Hi! Boxer! Here, boy! Come here Boxer! good dog!” the sporting lawyer shouted, as a shower of sticks and stones were launched by the trip of spectators to enforce the command.

But Boxer would not let go, and Tip did not resist of run. He merely kept on slipping gradually toward the brink of the water, dragging the bull-dog with him by the mere inert force of his superior might.

Suddenly Tip gave a sudden spring, a splash was heard, and the triumph of Boxer was at the end. The combatants had rolled together into the swift, deep current of the dyke, and there they speedily changed places. I say “speedily, ” narrating as I do an actual fact; though I am aware that it may seem to require explanation, inasmuch as the grip of a bull-dog is supposed to be a final affair. I can only suggest that my gentlemanly friend Tippoo was from the first so completely on the alert as to prevent his antagonist from getting a sure firm hold. However that may be, Tippoo released from custody, in his turn, seized Boxer by the neck; held him under water and drowned him! The brave, sagacious water-dog, wrongly imagined to be a coward, knew his own power in his own element, and had watched his opportunity. Would that we were all as wise.

Ere this just execution had been thoroughly performed, Tippoo’s glossy hide was pretty well cut by the missiles hurled at him instead of his aggressor. But he received them all without so much as a wince, till he felt that his enemy under the water was throughly dead. Then he brought the ignoble carcass out of the stream, between his teeth; threw it on the grass with a jerk, and stood with his fore-paw resting on its flank wit a calmly defiant expression, that might clearly be translated by the words,

“Now, let this ugly rascal presume to take liberties with his betters. makethe best of him as he lies there!”

Newfoundland Dog. Childs & Inman. Hand-colored lithograph. 1830.

I know this story to be a true one. Moreover, I remember exulting over the sight of the drowned Boxer’s disfigured remains–just the least bit in the world ashamed of the feeling, perhaps, but I certainly felt it,–and doing my best to console my darling Tippoo for his unsightly wounds, by gifts of stolen refreshments, the best medicine I knew how to offer. I suppose that Tippoo, also, is dead by this time. Most of my early friends are, and it may be my turn next, as likely as not. I have finished for the present.

P.W. “My Friend Tippoo.” Youths Casket and Playmate: A Magazine for Boys and Girls, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 1860, pp. 14–17.
Inman, Childs &. Newfoundland Dog. 1830, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013651008/.

[1] original emphasis.

[2] The biblical figure of Samson is known for being incredibly strong.

Pedagogy
  • Why did the dog’s owners not step in?
    • How does this reflect what happens when people are bullied in front of others?
  • Tippoo, the Newfoundland dog, is much larger than Boxer, the bulldog. Why do you think Boxer felt the need to bully Tippoo?
Contemporary Connections

Bullying is a continued problem with children. This story is to show that bully’s may win sometimes, but often are risking quite a bit when bullying others. There is always someone stronger. For more information about stopping bullying visit stopbulling.gov.

Categories
1860s Fable

The Ant and the Grasshopper

The Ant and the Grasshopper

By Aesop
Annotations by Jessica ABell
The Ant and the Grasshopper from The Fables of Æsop With a Life of the Author. 1865.

In the winter season, a commonwealth of Ants was busily employed in the management and preservation of their corn, which they exposed to the air in heaps round about the avenues of their little country habitation. A Grasshopper, who had chanced to outlive the summer, and was ready to starve with cold and hunger, approached them with great humility, and begged that they would relieve his necessity with one grain of wheat or rye. One of the Ants asked him, how he had disposed of his time in the summer, that he had not take pains, and laid in a stock, as they had done?–“Alas, gentlemen,” says he, “I passed away the time merrily and pleasantly, in drinking, singing, and dancing, and never once thought of winter.”–“If that be the case,” replied the Ant, laughing, “all I have to say is, that they who drink, sing, and dance in the summer, must starve in winter.”

APPLICATION.

As summer is the season of the year in which the industrious and laborious husbandman gathers and lays up such fruits as may supply his necessities in winter, so youth and manhood are the times of life which we should employ and bestow in laying in such stick of all kind of necessaries as may suffice for the craving demands of helpless old age. Yet, not withstanding the truth of this, there are many of those which we call rational creatures, who live in a method quite opposite to it, and make it their business to squander away in profuse prodigality whatever they get in their younger days: as if the infirmity of age would require no supplies to support it; or, at least, would find them administered to it in some miraculous way. From this fable we learn this admirable lesson, never to lose any present opportunity of providing against the future evils and accidents of life. While health and the flower and vigor of our age remain firm and entire, let us lay them out to the best advantage, that, when the latter days take hold of us and spoil us of our strength and abilities, we may have a store moderately sufficient to subsist upon, which we laid up in the morning of our age.

Aesop. The Fables of Æsop with a Life of the Author /. Boston :, c1865., http://hdl.handle.net/2027/chi.18810389.

Contexts

“The Ant and the Grasshopper” is a well-known Aesop fable. Aesop’s fables are tales that often contain lessons to teach the reader. Similar to morals lessons that are often featured in fairy tales.

Resources for Further Study
Pedagogy
  • Lesson Plan for “The Ant and the Grasshopper” for third grade.

Categories
1860s Short Story

The Railroad

The Railroad

By Gail Hamilton [1]
Annotations by Kristina Bowers
“The Lackawanna Valley” by George Inness, c. 1856, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mrs. Huttleston Rogers. Open Access.

It was a wild story that came to Trip’s ears, and no wonder she was frightened out of what few little wits she had. For as she came around the rock a whole troop of her schoolmates sprang up to meet her, and one cried one thing, and one another, but the burden of their song seemed to be, “The railroad! the railroad! O, have you heard?”

“Yes,” said little Trip, unconcernedly; “I know there is a railroad going to run in Applethorpe.”

“O, but that’s nothing! It’s going to run right through your house!” exclaimed Olive. 

“Right through your front door!” added Martha.

“Now I don’t believe that,” replied Trip. “A railroad can’t get through a door.”

“Why, of course,” said Olive, “they’ll take the door out; they’ll pull the house down. A railroad is too big,–it’s as big as a meeting-house.”[2] Olive had very hazy notions about railroads, never having seen one. 

“I don’t believe there’s going to be any railroad,” meditated Trip, after a pause, choosing what seemed the quickest and surest way of saving the front door. 

“O, yes there is! I heard my father,– why, my father knows all about it. It’s coming now.”

“And, Trip, if I was you,” said Olive, in a low, impressive voice, “I wouldn’t stay at school to-day. I would go straight home and put my boxes and things together so’s to save them. I expect they’ll tear the house down right away. I shouldn’t wonder if they had it all teared down by the time you get home.” 

Now was Trip’s heart in a flutter all day, though she resolutely refused to go home. She even persisted in her professed doubt as to whether there was going to be any railroad at all; but in the depths of her quaking heart she saw already the dear old house torn quite away, and herself and all the family forced to rove homeless over the world. So it is no wonder she was a little absent-minded that day, and missed two words in spelling, for which she cried vigorously all noon-time, with a little under-wail for the lost house. 

But as she came down the lane at night, behold! there was the house as whole as ever,–that was one comfort. No wandering about in the darkness to-night, at least. And there, too, was Jack turning summersets[3] under the Balm-of-Gilead[4] tree, and Lilo frisking about frantically, as if no ruin impended. So Trip plucked up heart a little, and asked Jack what it was all about, and “Is the railroad going to tear our house all down, Jack Straws?”

Jack Straws, thus appealed to, left standing on his head, and tried his feet by way of variety, thrusting both fists under her chin, one after the other, as an appropriate way of saying, “No, Trip-up. I wish ‘t was.”

“Well, there,” sighed Trip, greatly relieved; “I knew ‘t was n’t. But Olive and all the girls said the railroad was coming, and I must pack up my clothes.” 

“But ‘t is coming, so pack away.”

“Why, what?–when?–where are we going?”

“Well, how should you like the barn, say? The hay is soft, and we should be handy to milk; and then there are the horned oxen to do the dairy-work.”

But seeing Trip’s dismayed face, he repented himself. “No, Trip, the line was laid out, and it ran right through our front door. That’s a fact now. I saw the stake driven down right before the front door. But father went to see them, and told them, besides moving the house, it would cut the farm in two halves, sir, and make trouble; and what do you think they’ve done, sir?” Here Jack interposed a summerset by way of taking breath. 

“Stopped the railroad, I guess,” said Trip, breathlessly.

“No, sir. Whisked it off one side, and are going slam-bang through the peach-trees. We’ve saved the house, but we’ve lost the garden. All the currant-bushes are making farewell visits, and the hop-toads are breaking up housekeeping.”

“Jack,” said Trip, solemnly, “do you care?”

“Care? No! I’m gladder’n ever I was before since I was born, and don’t remember anything.”

“So am I. I shouldn’t like to live in the barn, but I should like to have the railroad run through the garden.”

But the older people were not all glad. The dear old trees had to come down, and their dear old roots to come up. The dear old pinks that had bloomed for unremembered years left their last sweetness in the soil. All the robins’ nests were rifted,[5] and the robins did not know what to make of it. Kitty Clover came out to refresh herself with a roll in the catnip, and there was no catnip there. Prince Hum came down to dip his dainty beak into the humming-bird balm, and saw only a gang of rough men digging away with all their might and main.[6] As for Trip, she sat on a stone, and watched and wondered. When they told her the road must be levelled, she thought a man would come with a great scythe, and slice off the hills like a loaf of brown-bread, and lay the slices in the hollows,–which was not strange, seeing it was only a little while since she had learned that, when people bought land, they did not take it up and carry it home. But after a while the railroad was completed. The hill had been dug out, the sleepers[7] placed, the rails fastened, the road fenced, and the first train was to run through. Jack put on his Sunday jacket, and went with his father to the brown old house that served for a station. Gerty had made a food fight to accompany them, but it was not thought best. “Cars is no place for girls,” had lordly Jack declaimed, sleeking down his elf locks before his looking-glass, and rioting in his pride of sex.

“I should like to know, did n’t Aunt Jenny way ‘t was just as nice as a parlor, and did n’t Aunty Jenny go in the cars?” asked Gerty, decisively. 

“Now I’m ready,” said Jack, rather abruptly, but very wisely, changing the subject.

“And I think there won’t be many will look nicer,” said little Trip, admiringly, drawing her tiny fingers over the velvet jacket.

“Now you mind,” said Jack, who would miss the keenness of his triumph if his sisters should not witness it; “you go and sit on the rock out there, and see me when I go by.”

“Yes,” said Gerty, forgetting her momentary dissatisfaction, “we will.”

“And don’t you go straying away, because they’ll come so fast, if you’re not there, you can’t get back before they’ll be all gone, and then you won’t see me. I shall whiz by just like a flash.”

“O,” said Trip, “I shall look just as tight!” And so she did; for though from their rock by the well they could see miles of railroad in each direction, she scarcely dared turn her head for fear in that moment the wonderful train should flash by, and she not see it. But after a half-hour’s waiting, a black speck appeared at the end of the long line; it grew bigger and bigger; all the family came out to see it; volumes of smoke rose and rolled backwards from it; there was a rattle and a roar and a din. Gerty and Trip instinctively shrunk back, but it had already passed them; and there, on the platform of the last car, stood Jack, holding on by the door, bowing and smiling, and proud as Lucifer.

“The Railroad.” Our Young Folks; An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls; 1, No. 5 (May 1865): 308.

O, what a grand and glorious thing it was to be a boy, and ride in that wonderful train! and what a comparatively tame and humiliating thing it was to be a girl, and just sit on a rock and see him go by![8]

So the railroad was finished, and the grown-up people found it was not so bad after all; for the cars passed through a “cut” so deep that the engine smoke-stack hardly reached the top, and you only knew they were there by the sound. “And if the well does not cave in,” said Trip’s father, “we shall be as good as new.” And the well never did cave in, though it stood on the very edge of the cut. The garden trotted over to the other side of the house, and did not mind it at all. The currants and the raspberries and the blackberries held their own, and some fine new peach-trees more than made good the loss of the old. “Besides,” said Jack, who had been continually prowling along the railroad ever since the first surveyors appeared, and who doubtless knew more about it than any of the directors, “what do you think? There are blackberries no end along the track. It’s my opinion the engine sows ’em.” “And there are strange flowers that I never saw here anywhere before,” added Gerty. There was also a continual running to see the swiftly-passing trains. A dozen times a day the sweet farm-silence was broken in upon by its roar and rush, and so many times wildly sped all the little feet over the velvet turf to the well, to gaze at the ever-charming sight. Lillo caught the fever, and carried it to extremes. “Cars!” rung through the house at the approach of every train, and at the cry out leaped Lillo, past the well and down the bank, barking furiously, and tearing along beside the train till it emerged from the cut, when he would return, wagging his tail, and looking up into the children’s faces as proud and happy as if he had done some great thing. What he evidently meant was, “You make great talk about your swift cars, but you see I am not afraid of them. I can keep up with them, yes, and chase them away.” Indeed, he was so on the alert that at any time Jack had only to say, “Cars, Lillo!” and away Lillo would rush pell-mell to the opening by the well, and execute several fine barks and great leaps before he would discover that he had been imposed upon.

The poultry about the farm did not take things so bravely as Lillo. The little yellow, downy goslings, which are the loveliest, sweetest things you ever saw, only they will grow up into geese in such a hurry; and the white little chickens, almost as soft and pretty; and the poor little slender-legged turkeys, that are not pretty at all, and have much ado to keep their feeble breath in their feeble bodies, – waddled and scampered and tottered over the grass, and never took a thought of the railroad; but after they became respectable fowls, and went on their travels in the neighboring pastures, dangers began to thicken. “It’s car-time. Run, Jack, run, Gerty, and see where the chickens are!” More than once all precautions were in vain. The heavy train thundered on into the very midst of the flocks. The chickens, surprised, took to their wings and escapes; but the dainty turkeys tiptoed along, wild with fright, yet loath to leave their dignity and run, and — let me not sadden your young hearts with tidings of catastrophe, but simply say that for a week thereafter Jack and Gerty and Trip had Thanksgiving dinners. One morning Jack rushed up to the open window, crying, “Mother Goose is on the track, and the down-train is coming!” Mother Goose was an old gray goose that had been kept in the family a long time in consideration of past services. Great-great-great-very-great-grandchildren had been hatched and hatcheted, and still Mother Goose waddled her serene way over the farm, and bathed herself in the brook, and grandmothered the successive broods without fear or favor. They all rushed out to the railroad side. Yes, her hour was surely come at last. There she sat between the rails, calmly surveying these new-fangled notions, and wondering, I suppose, what would turn up next by way of improvement, and on came the terrible engine, dragging its terrible train, ignorant of Mother Goose and her meditations. Nonsense! What can a smart young engine, however energetic, do against a sensible old goose, with all her wits about her? Mother Goose was not going to be put down by that upstart, not she! She just sat still, bobbed her head a little as each car came up, and bade them all defiance. When the train had passed over her, she remained quiet a moment to show that she was not nervous, then arose, shook herself, and looked over her shoulder as who should say, “Seems to me I heard something” quietly stepped upon the rail, flopped down on the outside, and waddled off with a placid but profound contempt for all such flummery. You may be sure she had a royal dinner that day, and I make no doubt added a very sarcastic chapter to her Memoirs of my Life and Times before she went to bed at night. 

But so many curious and remarkable things happened at the farm-house in consequence of that railroad, that I have not now room to tell them. If you care to know them, however, I will tell you more another time.

Hamilton, Gail. “The Railroad.” Our Young Folks: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls; 1, No. 5 (May 1865): 306-310.

[1] Gail Hamilton is the pseudonym of writer Mary Abigail Dodge.

[2] Meetinghouse: A building used for Protestant worship. (Merriam-Webster)

[3] Somersault: Falling or tumbling head over heels. (Merriam-Webster)

[4] Resin from the Balm of Gilead tree, or Balsam Poplar in N. America, has been used in medicinal salves for centuries. The name appears in the Bible and originates from the Gilead region of Palestine.

[5] Rifted: Split in half. (Merriam-Webster)

[6] Main: Sheer strength or force. (Merriam-Webster)

[7] Also called railroad ties, sleepers keep railroad rails in place. (Merriam-Webster)

[8] Dodge was known for writing that promoted women’s independence and commented on gender norms.

Contexts

The State of American Railroads at the Close of the Civil War: Published just weeks after Confederate leader General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, VA, effectively ending the U.S. Civil War, this story came at a time of great expansion of the American rail system [1]. During the war, the North held a big advantage over the South due to the large number of railroads and investment in maintaining them. By 1864, “…most railways in the south were either in Northern control or completely destroyed” [2]. The South received much of their iron for building railroads from the North before the war. This importing stopped when the war began and Northern ships blocked imports from Europe along the Southern coast, further weakening the South’s ability to maintain their rail system. [2] Farmers had many grievances with railroads including unfair rates for their services, the political influence of big rail companies, and low farm prices. An organization called “The Grange” or “Patrons of Husbandry” appeared in the 1860s to represent farmers and their concerns [3]. Like any industrial innovation, railroads brought political and economic power to certain groups and caused challenges for others, expanded transportation across the continent, and ultimately played a pivotal part in the Northern victory in the U.S. Civil War.

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Categories
1860s Short Story

Living in an Omnibus: A True Story

Living in an Omnibus: A True Story

By Louisa May Alcott
Annotations by Maggie Kelly/JB
Warren S. Parker. Old Omnibus. Photograph, c. 1870-1930, Thomas Crane Public Library, Quincy, MA.

“Chips, ma’am? Only five cents a basket,” said a little voice, as I stood at my gate one morning, deciding which way I should walk. [1]

Looking around, I saw a small yellow-haired, blue-eyed boy, smiling at me with such a cheerful, confiding face, that I took the chips at once, and ordered some more.

“Where do you live?” I asked, as we waited for Katy, the girl, to empty the basket.

“In the old bus, ma’am.”

“The what?” I exclaimed.

“The old omnibus down on the flats, ma’am. It’s cheap, and jolly, now we are used to it,” said the boy.

“How came you to live there?” I asked, laughing at the odd idea.

“We are Germans; and when the father died, we were very poor. We came to this city in the spring; but couldn’t get any place, there were so many of us and we had so little money. We stopped one night in the old bus that was left to tumble to pieces down on the flats behind the great stables. The man who owned it laughed when my mother asked if we might stay there, and said we might for a while; so we’ve been there ever since, and like it lots.”

While the boy spoke, I took a fancy that I’d like to see this queer home of his. The flats were not far off; and I decided to go that way and perhaps help the poor woman, if she seemed honest. As Katy handed back the basket, I said to the lad,

“Will you show me this funny house of yours, and tell me your name?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am; I’m just going home, and my name is Fritz.”

I saw him look wistfully at a tray of nice little cakes which Katy had put to cool on the window-seat, and I gave him one, saying, as he put it in his pocket very carefully,

“How many of you are there?”

“Six besides the mother.”

I just emptied the tray into the basket, and we went away together. We soon came to the flats behind the stables, and there I saw a queer sight. A great, shabby omnibus, of the old-fashioned sort, with a long body, high steps, and flat roof, with the long grass growing about its wheels, and smoke coming out of a stove- pipe poked through the roof. A pig dozed underneath it; ducks waddled and swam in a pool near by; children, of all sizes, swarmed up and down the steps; and a woman was washing in the shadow of the great omnibus.

“That’s mother,” said Fritz, and then left me to introduce myself, while he passed his cake-basket to the little folks.

A stout, cheery, tidy body was Mrs. Hummel, and very ready to tell her story and show her house.

“Hans, the oldest, works in the stables, ma’am, and Gretchen and Fritz sell a many chips; little Karl and Lotte beg the cold victuals, and baby Franz minds the ducks while I wash; and so we get on well, thanks be to Gott,” said the good woman, watching her flock with a contented smile.

She took me into the omnibus, where everything was as neat and closely stowed as on board a ship. The stove stood at the end, and on it was cooking a savory-smelling soup, made from the scraps the children had begged. They slept and sat on the long seats, and eat on a wide board laid across. Clothes were hung to the roof in bundles, or stowed under the seats. The dishes were on a shelf or two over the stove; and the small stock of food they had was kept in a closet made in the driver’s seat, which was boarded over outside, and a door cut from the inside. Some of the boys slept on the roof in fine weather, for they were hardy lads; and a big dog guarded the pig and ducks, as well as the children.

“How will you manage when the cold weather comes?” I asked.

She shook her head, and looked sober for a minute as she stroked the white head of baby Franz, who clung to her gown; then a smile broke over her face, and she answered trustfully:

“I do my best, ma’am, and keep a brave heart in me; for I remember that the dear Gott is a father to such as these; and he won’t let them suffer.”

“You may be sure of that,” I said heartily; and resolved that her beautiful faith should be rewarded by finding friends close by her.

“We are saving to get clothes for Gretchen and Fritz to go to school in the winter, ma’am. Karl and Lotte make toy furniture, as the father taught them; and when the bad weather comes, they can sit warm in the bus, and make their bits of chairs and tables as well as ever. They can earn but little yet; still they are so good I can leave Franz with them, and old Spitz, the dog, while I go out washing when it gets too cold to work here.”

Meade Brothers Studio. Meade Family Children. Waxed salted paper print, 1857, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

“Perhaps some kind person would take one of the children, and so lessen your care,” I said; for I rather coveted pretty Lotte.

“Ah, but no! I could not spare one even to you, best madam. They are my treasures, and I keep them all, all, as long as I can find bread to give them,” cried the mother, gathering her flock into her arms, and feeling herself rich in spite of poverty. I said no more, but slipped a bit of money into pretty Lotte’s hand, and said good-by.

A happier, healthier, busier set I never saw; each had work to do, and did it cheerfully. Often they had hunger and cold to bear, but bore it patiently. Very seldom did any of the pleasant things that children like come to them; but they were contented, and enjoyed playing with oyster-shells, old shoes, and broken crockery as much as many children enjoy their fine toys. Few mothers have more loving children, or do more for them than good Mrs. Hummel; and I think I never saw a happier family than those little red-cheeked, yellow-haired Germans, as they gratefully smiled and nodded at me from the steps of their funny omnibus home.

Alcott, Louisa May. “Living In an Omnibus: A True Story.” Merry’s Museum and Woodworth’s cabinet 24, no. 1 (July, 1867): 103-05.
Contexts

This piece is a selection from Merry’s Museum and Woodworth’s Cabinet, a continuation of Robert Merry’s Museum, a popular children’s literary magazine in the 19th century. Robert Merry’s Museum was founded in 1841 by Samuel Griswold Goodrich and edited by Alcott from 1867 to 1870. In 1872, the magazine was absorbed by The Youth’s Companion.

Note from Pat Pflieger: “The family—now three children and a mother and renamed ‘Schmidt’—appears in Alcott’s ‘The Autobiography of an Omnibus,’ published in the October 1874 issue of St. Nicholas (pp. 719-723). Told from the bus’s point of view, the story winds through the vehicle’s early years, before it is abandoned and the Schmidts—Hans, Lotte, Lina, and their mother—find a benefactor in the owner of the factory where Hans works; when winter comes, he gives them a house, and the omnibus becomes Lina’s play-house. The Hummel family had, of course, by this time appeared in Little Women (1868).” This story was reprinted in The Youth’s Companion in November 1867 as a “Merry’s Museum” column and in The Hub in May 1879.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

omnibus: A large public vehicle carrying passengers by road, running on a fixed route and typically requiring the payment of a fare; a bus. Now chiefly historical (esp. with reference to a horse-drawn vehicle of this kind).

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[1] This was Louisa May Alcott’s first piece in Merry’s Museum. It was originally published without an author byline.

Categories
1860s Poem

If I Were a Sunbeam

If I Were a Sunbeam

By Lucy Larcom
Annotations by Josh benjamin
"If I were a sunbeam,
    I know what I'd do;
I would seek white lilies
    Rainy woodlands through.
I would steal among them—
    Softest light I'd shed;
Until every lily
    Raised its dropping head.

"If I were a sunbeam
    I know where I'd go;
Into lowliest hovels,
    Dark with want and woe.
Til sad hearts looked upward,
    I would shine and shine!
Then they'd think of heaven,
    Their sweet home and mine.

Art thou not a sunbeam,
    Child, whose life is glad
With an inner radiance
    Sunshine never had?
O, as God hath blessed thee,
    Scatter rays divine!
For there is no sunbeam
    But must die or shine.
John George Brown. Little Sunshine. Chromolithograph, 1868, published by Currier & Ives, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Larcom, lucy. “if i were a sunbeam.” The youth’s companion 37, No. 49 (December 1864): 195.
Contexts

The prefatory note to the 1892 Larcom collection, At the Beautiful Gate: and Other Songs of Faith, notes about the poems, “They do not claim to be songs or hymns in any restricted sense, although a number of them have been included in hymn-books, both, here and in England. The themes of some of them are drawn from nature and from friendship, as well as from religion; and some of them may be regarded simply as meditations. But hymns may be written either to read or to sing; and sometimes not even to read aloud, but only for the wordless response of feeling and thought, —the truest singing being indeed but a voice-rendering of this silent inner melody. That nature and human affection belong to our most sacred inspirations, scarcely needs to be affirmed.” Lyricist Jerome McCauley and composer W. E. M. Hackleman added a refrain and published the poem as a hymn copyrighted in 1907.

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