FEINBERG/WHITMAN LITERARY FILE POETRY FILE "Barbic Symbols" (Apr.1860). Printed copies. Box 26 Folder 25 Number 30. 25 Cents. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Devoted to Literature, Art, and Politics. APRIL, 1860. BOSTON: TICKNOR & FIELDS. 135 WASHINGTON, CORNER OF SCHOOL STREET. ROSS AND TOUSEY, AND DEXTER AND COMPANY, GENERAL AGENTS, NEW YORK. LONDON: TRUBNER AND COMPANY Contents. No. XXX. PAGE The Laws of Beauty . . . 385 Found and Lost . . . 391 An Experience . . . 408 About Thieves . . . 409 The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties . . . 417 The Portrait . . . 427 American Magazine-Literature of the Last Century . . . 429 Come si Chiama? . . . 439 Bardic Symbols . . . 445 Hunting a Pass . . . 447 Kepler . . . 457 Pleasure-Pain . . . 468 The Professor's Story . . . 470 Lost Beliefs . . . 486 The Mexicans and their Country . . . 487 Reviews and Literary Notices . . . 497 Ludwig van Beethoven. Leben und Schaffen, 497.—The American Draught- Player, 505.—The Adopted Heir, 506.—Fanny, 507.—Life Without and Life Within, 507—Lectures on the English Language, 508.—The Marble Faun, 509.—A Trip to Cuba, 510—Poems by Two Friends, 510.— Vanity Fair, 511.—Twenty Years Ago and Now. 511. Recent American Publications . . . 511 To Contributors. The Publishers will return rejected articles on the receipt of a sufficient number of stamps to pay the postage. When they say that the number of contributions offered averages more than a hundred, monthly, authors of accepted articles will see that immediate publication must be often out of the question. Absolute impartiality is assured by the fact that the name of the writer is never known to the tribunal which pronounces on his contribution. Contributors of verses are requested to keep copies of them, as the Publishers will not hold themselves responsible for their return. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS,, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Press of the Franklin Printing House, Boston. 1860.] Bardic Symbols. 445 Bardic Symbols. I. Elemental drifts! Oh, I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me! II. As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the the land of the globe. III. Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide. IV. Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok, there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses, These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types. V. As I wend the shores I know not, As I listen to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked, As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, At once I find, the least thing that belongs to me, or that I see or touch, I know not; I, too, but signify a little washed-up drift,—a few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the leaves and drift. VI. Oh, baffled, lost, Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows, Terrified with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now, that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, 446 Bardic Symbols. [April, But that before all my insolent poems the real me still stands untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written or shall write, Striking me with insults, till I fall helpless upon the sand! VII. Oh, I think I have not understood anything,—not a single object,—and that no man ever can! VIII. I think Nature here, in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me to oppress me, Because I was assuming so much, And because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. IX. You oceans both! You tangible land! Nature! Be not too stern with me,—I submit,—I close with you,— These little shreds shall, indeed, stand for all. X. You friable shore, with trails of debris! You fish-shaped island! I take what is underfoot: What is yours is mine, my father! XI. I, too, Paumanok, I, too, have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your shores. XII. I, too, am but a trail of drift and debris,— I, too, leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island! XIII. I throw myself upon your breast, my father! I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,— I hold you so firm, till you answer me something. XIV. Kiss me, my father! Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love! Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring I envy! For I fear I shall become crazed, if I cannot emulate it, and utter myself as well as it. XV. Sea-raff! Torn leaves! Oh, I sing, some day, what you have certainly said to me! 1860] Hunting a Pass. 447 XVI. Ebb, ocean of life! (the flow will return,)— Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother! Endlessly cry for your castaways! Yet fear not, deny not me,— Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or gather from you. XVII. I mean tenderly by you,— I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine. XVIII. Me and mine! We, loose windrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature, Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets,— We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you,— you, up there, walking or sitting, Whoever you are,—we, too, lie in drifts at your feet. [*Walt Whitman*] Hunting a Pass: A Sketch of Tropical Adventure. Preliminary. Reader, take down your map, and, starting at the now well-known Isthmus of Panama, run your finger northward along the coast of the Pacific, until, in latitude 13° north, it shall rest on a fine body of water, or rather the "counterfeit presentment" thereof, which projects far into the land, and is designated as the Bay of Fonseca. If your map be of sufficient scale and moderately exact, you will find represented there two gigantic volcanoes, standing like warders at the entrance of this magnificent bay. That on the south is called Coseguina, memorable for its fearful eruption in 1835; that on the north is named Conchagua or Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its top with verdure. It is remarkable for its regularity of outline and the narrowness of its apex. On this apex, a mere sugar-loaf crown, are a vigía or look-out station, and a signal-staff, 448 Hunting a Pass. [April, whence the approach of vessels is telegraphed to the port of La Union, at the base of the volcano. A rude hut, half-buried in the earth, and loaded down with heavy stones, to prevent it from being blown clean away, or sent rattling down the slopes of the mountain, is occupied by the look-out man,—an old Indian muffled up to his nose; for it is often bitter cold at this elevation,and there is no wood wherewith to make a fire. Were it not for that jar or tinaja of aguardiente which the old man keeps so snugly in the corner of his burrow, he would have withered up long ago, like the mummies of the Great Saint Bernard. But I am not going to work up the old man of the vigía; for he was of little consequence on the 10th day of April, 1853, except as a wondering spectator on the top of Conchagua, in a group consisting of an ex-minister of the United States, an officer of the American navy, and an artist from the good city of New York, to whose ready pencil a grateful country owes many of the illustrations of tropical scenery which have of late years lent their interest to popular periodicals and books of adventure. I might have added to this enumeration the tall, dark figure of Dolores, servant and guide; but Dolores, with a good sense which never deserted him, had no sooner disencumbered his shoulders of his load of provisions, than he bestowed himself in the burrow, out of the wind, and possibly not far from the aguardiente. The utilitarian reader will ask, at once, the motive of this gathering on the top of the volcano of Conchagua, five thousand feet above the sea, wearily attained at no small expenditure of effort and perspiration. Was it love of adventure merely? ambition to do something whereof to brag about to admiring aunts or country cousins? Hardly. The beauty of the wonderful panorama which spreads before the group of strangers is too much neglected, their instruments are too carefully adjusted and noted, and their consultations are far too earnest and protracted, to admit of either supposition. The old man of the vigía, as I have said, was a wondering spectator. He wondered why the eyes of the strangers, glasses as well as eyes, and theodolites as well as glasses, should all be directed across the bay, across the level grounds beyond it, far away to the blue line of the Cordilleras, cutting the clear sky with their serrated outline. He does not observe that deep notch in the great backbone of the continent, as regular as the cleft which the pioneer makes in felling a forest-tree; nor does he observe that the breeze which ripples the waters at the foot of the volcano is the north wind sweeping all the way from the Bay of Honduras through that break in the mountain range, which everywhere else, as far as the eye can reach, presents a high, unbroken barrier to its passage to the Pacific. Yet it is simply to determine the bearings of that notch in the Cordilleras, to fix the positions of the leading features of the intervening country, and to verify the latitude and longitude of the old man's flag-staff itself, as a point of departure for future explorations, that the group of strangers is gathered on the top of Conchagua. And now, O reader, run your finger due north from the Bay of Fonseca, straight to the Bay of Honduras, and it will pass, in a figurative way, through the notch I have described, and through the pass of which we were in search. You will see if your map be accurate, that in or near this pass two large rivers have their rise; one, the Humuya, flows almost due north into the Atlantic, and the other, the Goascoran, nearly due south into the Pacific, --- together constituting, with the plain of Comayagua, a great transverse valley extending across the continent from sea to sea. Through this valley, commencing at Port Cortes, on the north, and terminating on the Bay of Fonseca on the south, American enterprise and English capital have combined to construct a railway, designed to afford a new, if not a shorter and better route of transit across the continent, between New York and San Francisco, WORCESTER'S QUARTO DICTIONARY, ILLUSTRATED. 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Clergymen, Teachers, and Postmasters will receive the work for Two Dollars a year. Booksellers and Newsmen will obtain the terms by the hundred, etc., upon application to the Publishers. TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 135 Washington, corner of School Street, Boston. E. B. Mason THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. VOLUME V. BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 135 WASHINGTON STREET. LONDON: TRÜBNER AND COMPANY. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PRESS OF S. CHISM,—FRANKLIN PRINTING HOUSE, HAWLEY ST., COR. FRANKLIN. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. CONTENTS. Amber Gods, The, 7, 170. American Magazine—Literature of the Last Century, A Leaf from the, 429. Central British America, 103. Chess, 662. Circumstance, 558. Clarian’s Picture, 707. Come si chiama, 439. Counting and Measuring, 129. Experience of Samuel Absalom, Filibuster, The, 38. Found and Lost, 391. French Character, The, 257. Future of American Railways, The, 641. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 614. Humming-Bird, The, 659. Hunting a Pass, 447. In a Fog, 649. Instinct, 513. Is the Religious Want of the Age Met? 358. Japan, 721. Kepler, 457. Laws of Beauty, The, 385. Love and Self-Love, 298. Maroons of Jamaica, The, 213. Maroons of Surinam, The, 549. Memorial of A. B., The, 186. Mexicans, The, and their Country, 487. Mexico, 235. Miranda’s Expedition, 589. Model Lodging-Houses in Boston, 673, 762. My Last Love, 135. My Own Story, 526. Nemophily, 21. Nursery Blarney-Stone, The, 341. Our Artists in Italy, 1. Professor’s Story, The, 88, 222, 347, 470, 602, 735. Progress of the Electric Telegraph, The, 290. Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties, The, 271, 417. Representative Art, The, 687. Roba di Roma, 60, 150, 572, 693. Screw-Propulsion, 314. Short Campaign on the Hudson, A, 680. Some Account of a Visionary, 192. Somerville, Mary, 568. Sphinx’s Children, The, 746. Spires, About, 75. Substance and Shadow, 29. Thieves, About, 409. White Mice, 329. POETRY. Abdel Hassan, 70. Andenken, 100. Bardic Symbols, 445. Experience, An, 408. For Christie’s Sake, 338. Granadan Girl’s Song, The, 657. “Implora Pace,” 289. Lost Beliefs, 486. Muse, To the, 310. Playmate, The, 547. Pleasure-Pain, 468. Poet’s Friends, The, 185. Portrait, The, 427. Pythagoras, 705. Shetland Shawl, A, 149. Song of Nature, 18. Spring-Song, 672. Thine, 685. Threnodia, 588. Through the Fields to Saint Peter’s, 35. Truce of Piscataqua, The, 208. Urania, 565. Vineyard-Saint, The, 733. ART. Forest Photographs, 109. White Captive, Palmer’s, 108. iv Contents. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. Adopted Heir, The, by Miss Pardoe, 506. American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 631. American Draught-Player, The, by Henry Spayth, 505. Avolio, and other Poems, by P. H. Hayne, 123. Beethoven, Ludwig van,—Leban und Schaffen, 364, 497. Brown, Captain John, Public Life of, by J. Redpath, 378. Carlyle, Thomas, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays by, 756. Choate, Rufus, Reminiscences of, by E. G. Parker, 370. Dictionary of the English Language, by Joseph E. Worcester, 631. Dies Iræ, translated by A. Coles, 752. Divina Commedia, Le Prime Quattro Edizioni della, 622. Dobell, Sydney, Poems by, 381 . Elements of Mechanics, by William G. Peck, 637. Ernest Bracebridge, by W. H. G. Kingston, 247. Fairy Dreams, by Jane G. Austin, 124. Fanny, from the French of Ernest Feydeau, 507. Florence Stories, The,— Florence and John,—by Jacob Abbott, 247. Fresh Hearts that failed Three Thousand Years Ago, 759. Friends in Council, New Series, 125. Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, 251. Good Fight, A, and other Tales, by Charles Reade, 381. Hester, the Bride of the Islands, by Sylvester B. Beckett, 760. History of the Whig Party, by R. M. Ormsby, 372. Lectures on the English Language, by George P. Marsh, 508. Life Without and Life Within, by Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 507. Lost and Found, The, by S. B. Halliday, 119. Mademoiselle Mori, 754. Marble Faun, The, by N. Hawthorne, 509. Mary Staunton, 638. Mill on the Floss, The, by George Eliot, 756. New American Cyclopædia,Vol. VI., 121. Notes of Travel and Study in Italy, by C. E. Norton, 629. Nugamenta, by G. E. Rice, 757. Owlglass, Master Tyll, The Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits of, 126. Plutarch’s Lives, Edited by A. H. Clough, 110. Poems, by the Author of “John Halifax,” 638. Poems, by Two Friends, 510. Revolutions in English History, by Robert Vaughan, 759. Reynard the Fox, by T. J. Arnold, 126. Simplicity of Christ’s Teachings, The, set forth in Sermons, by C. T. Brooks, 250. Sir Rohan’s Ghost, 252. Stories from Famous Ballads, by Grace Greenwood, 638. Title-Hunting by E. L. Llewelyn, 638. Tom Brown at Oxford, 123. Trip to Cuba, A, by Julia W. Howe, 510. Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India, by Major W. S. R. Hodson, 124. Twenty Years Ago and Now, by T. S. Arthur, 511. Undergraduate, The, 382. Vanity Fair, 511. Voyage down the Amoor, by P. M. Collins, 757. West Indies and the Spanish Main, The, by A. Trollope, 375. LIST OF BOOKS, 127, 255, 383, 511, 639, 763. 1860.] Bardic Symbols. 445 BARDIC SYMBOLS. I. ELEMENTAL drifts! Oh , I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me ! II. As I ebbed with the ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe. III. Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide. IV. Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok, there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses, These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types. V. As I wend the shores I know not, As I listen to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked, As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, As once I find, the least thing that belongs to me, or that I see or touch, I know not ; I, too, but signify a little washed-up drift,---a few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the leaves and drift. VI. Oh, baffled, lost, Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows Terrified with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now, that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, 446 Bardic Symbols. [April. But that before all my insolent poems the real me still stands untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written or shall write, Striking me with insults, till I fall helpless upon the sand ! VII. Oh, I think I have not understood anything,—not a single object,—and that no man ever can ! VIII. I think Nature here, in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me to oppress me, Because I was assuming so much, And because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. IX. You oceans both ! You tangible land ! Nature ! Be not too stern with me,—I submit,—I close with you,— These little shreds shall, indeed, stand for all. X. You friable shore, with trails of debris ! You fish-shaped island ! I take what is underfoot : What is yours is mine, my father ! XI. I, too, Paumanok, I, too, have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your shores. XII. I, too, am but a trail of drift and debris,— I, too, leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island ! XIII. I throw myself upon your breast, my father ! I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, — I hold you so firm, till you answer me something. XIV. Kiss me, my father ! Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love ! Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring I envy ! For I fear I shall become crazed, if I cannot emulate it, and utter myself as well as it. XV. Sea-raff ! Torn leaves ! Oh, I sing, some day, what you have certainly said to me ! 1860.] Hunting a Pass. 447 XVI. Ebb, ocean of life ! (the flow will return,)— Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother ! Endlessly cry for your castaways ! Yet fear not, deny not me,— Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or gather from you. XVII. I mean tenderly by you,— I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine. XVIII. Me and mine ! We, loose windrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, Tufts of straw, sand, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature, Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets,— We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you,— you, up there, walking or sitting, Whoever you are,—we, too, lie in drifts at your feet. HUNTING A PASS : A SKETCH OF TROPICAL ADVENTURE PRELIMINARY. READER, take down your map, and, starting at the now well-known Isthmus of Panama, run your finger northward along the coast of the Pacific, until, in latitude 13° north, it shall rest on a fine body of water, or rather the "counterfeit presentment' thereof, which projects far into the land, and is designated as the Bay of Fonesca. If your map be of sufficient scale and moderately exact, you will find represented there two gigantic volcanoes, standing like warders at the entrance of this magnificent bay. That on the south is called Coseguina, memorable for its fearful eruption in 1835 ; that on the north is named Conchagua or Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its top with verdure. It is remarkable for its regularity of outline and the narrowness of its apex. On this apex, a mere sugar-loaf crown, are a vigía or look-out station, and a signal-staff, 448 Hunting a Pass. [ April, whence the approach of vessels is telegraphed to the port of La Union, at the base of the volcano. A rude hut, half-buried in the earth, and loaded down with heavy stones, to prevent it from being blown clean away, or sent rattling down the slopes of the mountain, is occupied by the look out-man,—an old Indian muffled up to his nose ; for it is often bitter cold at this elevation, and there is no wood wherewith to make a fire. Were it not for that jar or tinaja of aguardiente which the old man keeps so snugly in the corner of his burrow, he would have withered up long ago, like the mummies of the Great Saint Bernard. But I am not going to work up the old man of the vigía ; for he was of little consequence on the 10th day of April, 1853, except as a wondering spectator on the top of Conchagua, in a group consisting of an ex-minister of the United States, an officer of the American navy, and an artist from the good city of New York, to whose ready pencil a grateful country owes many of the illustrations of tropical scenery which have of late years lent their interest to popular periodicals and books of adventure. I might have added to this enumeration the tall, dark figure of Dolores, servant and guide ; but Dolores, with a good sense which never deserted him, had no sooner disencumbered his shoulders of his load of provisions, than he bestowed himself in the burrow, out of the wind, and possibly not far from the aguardiente. The utilitarian reader will ask, at once, the motive of this gathering on the top of the volcano of Conchagua, five thousand feet above the sea, wearily attained at no small expenditure of effort and perspiration. Was it love of adventure merely ? ambition to do something whereof to brag about to admiring aunts or country cousins ? Hardly. The beauty of the wonderful panorama which spreads before the group of strangers is too much neglected, their instruments are too carefully adjusted and noted, and their consultations are far too honest and protracted, to admit of either supposition. The old man of vigía, as I have said, was a wondering spectator. He wondered why the eyes of the strangers, glasses as well as eyes, and theodolites as well as glasses, should all be directed across the bay, across the level grounds beyond it, far away to the blue line of the Cordilleras, cutting the clear sky with their serrated outline. He does not observe that deep notch in the great backbone of the continent, as regular as the cleft which the pioneer makes in felling a forest-tree ; nor does he observe that the breeze which ripples the waters at the foot of the volcano is the north wind sweeping all the way from the Bay of Honduras through that break in the mountain range, which everywhere else, as far as the eye can reach, presents a high, unbroken barrier to its passage to the Pacific. Yet it is simply to determine the bearings of that notch in the Cordilleras, to fix the positions of the leading features of the intervening country, and to verify the latitude and longitude of the old man's flag-staff itself, as a point of departure for future explorations, that the group of strangers is gathered on top of Conchagua. And now, O reader, run your finger due north from the Bay of Fonseca, straight to the Bay of Honduras, and it will pass, in a figurative way, through the notch I have described, and through the pass of which we were in search. You will see, if your map be accurate, that in or near that pass two large rivers have their rise ; one, the Humuya, flows almost due north into the Atlantic, and the other, the Goascoran, nearly due south into the Pacific,—together constituting, with the plain of Comayagua, a great transverse valley extending across the continent from sea to sea. Through this valley, commencing at Port Cortés, on the north, and terminating on the Bay of Fonseca on the south, American enterprise and English capital have combined to construct a railway, designed to afford a new, if not a shorter and better route of transit across the continent, between New York and San Francisco, Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.