FERNBERG/WHITMAN Box 34 Folder 27 LITERARY FILE Prose "Some Casual Notes Toward an Estimate of Elias Hicks" (1888?) A.MS. draft & notes. Includes verso letter from W. M. Graham, July 13, 1888.Elias Hicks to go Cast of L. Magazine ought to be 39 or 40,000 words would then make 65 to 67 pages (600 words to page)838 625 773 65 65 3125 12 1/2 3750 50 40,625 600 25 625 625 words in (solid) page of Lippincotts in "Miss Defarge" 65 pp 40,625 words224 words in my MS page with 118 such pages to make -60 pages solid Lippincotts 9 26 224 words in my MS [60] page [13440] 625 60 224 37500 118 224 410 224 1860 1792 683Elias Hicks First an incident 32 years ago. - [In] My dear mother, [has] while I was quite a child often told me of Elias Hicks. - [She began hearing him] When she was a girl, [If Elias] [arrived in, and] she began to go with her brothers and sisters and her parents to hear him. [Where] When she was grown and married the same. Sure as [he] Elias arrived in the neighborhood and held one of his [services (sittings),] meetings, [they shut up] the house was temporarily shut up, and all hands went. [when] [This continued] Afterwards, my father the same. I will transport you back to An Incident in Brooklyn [32] forty years years ago, [perhaps] in 182[?]6 or thereabout. One day, forty years ago, When my father [comes] came home one evening (it is now over forty years from his day's work as a carpenter - it is now over forty years ago - the first words he [speaks] spoke [to] [my mother] after throwing down his armful of blocks [are:] [were:] he said, "Mother, Elias [Hicks] preaches to-night." Then [my] mother [thanks] [thinks] [makes with her?] knew right away [I must] she might do up [my] her work - I must hasten with the supper, and be ready to go.PLEASE PRESERVE THIS BILL.] [BANKABLE MONEY Collector's Office, City Hall, corner of South 2d and Fourth Streets. Hours for Receiving Taxes from 9 A. M.. till 2 P. M. M To City of Williamsburgh, To City and County Tax for the Year 185 on the [foll?] WARD. ASSESSED NO. LOCATION. VALUATION. CITY. COUNTY. [DEFA?] PLEASE PRESERVE THIS BILL.] Collector's Office, City Hall, corner of South 2d [?] Hours for Receiving Taxes from 9 A. M., till M to City of [?] To City and County Tax for the Year 185 WARD. ASSESSED NO. LOCATION. VALUATION.[audience was] [were] Many fashionable's are among the audiance - [there] [were the] common people also. Yes the [very] dead of Brooklyn [again] return again. The room [filled] fills with [the faces of] the well-known [Brooklynites] forms of those days, the Trustees of the village, the rich people, the lawyers, [the] [some] several of [the] ministers, and many [young men and] mechanics and young men. For the most men of them In the midst of the silence [Elias] All of a sudden, [(my mother says)] Elias rises [with lofty and raising] - His form [was] is tall, his eyes piercing and dark, [his] [his head] - he erects his stately noble-shaped head - . . . . . [He slung] [slings] [removing] [his hat] [down] and looking [around] straight ahead, [said] says slowly and [with] [determined] with pronounced emphasis, - What - is - the - chief end - of man ? [Then] He then pauses long -- again he [he] [sweeps] sweeping his fine fiery old [powerful] eyes 2 [all] around the [whole] entire ball-room as if to enclose [all] [present there] it (and indeed, [my mother says,] he evidently fascinated all in it) [there)] he continue[d]s; "I have read in my younger days that [the chief end of Man]['s chief end] the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.- Then [as my mother says] [he][?] afterward [would] paused again, and [as my mother says] (as my mother describes it,) looked around him like a lion. -of South 2d and Four om 9 A. M., till 2 P. M. y of Williams VALUATION. CITY. PLEASE PRESERVE THIS BILL.] [BANKABLE MONEY ONLY REC Collector's Office, City hall, corner of South 2d and Fourth Streets. Hours for Receiving Taxes from 9 A. M., till 2 P. M. M To City of Williamsburgh, Dr, To City and County Tax for the Year 185 on the following Lot WARD. ASSESSED NO. LOCATION. VALUATION. CITY. COUNTY. DEFAULT. TO BILL.] Collector's Office, City Hall, corner of Sou Hours for Receiving Taxes from 9 A. To City of d county Tax for the year 185 LOCATION. VALUATIOWe also will go to this meeting, recalling over forty years of [the] time — recalling the dead." [[But come] Now [let us turn back] - let us go to the quaker meeting of [32] 32 [years ago] since with my father and mother,] Brooklyn is again an [rut rural rich] open and beautiful rural village [with] of unpaved roads [with with] many large mansions — altogether [of eight] some eight or ten thousand inhabitants. — Elias' custom is to preach[es] in taverns, barns, private houses, parlors [any - he] anywhere. — He is not particular, He preached in the old apprentice Library — I remember my parents going to hear him there. To=night he preaches in a large ball-room in a fashionable hotel on [Brooklyn] the heights on Columbus street — Morrison's Hotel. — [ The old man] We ascend the stairs (for the hall is on the second floor), and enter the brilliantly lighted ball room. - The old man himself sits right in the middle of the ball room there is no pulpit nor need of any. The light from the great [glass] centrifugal chandelier sparkles down from its [magnific] cut glass drops, falls on [his bald covered head] him. - [Tonight Indeed] Truly that [The] chandelier[s of the ball-room] casts [their] its light on a far different scene from usual. [He would sit] Elias [sat] sits with his head drooped, his hat on, the [perfect] picture one might say of some old Greek [as] of [a] or Hebrew sage, lost in [profound] meditation, - [over the] - room. - In [his] immediate contact, He [was] is surrounded with drab dressed friends, male and female, silent as death. —PLEASE PRESERVE THIS BILL.] [BANKABLE MONEY ONLY [REC?] Collector's Office, City Hall, corner of South 2d and Fourth Streets. Hours for Receiving Taxes from 9 A. M., till 2 P. M. M To City of Williamsburgh, Dr, to City and County Tax for the Year 185 on the following Lot WARD. ASSESSED NO. LOCATION. VALUATION. CITY. COUNTY. DEFAULT. [?] Morals, after all, are the first things [America (it is to be carefully borne in mind) [it] is but a genuine and legitimate out growth of the Past in Literature, Politics, Religion, and every thing else.] How long it takes to learn [Morals] Freedom under the Law ! How long it takes men to [receive] achieve [in] the full [the] meaning of the tenet, "And God saw every thing that He had made, and pronounced it good." (Has any [one] man ever achieved it ?) [(Let me [try for it] at any rate [let me] put the [thought] notion the wish on record.)] [*note to Elias Hicks*]1? Religion As in The history of the past and of all other lands must be [penetrated and] thoroughly realized, - [for only without it ignorant] because we [cannot] understand [the] ignoring not present hour, [nor our understood] or [own] present lands. - [All] Those heroes [&] representative men and women, [person] strong personalities old, new , Asiatic, (even African,) European. - [these, too, also] Those also, I say are [necessary] indispensable to us [be known] that we may truly [know] develop ourselves and compare, and have [un]full illumination. - [Indeed,] Because the history of our land, the biography of one man the, amount of progress, one age the theory of one science (in a certain & the [fullest] earnest sense), can [only] be [really truly well well] comprehended or written only from the point of view of the consideration of all lands, all ages, all human beings, biographies and of all the sciences. - The same is true of religions9Elias Hicks See allusion to Quakers pp 333 '4 (Appendix) Gazetteer & History N. Y. 8>>top post mark<< New York Jan 7 3 PM 81 Walt Whitman 413 Stevens St Camden N. J. [*10*] >>bottom post mark<< Camden Jan 8 11 AM N. J.The eye compare his eye with Robert Burns's or Wm Blakes WB's "brilliant but not roving — the finest I ever saw"1830 1754 76 [Though] The above-named man, though born in [1754][48]1748, and attracting direct public attention, [from] during the long stretch from Of This celebrated person, (born 17[??]48, died 1830.) 1830 1748 82The inner light [of] so dwelt upon by Elias Hicks — as [of] by [the] F'ox and Barclay, at the beginning and all the Friends since and now — is [probably] perhaps only another another name for the Religious Conscience. In my opinion, they have diagnosed, like good doctors, the [true state of the case the] real inmost disease of our [to] times, [perhaps] probably of all times [Of all wanted in The United States (apparently with its organic supplies of every close thing) the [I] sad [then] fear will not down.] ? 153[in one gorgeous] in one last [most] gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new [spirit,] genius, [a] its enemy & destined conqueror, - [wh] [that, we behold, we are to behold we behold, out] we behold advancing out of] bred from [and and] & acting amid the social and domestic customs of [the] that period, and in a sphere far, far from the pageants of the court, the [da] awe of personal rank or genius, or the [delightfull] excitement [or victories of] of royalists or Parliamentarian[s] - fortunes - a curious young rustic a dreamer, [was either] after tending sheep [or] & cobbling shoes, awhile, [or was] now [now] wandering to and fro in England. [?] [now, f] Indifferent to [those] all those reverberations that seemed enough to wake the dead [and] far from the sphere of courts or armies, he. - - -[?????] about Edward carpenter 13Some Casual [Disjointed] Notes toward an Estimate of Elias Hicks left fragmentary and most incomplete, wretchedly? Opening of Elias Hicks [We] I must [will would will] not waste time in breaking ground, [but transport] but as [the best] preparation [and overture] for [estimating] the life & [personage] character of Elias Hicks [& also] & perhaps indispensable overture [to them] an estimate of that man, [we] I will, without ceremony transport ourselves you back to times events times of 16 [the 17th Century [and] in [the] England of that period. It is the era of ? Europe? Fox? or ? Elias Hicks himself? or bothNovember Boughs page 119. WHITMAN, (WALT). Original Autograph Manuscript. 1p. Sm. 4to, titled in Whitman's hand "Opening of Elias Hicks." About seventy words and corrections all in Walt Whitman's hand. Framed with a photograph of Whitman, taken in his last years, Matted & Framed. It reads: "I must not waste time in breaking ground, but as preparation for the life and character of Elias Hicks & perhaps indispensible overture an estimate of that man I will without ceremony, transport you back to events of the 17th Century and in the England of that period. It is the era of Europe..." other words and changes make possible another version of the above.137 Notes (such as they are) [abit] foryrded on Elias Hicks, &c : Gray [*side head Ital*] [*set this "pre[p]fatory note" pp 137 and 138 in prev close *] Prefatory Note. As myself a little boy hearing so much of E. H. at that time long ago in Suffolk and Queens and Kings counties - and more than once personally [meeting, saw and heard] seeing and hearing [that] the old man - and my father and mother faithful listeners to him at the meeting - remember['d] [even then] how I [would perhaps intentionally] dream to write personally a piece about E. H. and his book and discourses, [may=be] however long afterward - [for] my dear parents' sake - and the Friend's too! [This] And the following is what has at last all [has] but come of it - [but for] the feeling and [memory] intention [were not] never forgotten yet! -- [W.W.] There is a sort of nature of persons I have compared to little [fresh] rills of water, fresh, from perennial springs - (and the comparison is indeed an appropriate one - persons not [to] so very plenty yet [hundreds] some few certainly of them running over the surface and area if humanity, all times, all lands.) [The] great biographers and metaphysicians and books seem to have mostly left [them] out of account - [yet for they are far] yet the sort have [a of immense] deep significance in [The profoundest study of of study of all told]] of this [kind] class I [would] would now [write in hour] It is a speciment [I would sum] I would sum up in [him] E H, and make his [special] case stand for, [those hundreds, perhaps, thousands, probably] the class, the sort, in all ages [all] [nearly] all lands, [who not numerous] sparse, not numerous, yet enough to irrigate the soil, enough to prove the inherent moral stock and irrepressible devotional aspirations growing indigenously of themselves [in the human race,] always advancing and never utterly [lost] gone under or lost. [He does]Dec the made out on our usual form, and executed on our part. If found correct please138 [Elias Hicks] [Curiously as it appears E.H. The [?] does your the nuisance] Always E. H. gives the service of [calling you] pointing to the fountain of all naked theology, all religion, all worship, all the truth to which you are possibly eligible - namely in yourself and your inherent relations. Others talk of Bibles saints, churches, exhortations, vicarious atonements, [extract about Christ saving any one] - the [religion and] canons [of religion] outside of [man] yourself, and apart from man - [he] E.H. to the religion inside of man's very own nature. This he incessantly labors to kindle, nourish, educate, bring forward & strengthen. He is the most democratic of the religionists - the prophets. The following are really but disjointed fragments recall'd to serve and eke out here the lank printed pages of what [?] I commenced unwittingly two months ago. Now as, I am well in for it, comes [the] an old attack, the [6th] sixth or seventh recurrence [?] of my war paralysis, [now] dulling me from putting the Notes, [and] shape and threatening any further action head or body. W.W.Hay & Nicholas were both for Harlan - this is what began the trouble with Philbrick139 Long Primer here) To begin with, my theme is comparatively featureless. The great historian has pass'd by the life of Elias Hicks quite [touch'd] without glance or touch. Yet [one] a man might [begin] commence and overhaul it as furnishing one of the amplest historic [and] biography's backgrounds. While the [great] foremost actors and events from 1750 to 1830 both in Europe and America were crowding each other on the [round] world's stage — while so many Kings, queens, [generals] soldiers, philosophs, musicians, voyagers, litterateurs, enter [at] one side, cross the boards, and disappear — amid [the] loudest reverberating names — Frederick the Great, Swedenborg, [George the Second, George the Third and] [George the Third,] Junius, Voltaire, [Rosseau] Rousseau, Linneus, Herschel — curiously contemporary with the long life of Goethe — [and] through the occupancy of the British throne by George Third — amid stupendous visible political and social revolutions, and far more stupendous invisible moral ones — while140 the many quarto volumes of the Encyclopaedia Francaise are being published [by] at fits and intervals by Diderot in Paris While Haydn and Beethoven and Mozart and Weber are working our their harmonic compositions, While Mrs. Siddons and Talma and Kean are acting, While Mungo Park explores Africa and Capt. Cook circumnavigates the globe -- through all the fortunes of the American Revolution -- the beginning continuation and end-- the Battle of Brooklyn, the surrender at Saratoga, the peace conference of '83 -- through the lurid tempest of the French Revolution, the execution of the King and queen, and the Reign of Terror -- through the whole of the meteor=career of Napoleon -- through all Washington's, Adams's, Jefferson's Madison's and Monroe's Presidentials -- amid so many flashing lists of names (indeed there seems hardly in any Department any end to them, Old World [and] or New.) Franklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mirabeau Fox, Nelson, Paul Jones, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, Fulton, Walter Scott, Byron, Mesmer, Champollion -- amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and coruscate and fade, like aurorora boreales -- Louis 16th threaten'd by the mob, the trial of Warren Hastings, the death bed of Robert Burns, Wellington at Waterloo, Decatur capturing the141 Masedonian, or the sea=fight [of] between the Chesapeake [with] and the Shannon -- during all these whiles I say, and though on a far different grade running parallel [with them all] and contemporary with all -- a curious quiet yet busy life, [transacted itself was transacting itself] can tred in a little country village on Long Isl. and within sound on still nights of the mystic surf beat of the sea. About this life, this Personality -- neither soldier's nor scientist's nor litterateur's. I propose to occupy [an hour] a few minutes in [Description and] fragmentary talk [this evening and to] -- to give some few malinger disconnected impressions statistics, [pictures, this even thoughts with then germinated thoughts glimpses], resultant glimpses, pictures, thoughts of him, or radiating from him.142 Elias Hicks was born [on] March 19, 1748 in Hempstead township, Queens county, Long Island New York State, near a village bearing the old scripture name of Jericho, (a mile or so north and east of the present Hicksville, on the L. I. Railroad.) His father and mother were Friends, of that class working with their own hands, [on their own land], and marked by neither riches nor actual poverty. Elias as a child and youth had small education from letters, but largely learned from Nature's schooling. He grew up even in his childhood a thorough gunner and fisherman. The farm of his parents lay on the south [?] sea=shore side of Long Island, (they had early removed [there] from Jericho,) one of the best regions in the world for wild fowl and for fishing. Elias became a good horseman, too, and knew the animal well, riding races; also a singer fond of "vain songs" as he afterwards calls them; a dancer too at the country balls. When a boy of 13 he had gone to live with an elder brother; and when about 17 he changed again and went as apprentice to the carpenter's trade. [All] The time of all this was [for time] before the Revolutionary War, and the [scene was] locality 30 to 40 miles from New York City. My great=grandfather Whitman was often with Elias at these [times] periods, and at merry=makings and sleigh=rides in winter over the 'plains.'148 How well I [know] remember [or rather know] the region — the flat plains of the middle of [the] Long Island as then, with their prairie=like vistas and grassy patches in every direction, [with] and the 'kill=calf' and herds of cattle and sheep. Then the South Bay and shores and the salt meadows, [and sedge], and the [briny] sedgy smell, [of the air], and [the] numberless little bayous and hummock=islands, in the waters the habitat of every sort of fish and aquatic fowl of North America. And the bay men — a strong, wild, peculiar race — now extinct, or rather entirely changed. And the beach outside, the sandy bars sometimes many miles at a stretch, with their old history of wrecks and storms — the wierd, white=gray beach — not without its tales of pathos — tales, too, of grandest heroes and heroisms. In such scenes and elements and influences — in the midst of Nature and [on] along the shores [and] of the sea — Elias Hicks was [formed] fashioned through boyhood and early manhood, to maturity. But a moral and mental and emotional change was immanent. Along at this time he says: George (take in Brev what is marked with pencil pages 12 and down to 6 lines of page 13 — [solid]) In his 22nd year Elias was married, by the Friends' ceremony, to Jemima Seaman. His wife was an only child; the parents were well off, for common people, and at their request the son-in-law moved home with them and carried on the farm — which at their decease became his own, and he lived there all his life144 [???????] matrimonial part of his [life] career, (it continued, and with unusual happiness for 60 years), he says, [speaking] giving the account of his marriage: Brev (take in brev from page 14 solid) Of a serious and reflective turn by nature, and from his reading and surroundings, Elias had more than one markedly devotional inward intimation. These feelings increased in frequency and strength until soon the following: Brev (pages 15 and [?] upper part of page 18 — marked — solid) The Revolutionary War following, tried the sect of Friends more than any [others]. The difficulty was to steer between their convictions as patriots and [those] their pledges of non=warring peace. Here is the way they solved the problem: Brev (pages 16, 17, & 18 solid)145 Then, Season [and] after season, when peace and Independence reigned, year [after] following year, this [it] remains to be (1791) a specimen of his personal labors: Brev: (take after[brev] five lines page 38 marked) And again another experience: Brev (pages 45 and 46 marked) And concluding another jaunt in 1794 Brev: (page 53 marked) Another 'tramp' in 1798: Brev: (page 81 marked 3 lines) Here are some memoranda of 1813, [at] near home: Brev: (page 132-133 marked)essay 146 But we find if we [enter] attend to [any] records and details, we shall lay out an endless task. We can briefly say, summarily, that [this is the commencement] his whole life was [of] a long, religious missionary life [in a] of method, [of] practicality, sincerity, earnestness and pure piety - as near to [us] his time here, to-day as one in Judea, far back, or in any life any age. [Any one] The reader who feels [to] interested [s] must get - with all its dryness and mere dates, [and] absence of emotionality or literary quality and so whatever [any] abstract attraction (with even a suspicion of past snuffling,) the Journal of the Life and Religious Labours of Elias Hicks written by Himself." [from] at some Quaker bookstore. (It is from this headquarters I have extracted from the preceding quotations.) During [this] E. H.'s matured life continued [of] from fifty to sixty years - while working steadily, [and] earning his living and paying his way without intermission, [or let=up] - he makes as previously memorialized, several hundred preaching visits, not [through] only through Long Island but some of them away into the [Southern] Middle or Southern States, or north into Canada, or the then far West - extending to thousands of miles or filling several weeks and Sometimes months. These religious journeys - scrupulously accepting in payment only his [forwarding] transportation from place to place, [and] with his own food and shelter, [and never] and never requiring a dollar of money for "salary" or preaching - Elias, through [of] good bodily health and strength, continues till [nearly] quite the age of eighty. It was at thus one of [these] his latest jaunts in Brooklyn city I saw and heard him. [Of] [t]This sight and hearing [of him] shall now be described.147 [Elias Hicks (authoritative] ¶ [my having of] Elias Hicks was at this period in the [summer] latter part (Nov, or Dec) of 1829. It was the last tour of the many missions of the old man's [his Elias's] life. He was in the 82d year of his age, & [a] it few months before he had lost by death a beloved wife with whom he had lived in [bonds of] unalloyed affection and esteem for 58 years. [A] But a few months after this meeting [1829] Elias was paralyzed [1748] and died. (run on sent [81][Top post mark reading BOSTON.MASS. JAN 6 9-45p 1888] Mr. Walt Whitman 328 Mickle St Camden N.J. Personal [Bottom post mark reading CAMDEN N.J. Jan 7 1pm 1888 REC'D]148 run in Though it is [more than half a century] sixty years ago since—and I a little boy at the time in Brooklyn, New York—I can remember my father coming home toward sunset from his day's work as carpenter and saying briefly, as he throws down his armful of kindling=blocks with a bounce on the kitchen floor, [and saying briefly], "Come, mother, Elias preaches to=night." Then my mother, hastening the supper and the table=cleaning afterward, gets a neighboring young woman, a friend of the family, to [come] step in and keep house for an hour or [two] so—puts the two little ones to bed—and as I had been behaving well, that day, as a special reward I was allowed to go also. We start for the meeting. Though as I said [over] the stretch of more than half a century has passed [away] over me since then, with its war and peace, and all its joys and sins and deaths ([and indeed] and what a half-century! how it comes up [to me] sometimes [in] for an instant, like [a] the lightning flash in [some] a storm at night!) I can recall that meeting yet. It is a strange [assemblage, and it is a strange] place for religious devotions. Elias preaches anywhere— no respect to buildings—private or public houses, school rooms, barns, even theatres—any thing that will accommodate. This time it is in a handsome ball=room on Brooklyn Heights, [overhanging] overlooking New York, and in full sight149 of that great city, and [of the] its North and East Rivers, filled with ships—[was] is (to specify more particularly) the second story of "Morrison's Hotel," [and was] used for the most genteel concerts, balls and assemblies—a large, cheerful, gay=colored room, with [large] glass chandliers [with] [having] bearing myriads of sparkling pendants, [to] [a large room]—plenty [of] with settees, and chairs, and a sort of velvet divan running all round the side=walls. Before long, the divan and all the settees and chairs are filled; many fashionables, out of curiosity; all the principal dignitaries of the town, Gen. Jeremiah Johnson, Judge Furman, George Hall, Mr. Willoughby, Mr. Pierrepont, N.B. Morse, [G?] Cyrus P. Smith and F.C. Tucker. Many young folks too; some richly dressed [ladies] women; I remember I noticed, with one party of ladies, a group of uniformed officers [in uniform] either from the U.S. Navy Yard, or some ship in the stream or some adjacent fort. — (run on On a slightly elevated platform at the [end] head of the room facing the audience, [were] [sat] sit a dozen or more Friends, most of them, elderly, grim, and with their broad=brimmed hats on their heads. Three or four women, too, in their characteristic Quaker costumes and bonnets. [And] All still as the grave. [??d] At length after [the] a pause and stillness becoming almost painful, Elias rises and stands for a moment or two without a word. A tall, 150 straight figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress'd in drab cloth, clean=shaved face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clear black eyes * long or middling=long white hair, he was at this time between 75 and 80 years of age, his head still wearing the broadbrim [Elias at this time must have been well on toward 80 years old]. A moment looking around the audience with those [calm but] piercing eyes, amid the perfect stillness. (I can almost see him and the whole scene now.) Then the words come from his lips, very emphatically and slowly pronounc[e]'d, in a resonant, grave, melodious voice. What is the chief end of man? I was told in my early youth, it was to [love] glorify God, and seek and enjoy him forever. I cannot follow [him in his] the discourse. It presently becomes very fervid, and in the midst of [that] its [The] fervor he takes the broadbrim hat from his head, and almost dashing it down with violence on the seat behind, continues with note Brev) * [I can almost see those eyes yet.] * In Walter Scott's reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the most eloquent, glowering flashing, illuminated dark=orbed eyes he ever beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks's must have been like them.151 uninterrupted earnestness. But I say I cannot repeat, hardly suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division of the Society of Friends, were even then under way, [indeed violent] he did not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many, were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heard Father Taylor, the sailor's preacher, and found in his passionate unstudied oratory the resemblance to Elias Hicks's—not argumentative or intellectual, but so [effective] penetrating—so different from any thing in the books—[as] (different as the fresh air of a May morning or sea=shore breeze from the atmosphere of a perfumer's shop.) [As] While he goes on he falls into the nasality and sing=song tone sometimes heard in such meetings; but in a moment or two more, as if recollecting himself, he breaks off, stops, and resumes in a natural tone. This occurs three or four times during the talk of the evening, till all concludes.152 George Now and then, at the many scores and hundreds—even thousands—of his discourses—as at this one—he [had] was very mystical and radical, [notes?] and had much to say of "the light within." Very likely this same note Brev: at bottom The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias Hicks) consists neither in rites or bibles or sermons or Sundays—but in noiseless secret extasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in a good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He said, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend all the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well=bound copy of the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and yet not be a truly religious person at all." E. H. believed [much] little in [the] a church as organized—even his own—with houses, ministers—or with salaries, creeds, Sundays, [of holy] saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c—But he believed always in the universal church [of the] in the soul of man, [silent] invisible, rapt, ever[y]=[r??]waiting, ever=responding to universal truths, [to] [??} He was fond of pithy proverbs—He said "It matters not where you live, but how you live." He said once to my father "They talk of the devil— I tell thee Walter there is no worse devil than man.that is an offset to the word "Culture." something involving the sense of the words Nativity Self. Personalism Personalize Personalistic153 run in) [The] inner light (so dwelt upon by [Elias Hicks] newer men, as by Fox and Barclay at the beginning, and all Friends and deep-thinkers since and now,) is perhaps only another name for the religious conscience. In my opinion they have all diagnosed, like [good] superior doctors, the real inmost disease of our times, probably [all] any times. Amid the huge inflammation called society, and that other inflammation called politics, what is there to=day of moral, power and ethic sanity as antiseptic to them and all? Though I think the essential elements of the moral nature exist latent in the good average people of the United States of to=day and sometimes break out strongly, it is certain that every marked or [powerful] dominating National Morality (if I may use the phrase) has not only not yet been developed, but that—at any rate when the point of view is turned on business, politics, competition, practical life and in character and manners in our New World—there seems to be a hideous depletion almost absence of [the] such moral nature. Elias taught throughout, as George Fox began it, or rather reiterated it, the Platonic Doctrine that the ideals of character, of justice, of religious action, when ever the highest is at stake, are to be conformed to no outside dicta of creeds bibles, legislative enactments, conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow the inward Deity=planted law of the emotional soul. In this only the true Quaker or Friend has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhaps strainingly, carrying it out that both the Old and New England records of Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts. 154 In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons or instructions ("sealed orders" the biographer calls them,) prepared by the sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one: [*brev*(] Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells with the pure in heart, to whom it was promised of old that they shall see God. How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then in Omar Khayyam: [*brev*(] I sent my soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that after-life to spell, And by-and-by my soul return'd to me, And answered, "I myself am Heaven and Hell."155 [The "Inward Light," [of upon] which Elias Hicks dwells has so much.—] [Of this] Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice of Quakerism, [the "Light Within,"] the difficult=to=describe "Light Within" or "Inward Law," [or Lig] by which all must be either justified or condemned, [we] I will not undertake [the task] where so many have failed— the task of making the statement of it for the average comprehension.—We will give, partly for the matter and partly as specimens of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hicks himself says [upon] in allusion to it—one or two of very many passages.—[Of] Most of his discourses, like those of Epictetus, and the ancient peripatetics [there is] have left no record remaining—[as] they were extempore, and those were not the times of [news paper] reporters.—Of one, however, delivered in Chester, Pa., toward the latter part of his career, there is a careful [reco] transcript; and from it we give the following extract:solid long primer 156 "I don't want to express a great many words; but I want you to be called home to the substance. For the scriptures, and all the books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him, 'God is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.' Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love—that love which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in love, and they are constrained to walk in it; and if they 'walk in it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin.' "But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have any material blood? Not a drop of it, my157 friends—not a drop of it. That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God breathed into it. "As we read, in the beginning, that 'God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul'—He breathed into that soul, and it became alive to God." Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted in correspondence: long primer all solid "Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, it is the158 perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the heart, and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispensed to the children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true and saving knowledge of God can be obtained. And by this inward law and light, all will be either justified or condemned, and all made to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them that they should receive power, when they had received the pouring forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost159 parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian faith in one day. "By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law, as it is heeded and obeyed, ever did, or ever can, make a true and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non=essentials in religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and the angelic song cannot be heard in our land - that of 'glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men. "But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and light, the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we shall be brought to know160 and believe alike, that there is but one Lord, one faith, and but one baptism ; one God and Father, that is above all, through all, and in all. "And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded in the scriptures of truth be fulfilled - 'He,' the Lord, 'shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people ; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning=hooks ; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb ; and the cow and the bear shall feed ; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox ; and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child put his hand on the cockatrice' den. - They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain ; for the earth,' that is our earthly tabernacle, 'shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.' "161 The exposition in the last sentence, that the [sentence is] terms of the texts are not to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one, and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through religious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number of instances of much that is obscure, to "the world's people," in the preachings of this remarkable man.162 [?] than proof, that unnamable constitutional something Elias Hicks emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience,—or carried with him or probed into, and shook and aroused in them—[that] a sympathetic [something] germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility which no book, no rule, no statement, has given or can give —inherent knowledge, intuition—not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launched out only by powerful human magnetism; brev: Unheard by sharpest ear—unform'd in clearest eye, or cunningest mind, Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly; Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss; Open, but still a secret—the real of the real—an illusion; Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner; Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme—historians in prose; Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted; Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd; —that remorse, too, for a mere worldly life,—[and] that aspiration [for] toward the ideal, which, however overlaid lies folded latent, hidden, in perhaps every character. More definitely as near as I remember (aided by my dear mother long afterward) Elias Hicks's discourse there [that night] in the Brooklyn ballroom, was one of his old never remitted appeals to that moral mystical [appea] portion of human nature, the inner light. But it [was] is mainly for the scene itself and Elias's personnel that I recall the incident. Soon afterward the old man died: Brev: (pages 449 and 450.)163 I have thought (even presented so incompletely with such fearful hiatuses, and in my own feebleness, and [in] waning life) one might well [my friends, we should] [not forget] memorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not [significant] eminent in literature or politics or inventions or business, it is a sample of not a few, [many] and is significant. [take in bed] Such men do not cope with the statesman's or soldier's—but I have thought they deserve to be [specially] recorded & kept up; [and] as a sample—that this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little [under=] flowing liquid [ever=living] rill of nature's life maintaining freshness. [water] [It is indeed] As if, indeed, under the smoke of battles [and] the blare of trumpets, and the madness [press] [passions] of contending hosts—the screams of [maniacs] passion, the groans of the suffering, the [mad] parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell's heat and noise and [violence] competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the ground, at men's very feet, a curious little brook of [cool and] clear and cool and ever=healthy, ever=living water. overPaoli, July 13 - 1888 Mr. Walt Whitman. Dear Sir, Would you kindly send me your autograph on the enclosed cards and oblige Yours truly, W.M. Graham George Fox to followElias Hicks [*(concluding*] [More one than one of the] Old persons who [has] heard Elias, in his day & who [& learned have] gleaned their impressions [more of less of the right impressions about] Direct [perso] from what they saw of him [have dw dwell] have, in their conversations with me, dwelt on another [p] point. They [say] think he [was] had, [after his own part,] a large element of personal ambition, the [ambition &] pride [to for] of establishing [his own a] leadership, and [a] a set of opinions,] [or] perhaps a sect, that [it] should [re] reflect his own [endowed personality &] name, & to which he himself should give acknowledged, form & character. [coloring, & be & be the] [definite centre. I think it] very likely [this is true, markedly true]. [It] Such indeed is the [only] means all through [the operations of chi] civilization, all through progress, by which strong men & strong convictions [can be] achieve anything. [Then Through of tays] But the basic foundation of Elias Hicks was undoubtably genuine[ss & true] religious [yearning] fervor. He was like an old Hebrew [ph] prophet. He [unko] had the spirit of one. X Walt Whitman lectured on Elias Hicks who was a Quaker--one of his friends whom he admired very much.