FEINBERG/WHITMAN LITERARY FILE Prose "Summer Days in Canada" (1880). Galley Proof. from cmt 33-2 (oversz 4-15) Includes A. Ms. notation.SUMMER DAYS IN CANADA -------- Letter From Walt Whitman ---------- First appearances--The Crops--Seeing Niagara to Advantage--A Good Route--Sunday with the Insane --A Zall-Verein Proposed--Elias Hicks--Fine Native Race Forming. ------------ LONDON, ONTARIO, CANADA, June 19. I am here almost 600 miles west-by- north-west of New York city, in a beautiful country, ("Old Dominion" they call it all-- and that "Old Dominion" of Virginia I was years ago quite familiar with, but having its own charms and amplitudes). After crossing the Niagara river, the topography the whole way, 120 miles, is pleasantly broken, attractive and thrifty, seldom much woods, the usual farm-sights dotting the landscape from the car windows in every direction, and passing some handsome and busy towns, St. Catherine's, Hamilton, Paris and Woodstock. Take it throughout, I should be at a loss to mention any portions of the States, east or west, with a more prosperous show, and of fairer comfortable human living. CROPS, THE SEASON, ETC. The land, although not the best I have ever seen, seems generally good, and prairie, quite diversified, and fairly tilled, the grass and wheat looking well. The hay crop indeed promises to be tremendous, as in the States. I can testify (have been in Canada now two weeks) to the excellence and plenty of such ice things as asparagus, pie-plant, strawberries, etc., from our daily table. Potatoes, oats, rye, growing well; corn ditto, but late. No potato-bug or army-worm here, so far. Sorghum is beginning to be raised on trial. June 9th to 15th frequent rains. Upon the whole, the season delightful, and the weather more bracing than in our Middle United States. June 15, afternoon and evening, I had to put on my old thick overcoat. Folks here talked anticipatingly of frost--they told me its freezing touch often came in June; but it did not come this time. I find all my birds singing in the bush and woods, and all our flowers in the gardens. This seems to be the special country of gorgeous cream-colored or cardinal peonies; they flaunt their great blossoms in every door yard and along the road. Then as I go about I am never without the scent of the hardy jessamine and seringa-bush; (Perhaps I may as well notify the reader that in the jottings following no attention is paid to the consecutiveness of dates. I am spending the season half-indolently in Canada, and these are some of my summer happenings, thoughts, and imprudence, as I go about.) SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE. June 4--For really seizing a great pasture or book, or piece of music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the first time even the common sunshine, or landscape, or maybe the mystery of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes now and then some lucky five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances, and bringing in a brief dash, the culmination of years of reading and travel, and thought. The present case about two o'clock, this afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of action and color and majestic grouping (like some colossal cluster of Greek statuary) in one short, indescribable show. We were very slowly crossing Suspension Bridge,--not a full stop anywhere, but next to it--the day clear, sunny, still--and I out on the platform. The Falls were in plain view almost a mile off, but very distinct, and no roar--hardly a murmur. The river, tumbling, green and white, far below me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all this luminous materiality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent. Brief, and as quiet as brief, that picture--yet a remembrance always afterwards. Such are the things, indeed, I lay away with my life's rare and blessed bits of hours, mostly reminiscent, past--the wild sea-storm I once saw one winter day, off Fire Island--the elder Booth in Richard, that famous night forty years ago in the Old Bowery--or Alboni in the children's scene in Norma--or night-views, I remember, on the field, after battles in Virginia--or the peculiar sentiment of moonlight and stars over the Great Plains, Western Kansas--or scooting up New York Bay, with a stiff breeze and a good yacht, off Navesink. With these, I say, I henceforth place that view, that afternoon, that combination complete, that five minutes' perfect absorption of Niagara--not the great majestic gem alone by itself, but set complete in all the varied, full, indispensable surroundings. A GOOD ROUTE TO CANADA. To go back a little, I left Philadelphia, 9th and Green streets, at 8 o'clock p. m. June 3, on a first-rate sleeper, by the Lehigh Valley (North Pennsylvania) route, through Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly, and so (by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, where we arrived at 8, morning, and had a bounteous breakfast. I must say I never put in such a good night on any RR track --smooth, firm, the minimum of jolting, and all the swiftness compatible with safety. So without change to Buffalo, and thence to Clifton, Canada, where we arrived early afternoon. (When I recommend this route to Niagara either from New York, Philadelphia or Washington, let no suspicious reader nose a puff, for I paid my honest fare, and here give these lines for pure satisfaction and love.) So we came through from Philadelphia to Clifton in seventeen hours without change, and then on to this city in four more--[les?] than 22 hours altogether. I am domiciled at the hospitable house of Dr. and Mrs. Bucke, in the ample and charming garden and lawns of the Asylum for the Insane. Besides the extensive ornamental grounds there is a vast farm.Pieces to give awaySUNDAY WITH THE INSANE June 6 --Went over to the religious services (Episcopal) Main Insane Asylum, held in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story. Plain boards, whitewash, plenty of cheap chairs, no ornament or color, yet all scrupulously clean and sweet. Some 200 or so present, mostly patients. Everything, the prayers, a short sermon, the firm, orotund voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond any portraying or suggesting, that audience, deeply impressed me. I was furnished with an arm chair near the pulpit, and eat facing the motley, eager, pitiful, huddled, yet perfectly well-behaved and orderly congregation. The quaint dresses and bonnets of some of the women, some of them girls, some very old and gray, here and there like the heads in old pictures. O the looks that came from those faces! There were two or three I shall probably never forget. Nothing at all markedly repulsive, or hideous -- strange enough,I did not see one such. Our common humanity, mine and yours, everywhere; "The same old blood -- the same red, running blood;" yet behind most an inferred arriere of such storms, such wreaks, such mysteries, fires, love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems, crosses, mirrored from those crazed faces (yet temporarily as calm, like still waters), all the woes and sad happenings of life and death -- now from every one the devotional element 'radiating - was it not, indeed, that peace of God that passeth all understanding, strange as it may sound? I can only say that I took long and searching eye-sweeps as I sat there, and it seemed so, rousing unprecedented thoughts, problems unanswerable. (How sometimes a flash of the living sight, magnetic, confounds all previous statements, and reams, folios of argument.) A very fair choir and melodeon accompaniment. They sang "Lead, Kindly Light," after the sermon. Many joined to the beautiful hymn, to which the minister read the introductory text, "In the daytime also He lead them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire." Then the words: Lead kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on. The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on. Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Should'st lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path, but now Lead thou me on. I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will; I remember not past years. I felt as I came out in the vendent June forenoon that the hour and scene had roused reverences, sanctity, deepest emotions, of which the stateliest churches I had ever seen, with all their ceremonies, stained glass, pealing organs, and velvet and sumptuousness, gave me no reminiscence. A couple of days after, I went to the "Refractory Building," under special charge of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards pretty thoroughly, both the men's and women's. I have made other visits of the kind through the Asylum, and around among the detached cottages. As far as I could see, this is among the most advanced, perfected and kindly and rationally carried on of all its kind in all America. It is a town in itself, with many buildings and a thousand inhabitants. I learn that Canada, and especially this ample and populous province, Ontario, has the very best and plentiest benevolent institutions in all departments. A ZOLLVEREIN BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. Some of the more liberal of the presses here are discussing the question of a Zollverein between the United States and Canada. It is proposed to form a union for commercial purposes -- to altogether abolish the frontier tariff line with its double sets of Custom House officials now existing between the two countries, and to agree upon one tariff for both, the proceeds of this tariff to be divided between the two Governments on the basis of population. It is said that a large percentage of the merchants of Canada are in favor of this step, as they believe it would materially add to the business of the country by removing the restrictions that now exist between trade between Canada and the States. Many of those persons who are opposed to the measure believe that it would increase the material wealth of the country, but it would loosen the bonds between Canada and England; and this sentiment over-rides the desire for commercial prosperity. Whether the sentiment in question can continue to bear the strain put upon it is a question. It is thought by many that commercial considerations must in the end prevail. It seems also to be generally agreed that such a Zollverein, or common customs union, would bring practically more benefits to the Canadian Provinces than to the United States. REMINISCENCE OF ELIAS HICKS. June 8 -- To-day a letter from Mrs: E.L. L., Detroit, accompanied in a little post office roll by a rare old engraved head of Elias Hicks, (from a portrait in oil by Henry Inman, painted for J.V.S., must have been 60 years old or more ago, in New York) -- among the rest the following excerpt about E.H. in the letter: "I have listened to his preaching so often when a child, and sat with my mother at social gatherings where he was the centre, and every one so pleased and stirred by his conversation. I hear that you contemplate writing or speaking about him, and I wondered whether you had a picture of him. As I am the owner of two, I send you one." A GRAND NATIVE GROWTH IN CANADA. In a few days I go to Lake Huron, and may have something to say of that region and people. From what I already see, I should say the young native population of Canada was growing up, forming a hardy, democratic, intelligent, radically sound, and just as American, good-natured and individualistic race, as the average-range of best specimens among us. As among us, too, I please myself by considering that this element, though may be not the majority, promises to be the leaven which must eventually leaven the whole lump. W. W.